[✔️] June2 , 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*June 2, 2021*/

[About time]*
****Biden administration to suspend Arctic oil leases issued under Trump*
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/556352-biden-administration-to-suspend-arctic-oil-leases-issued-under



[video from Australia]
*Sydney teenager fights for climate change*
Jun 1, 2021
Reuters
Leading thousands of protest marchers aren’t the usual activities for 
most 14-year-olds. But Australian student Izzy Raj-Seppings has 
abandoned more frivolous activities in favor of stepping up pressure on 
the country’s leadership to battle climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVYK4ueW94Q



[Why not make it into a utility?]
*BP buys string of US solar farms for £155m in clean energy drive*
Projects to be developed across 12 states by Lightsource BP will be 
capable of powering 1.7m homes
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jun/01/bp-re-enters-us-market-buying-up-string-of-solar-farms-for-155m



[Ice box meltwaters]
*Climate Change Is Melting Arctic Ice Cellars*
For generations, Native Alaskans have preserved foods by digging 10 to 
20 feet into the permafrost. As the planet warms, more than their food 
security is at stake.
- -
No part of the whale goes to waste. Or it didn’t until recently. It’s 
common for Iñupiat families to store whale meat and other subsistence 
foods in icy cellars deep underground, but in recent years, many people 
have reported that their cellars are either becoming too warm and 
causing food to spoil, or failing completely due to flooding or 
collapse. For instance, a 2014 inventory of ice cellars in the coastal 
village of Wainwright conducted by the Alaska Native Tribal Health 
Consortium found that 19 out of 34 cellars had been abandoned.
- -
https://civileats.com/2021/06/01/climate-change-is-melting-arctic-ice-cellars/ 




[see some pictures]
*Five satellite images that show how fast our planet is changing*
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/this-is-why-satellites-are-so-vital-for-protecting-the-health-of-our-planet/


[excellent instructional video ]*
**Population & Food: Crash Course Geography #16*
Jun 1, 2021
CrashCourse
Today we’re going to talk about the link between population and food 
energy. As the world's population keeps growing, finding ways to provide 
enough food and water for everyone while supporting a sustainable 
environment can be tricky!  We'll take a closer look at food chains and 
how energy is transferred between different trophic levels, follow the 
trends in human consumption as incomes rise, and talk about the two 
types of overpopulation as they're related to the planet's carrying 
capacity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvc1P5edKTc


[Congressman takes a risky political step forward]
*With GOP circling, Ossoff leans into climate change*
The Georgia Democrat said he won’t rule out mechanisms like carbon taxes 
or clean energy standards as possible climate policies.
- -
Ossoff, who won’t face voters again until 2026, acknowledges he may be 
“particularly attuned” to the need for action on climate change since 
his youth means he's likely to see the increasing impacts. But he still 
sees it more as an opportunity to build a thriving next generation 
economy in his state.

    “The economic advantages that the fossil fuel industry has developed
    over the last century are not born of the inherent efficiency of
    those commodities or their production techniques,” he said. “They're
    born of decisions made by policymakers to subsidize that sector. Now
    what we need to do is align the incentives so that energy production
    that is sustainable becomes, as it is rapidly becoming, the dominant
    and most economical way of powering our lives, power and commerce.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/01/jon-ossoff-climate-change-491505



[Texas and Oil Industry has to act responsibly... no really. ]
*There’s a ticking climate time bomb in West Texas*
Biden faces a critical decision about the Permian Basin and its methane 
emissions from oil and gas.
By Rebecca Leber -  Jun 1, 2021
*The Permian Basin is a ticking climate bomb*
When Biden first said he would issue “stronger standards like controls 
from methane leaks,” in January, he never named the nation’s No. 1 
source of methane pollution. The Permian Basin tops the list — and this 
runaway pollution is the primary reason why gas can be as bad for 
climate change as carbon-intensive coal.
- -
*The EPA has been struggling to enact common sense methane regulation 
for years...*
- -
*There’s one last option: Biden could go all-in and declare a climate 
emergency...*
The political drawbacks are clear even to environmentalists who say it 
may become necessary. Biden would face serious backlash, especially in a 
state that Democrats hope to win in a future presidential election and 
that some say is turning purple.

“An overnight ban on crude oil exports would, obviously, have serious 
economic disruption for the industry and communities in Texas and 
elsewhere that are built around those exports,” said Stockman. “It would 
be much better to have a five-, 10-year, and beyond plan to wind this 
part of our economy down in a just and fair way.”

Effective methane regulation is only a first step, because the climate 
crisis requires more unprecedented action. And that’s convincing the 
famously individualistic state to sunset one of its leading industries.

“Regulating emissions is just not enough,” said Rebekah Hinojosa, a 
Sierra Club organizer based in Brownsville, Texas, citing the other 
impacts of oil development in West Texas on the entire state’s air 
quality and groundwater pollution as well as the safety hazards from 
pipelines and trucks.

“We’re going to actually need to wind down the industry, not just clean 
it up,” Stockman said.
https://www.vox.com/22407581/gas-texas-biden-climate-change-methane-permian-basin



[from the greatest living climate scientist - the Grandfather]
*Fighting the Battles, Winning the War*
1 June 2021
James Hansen
The battles to slow human-made climate change have been fought bravely 
by ad hoc groups of concerned citizens – trying to stop pipelines, coal 
mines, fracking, etc.  Winning a battle helps, and fights are beginning 
to be won, including confrontations in courts and industry board rooms.

Winning the war requires governments to fight on the side of the 
people.  It hasn’t happened yet.  Our governments have too many 
politicians who are well-oiled, coal-fired, and full of gas.

Instead, governments set goals for the future and heavily subsidize 
renewable energies.  The fossil fuel industry is pleased.  They smugly 
put windmills and solar panels on their websites.

We have lived with that situation for three decades, since the United 
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992.  
Each year scientists who understand the delayed response of the climate 
system – and implications for young people, future generations and 
nature – become more and more frantic, but to no avail.

But today – for the first time – there is a good chance that we can get 
onto a path to win the war.

President Biden has the authority to impose a national carbon 
fee-and-dividend, as my attorney Dan Galpern and I point out in an op-ed 
in the Boston Globe.  Specifically, EPA has authority to collect a 
pollution fee.  The Supreme Court in Massachusetts vs EPA ruled that 
fossil fuel CO2 is a pollutant.  The fossil fuel industry may squeal 
like a stuck pig and expect rescue by the Court, but the Court will 
realize its place in history, if it reverses the prior ruling of the 
Roberts Court.

Let’s be clear: the frequent comparison of the fossil fuel and tobacco 
industries is nonsense.  Fossil fuels are a valuable energy source that 
has done yeomen service for humankind.  One gallon (3.7 liters) of 
gasoline (petrol) contains the equivalent of 400 hours of labor by a 
healthy adult.  Fossil fuels raised living standards in much of the 
world.  But we now understand that fossil fuel use comes with an 
unacceptable cost for young people and future generations.

The fastest way to phase down fossil fuel use is via a steadily rising 
carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies.  If the funds are 
distributed uniformly to the public, the effect is anti-regressive; 70 
percent of the public gets more in the dividend than they pay in 
increased prices.

Carbon fee-and-dividend can survive successive administrations, if the 
collected funds are distributed uniformly, because of its popularity.  
Also, almost all economists – conservative and liberal – agree that 
fee-and-dividend is the appropriate, economically-efficient energy policy.

Global solution of the climate problem requires cooperation of the 
United States and China.  The United States is the nation most 
responsible for historic (cumulative) emissions and thus for climate 
change.  However, China has the largest emissions today.  Both nations 
have much to lose, if global emissions are not phased down during the 
next few decades.

If China and the United States agree to have rising carbon fees, they 
would surely also place border duties on products from countries without 
a carbon fee.  This would be a strong incentive for other countries to 
have carbon fees, so they can collect the carbon fee themselves.

In absence of such a rising carbon fee/tax, nations will keep having 
annual COP (Conference of the Parties) meetings, politicians will clap 
each other on the back, and young people are screwed.
     ***
In my communication of 16 March 2021 (Activists) I mentioned two heroes 
in the battle against mountaintop removal (MTR): Larry Gibson and Judy 
Bonds.  The photo in that communication actually showed Larry Gibson and 
Lorelei Scarbro.  I should have recognized Lorelei.  I met her on 4 July 
2010 (Independence Day on Kayford Mountain) at a picnic on Larry 
Gibson’s property.  That day I took the above photo of the land directly 
abutting Larry’s property, which shows the effect of mountaintop 
removal.  When I got home, I wrote Activist.

Contrary to drivel from liberal media and ‘big green’ environmental 
organizations, the climate war is not being won.  We have not even 
stopped mountaintop removal.  For years, the U.S. Congress has failed to 
pass the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Act, which asks for a 
halt in new or expanded coal mine permits until the Department of Health 
and Human Services does a study that concludes that there is no threat 
to public health.  Somebody does not want that study conducted, somebody 
who has more sway over our politicians than does the public good.

Jeff Biggers has done more than anyone to draw attention to consequences 
of MTR and strip-mining.  Biggers strongly recommends a new short 
documentary, The Both of Me, which premiered over the Memorial Day weekend.

MTR is a small battle in the world war on pollution and climate change.  
MTR provides a small part of U.S. coal.  U.S. coal is but a fraction of 
global coal.  Coal is only one of the three big fossil fuels, the others 
being oil and gas.  Fracking to get gas is as bad as coal mining.

Winning the climate war requires a rising carbon fee that covers all of 
these: oil, gas and coal.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/20210601_WinningTheWar.pdf



[kicking Koonin]
*That ‘Obama Scientist’ Climate Skeptic You’ve Been Hearing About 
...*His track record on getting climate science right is extremely poor

By Naomi Oreskes, Michael E. Mann, et al...
June 1, 2021

If you’d heard only that a scientist who served in the Trump 
administration and now regularly appears on Fox News and other 
conservative media thinks climate change is a hoax, you’d roll your eyes 
and move on. But if you heard that someone associated with former 
President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration was calling the 
climate science consensus a conspiracy, the novelty of the messenger 
might make you take it a little more seriously.

The latter is what Steve Koonin is using to sell his new book, which is 
being billed as the revelation of an “Obama scientist” who wants you to 
think that climate change isn’t a big deal. But unfortunately, climate 
change is real, is caused primarily by burning fossil fuels, and is 
already hurting people all over the world, including here in the United 
States.

For example, a study published recently found that because climate 
change has caused sea levels to rise, Superstorm Sandy flooded an 
additional 36,000 homes, impacting 71,000 people who would’ve been safe 
otherwise, and caused $8 billion in additional damage.

How many people are suffering, and paying in health care costs because 
of fossil fuels isn’t the kind of thing Steve Koonin thinks you should 
worry about, though. That’s because his argument in 2021 is as 
scientifically empty as it was in 2013, when the American Physical 
Society allowed him to lead a review of their climate consensus 
statement. He assembled a team of his own to challenge mainstream 
scientists, and in January of 2014 held a debate for the scientific 
society. You can even read the 573-page transcript of the full-day 
debate. (Spoiler alert: the APS was not swayed by denial.) But instead 
of accepting that his idiosyncratic view of climate science was 
considered wrong by climate scientists, Koonin resigned from the 
process. He evidently doesn't need to win a debate, he just needs to 
make it seem like there is one.

Since then, the public seems to be his target, as he racks up media hits 
in the conservative “news” circuit that pushes climate denial. From the 
friendly reviews and interviews he’s gotten on that circuit, it’s clear 
that he’s pushing the same tired story that he failed to get the APS and 
climate scientists to embrace.

Steve Koonin is hoping you’ll see Obama’s name and trust him when he 
tells you that he’s better equipped to summarize major climate reports 
than the authors of the U.N.’s IPCC report and the U.S. government’s 
National Climate Assessment, who wrote at length about the already 
sizable and growing costs of climate change.

He’s hoping you won’t recall that each president appoints thousands of 
people, and Koonin, it turns out, was hired at the Energy Department 
specifically for his contrarianism. His boss at the time, Stephen Chu, 
said he “didn’t want to have a department where everybody believed 
exactly as everybody else” and added that Koonin “loves to be the 
curmudgeon type.”

Knowing that he was brought in to play devil’s advocate because his 
beliefs were in opposition to the Obama administration makes clear that 
splashing his decade-old appointment on his book cover is a marketing 
gimmick.

When it comes to the science, Koonin cherry-picks and misrepresents 
outdated material to downplay the seriousness of the climate crisis. In 
April, climate scientists fact-checked Koonin’s claims as encapsulated 
in a Wall Street Journal review, and found them to be highly misleading. 
They explain the many ways in which he presents outdated science as 
definitive and otherwise misrepresents studies to make it seem like that 
the science is still out on whether or not climate change will be bad. 
But if the science weren’t settled, as he claims, then that would cut 
both ways: It might be worse than we think, instead of being no big 
deal, as Koonin suggests.

The misrepresentations cited as appearing in Koonin’s book are being 
amplified in right-wing media and beyond. A recent Washington Post 
column by conservative contributor Marc Thiessen repeats several points 
Koonin makes. The first is citing the 2017 National Climate Assessment 
to downplay rising temperatures—but the report’s very first key finding 
on the topic says temperatures have risen, rapidly since 1979, and are 
the warmest in 1,500 years.

The second is Thiessen quoting Koonin’s use of an outdated 2014 
assessment on hurricanes to downplay climate concerns. But the newer 
2017 report finds that human activity has “contributed to the observed 
upward trend in North Atlantic hurricane activity since the 1970s.”

A third point downplays sea level rise by portraying it as steady over 
time, cherry-picking reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change. In fact, the rate of sea-level rise has quadrupled since the 
industrial revolution, as climate scientists pointed out years ago when 
Koonin made this same argument. The remaining points are just as easily 
rebutted by a simple read of the sources he is misrepresenting. But he 
wants you to believe that, as an Obama hire, he knows better about what 
you should take away from these reports than the scientists who wrote them.

Thiessen is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. For those 
unfamiliar with the tangled world of organized climate denial, a recent 
study paints a pretty clear picture: of all the conservative, 
climate-denying think tanks that get Koch and other industry funding, 
AEI has gotten the most. It received some $380 million to peddle 
industry-friendly denial like Koonin’s, much of it through dark money 
pass-throughs to conceal that it’s coming from conservative and 
dirty-energy donors.

Koonin isn’t lying about having worked for the Obama administration, but 
he’s certainly trying to portray himself as something better than he is: 
a crank who’s only taken seriously by far-right disinformation peddlers 
hungry for anything they can use to score political points. He’s just 
another denier trying to sell a book.
By Naomi Oreskes, Michael E. Mann, Gernot Wagner, Don Wuebbles, Andrew 
Dessler, Andrea Dutton, Geoffrey Supran, Matthew Huber, Thomas Lovejoy, 
Ilissa Ocko, Peter C. Frumhoff, Joel Clement
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/that-obama-scientist-climate-skeptic-youve-been-hearing-about/




[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming June  2, 2008*

June 2, 2008: The New York Times reports:

"Some of the most powerful corporate leaders in America have been 
meeting regularly with leading environmental groups in a conference room 
in downtown Washington for over two years to work on proposals for a 
national policy to limit carbon emissions.

"The discussions have often been tense. Pinned on a wall, a large 
handmade poster with Rolling Stones lyrics reminds everyone, 'You can’t 
always get what you want.'

"What unites these two groups — business executives from Duke Energy, 
the Ford Motor Company and ConocoPhillips, as well as heads of 
environmental organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council — 
is a desire to deal with climate change. They have broken with much of 
corporate America to declare that it is time for the federal government 
to act and set mandatory limits on emissions."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/business/02trade.html?pagewanted=all


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