[TheClimate.Vote] March 2, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*March 2, 2021*/

[Not funny, a cute, smart cartoon]
*The global climate disaster misinfornado will end up killing way more 
people than the Texas ice storms*
First Dog on the Moon
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/01/the-global-climate-disaster-misinfornado-will-end-up-killing-way-more-people-than-the-texas-ice-storms
- -
[The Guardian from Texas newspapers]
*A Texas city had a bold new climate plan – until a gas company got 
involved*
When the city of Austin drafted a plan to shift away from fossil fuels, 
the local gas company was fast on the scene to try to scale back the 
ambition of the effort.

Like many cities across the US, the rapidly expanding and gentrifying 
Texas city is looking to shrink its climate footprint. So its initial 
plan was to virtually eliminate gas use in new buildings by 2030 and 
existing ones by 2040. Homes and businesses would have to run on 
electricity and stop using gas for heat, hot water and stoves...
The proposal, an existential threat to the gas industry, quickly caught 
the attention of Texas Gas Service. The company drafted line-by-line 
revisions to weaken the plan, asked customers to oppose it and escalated 
its concerns to top city officials.
In its suggested edits, the company struck references to 
“electrification”, and replaced them with “decarbonization”– a policy 
that wouldn’t rule out gas. It replaced “electric vehicles” with 
“alternative fuel vehicles”, which could run on compressed natural gas. 
It offered to help the city to plant more trees to absorb climate 
pollution and to explore technologies to pull carbon dioxide out of the 
air – both of which might help it to keep burning gas.

Those proposed revisions were obtained by Floodlight, the Texas Observer 
and San Antonio Report through public records of communications between 
city officials and the company.

The moves have so far proven a success for Texas Gas. The most recently 
published draft of the climate plan gives the company much more time to 
sell gas to existing customers, and it allows it to offset climate 
emissions instead of eliminating them. The city, however, is revisiting 
the plan after a backlash to the industry-secured changes.

The lobbying in Austin is not unique. It echoes how an electricity and 
gas company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars scaling back San 
Antonio’s climate ambitions by funding the city’s plan-writing process, 
replacing academics with its preferred consultants and writing its own 
“Flexible Path” that would let it keep polluting.
The American Gas Association in a statement for this story said it “will 
absolutely oppose any effort to ban natural gas or sideline our 
infrastructure anywhere the effort materializes, state house or city 
steps”. But it argued that position is “not counter to environmental 
goals we all share”, and said “natural gas is key to achieving the 
cleaner energy future we all want”.

Texas’s reliance on gas was on display in mid-February when more than 4m 
households lost power for days after a freak winter storm battered the 
state. Gas power plants dominate the Texas grid, providing 47% of the 
state’s electricity. Many of those plants and the natural gas pipelines 
leading to them failed in the cold conditions.

More than a third of Texas households also rely on gas for heat. 
Competition for gas-fueled power and heat forced prices to surge as high 
as 16,000%, one power company said. Utilities now face massive bills 
from their gas suppliers – and many are passing the costs on to 
customers in the form of sky-high bills.

The CEO of Comstock Resources, a gas company owned by the billionaire 
Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, described the gas industry windfall 
as “hitting the jackpot” in an earnings call.
*
**A nationwide fight goes local*
The gas industry is battling climate change reforms in cities around the 
US – with support from Republican politicians.

In Texas, lawmakers have introduced two bills that would prohibit local 
governments from banning gas connections. “There hasn’t been a city 
necessarily that has banned natural gas yet, but we have whispers from 
the Austin city council, the city of Houston, even smaller cities,” said 
Jeff Carlson, the chief of staff for Representative Cody Harris, who 
introduced one of the bills...
Four other state legislatures passed similar laws last year, and 12 more 
have seen proposals for them in 2021. The gas lobby, the American Gas 
Association, has said it isn’t actively coordinating support or lobbying 
for state laws to prohibit gas bans, but its internal records indicate a 
different story.

“We are increasingly active in the States,” the association’s president, 
Karen Harbert, said in a November letter to members explaining how the 
organization spent membership dues in 2020. She said the association is 
participating in several “Pro Natural Gas Coalitions” to bring allies 
together...
- -
Gas is cheap, and affordability is a major concern in Austin, where 
families and people of color continue to get priced out of the 
fast-growing city.

But even so, Austinites don’t necessarily want gas, said Chelsea Gomez, 
a community ambassador who consulted on the city plan. “When you talk to 
people, they don’t want natural gas as a middle man to a sustainable 
future – they want solar panels to be affordable for them,” said Gomez. 
“People want better [options].”

Burning gas indoors exposes people to dangerous pollutants that are 
linked with heart attacks, respiratory disease and asthma. One study 
found that children in homes with gas stoves were 42% more likely to 
have asthma than children in homes with electric stoves.

The fossil fuel also has clear climate impacts. In Texas, the number of 
days that are 100F or hotter has more than doubled over the past 40 
years and could double again by 2036, according to a study from the 
Texas state climatologist. Extreme rainfall and urban flooding are 
increasing, hurricanes are getting more intense and the Gulf of Mexico 
is rising. Droughts and wildfires are becoming more severe.

Those effects were what Austin was trying to help to limit when Texas 
Gas Service got involved...
*‘Crashing the party’*
After one early meeting in June with the city’s climate program manager, 
Texas Gas’ regulatory affairs manager, Larry Graham, said in an email to 
Austin’s climate program manager, Zach Baumer, that the proposal for 
all-electric new construction had “gotten the attention of people at the 
highest level of our company”. The city released the internal emails, 
along with the draft versions of the plan, in response to a request for 
public records.

By July, employees of the company’s parent corporation, One Gas, were 
weighing in on the proposals from their headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

It was a level of involvement that raised red flags among city employees.

Baumer later emailed Graham that his company was “kind of crashing a 
party” when it attended meeting after meeting...
-  -
Shane Johnson, the co-chair of the steering committee who works for the 
Sierra Club, called Texas Gas’ influence “unnerving”.

After environmental advocates balked at the revisions, the city agreed 
to revert back to the original, more aggressive goals.
- -
In response to the lobbying, the city’s final plan watered down key 
emission goals, replacing specific strategies to cut emissions with 
vague and sometimes misleading platitudes.

The climate activists did have some successes. They got the city to 
include interim goals – to cut climate pollution 41% by 2030 and 71% by 
2040 as checkpoints on the path to carbon neutrality by 2050.

Greg Harman, a clean energy advocate with the Sierra Club who served on 
one of the climate plan committees, said Texas’s reputation as hostile 
to climate action is both earned and imposed on the state by the energy 
industry. Like the rest of the US, surveys show a majority of Texans 
believe that climate change is real and a cause for concern.

“We’re a complex and interesting state, we just happen to have a lot of 
energy resources,” Harman said. “But the cynics are right to be cynical.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/01/a-texas-city-had-a-bold-new-climate-plan-until-a-gas-company-got-involved


[Climate journalism]
*Talking Shop: Boosting your climate confidence on every beat*
Mar 1, 2021
Covering Climate Now
Want to boost your news team’s climate chops but unsure where to start?

With President Joe Biden clearly prioritizing the climate issue, 
newsrooms have no choice but to raise their own climate competence, 
fast. The Biden administration is taking an all-of-government approach, 
making climate change central to its economic, foreign policy, and 
social justice agendas.
This webinar will help journalists develop an all-of-newsroom approach 
to covering climate change in Biden’s Washington.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SfvUi4Syls



[its about time]*
**Florida celebrates sea level rise planning tool after years ‘behind 
the curve’*
A recent law requires builders to think about climate change for some 
publicly funded projects.
By Zachary T. Sampson - Feb. 18, 2021

One year after the Florida Legislature passed a bill considered its 
first direct confrontation of climate change in years, the state is 
moving closer to making the policy’s promises a reality.

The Department of Environmental Protection is crafting a rule that will 
lay out a standard for considering sea level rise before starting 
construction on some publicly funded projects along the coast. It is 
supposed to take effect July 1, and agency officials said this week they 
aim to hone a draft version by April 1.

“The whole idea is to raise the floor, and the floor on planning was 
absolutely nothing,” said José Javier Rodríguez, a former state senator 
from Miami who pushed the original legislation.
Department of Environmental Protection secretary Noah Valenstein said in 
a meeting last month that the measure will mark the first time Florida 
sends “a uniform signal across the state of what sea level rise 
projections should be used over what time periods.”

The rule will require Sea Level Impact Projection (or SLIP) studies to 
be finished before builders break ground on projects that receive state 
funding and fall in specific areas especially vulnerable to flooding 
near the shore. It will cover structures like houses, parking garages, 
piers, water treatment plants and bridges, but not smaller items like 
gazebos and beach walkovers, or seawalls and breakwaters meant to combat 
erosion.

The impact studies are supposed to look forward to possible flooding 
over the lifespan of a project, often several decades, using a sea level 
rise estimate developed by federal scientists. During a meeting Tuesday, 
state officials indicated they would require an “intermediate-high” 
projection for how much local sea levels could rise, slightly lower than 
some environmentalists wanted but also not among the most conservative 
scenarios...
An engineering firm is creating an online tool that will allow 
developers to plug in their project information and produce the studies. 
It could provide a ranking of future flood risk, data on potential 
flooding, along with suggestions of ways to make a project more 
resilient. The rule will not force agencies, cities or counties to 
pursue whatever is deemed the safest route.
“There’s no requirement to implement a particular alternative that may 
be suggested,” said Whitney Gray, administrator of the Florida Resilient 
Coastlines program, during the meeting this week. “This is not a 
regulatory tool.”

Rodríguez, a Democrat who lost a bid for re-election last year, said he 
designed the bill to gain support in a Legislature historically averse 
to discussing climate change. “We are so far behind the curve from where 
we’re starting,” he said.

He modeled it after the National Environmental Policy Act, which 
requires project managers to study environmental impacts and identify 
alternative designs, but not necessarily to take the least harmful route.

The rule will require studies to be posted on the Department of 
Environmental Protection’s website for at least 10 years, and for 30 
days before groundbreaking can commence. The state will not solicit 
public comments or hold public hearings on each individual study, said 
Weesam Khoury, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection.

Rodríguez said he hopes that requiring the research and posting it 
online affords accountability, and that residents will pressure elected 
officials who back risky investments of their tax dollars.

Environmental groups like the measure but have offered some critiques. 
State officials have revised the draft language in response to feedback 
and will continue to do so over the next several weeks.

The Environmental Defense Fund in Florida submitted suggestions in a 
letter last month, including a request that the rule make clear how 
studies should look at environmental risks outside damage to buildings, 
like changes to water quality and erosion.

“The rule feels more like an anti-flooding rule rather than a sea level 
rise impacts tool,” said Elizabeth Fata Carpenter, a staff attorney at 
the Everglades Law Center, which shares the concern.

The Law Center also wants officials to demand a longer wait period 
before construction than 30 days to give developers time to consider 
alternative designs.

“Because the state is beginning to take steps, we want to make sure that 
the step they do take is of high quality,” Fata Carpenter said. “It’s a 
step in the right direction, but it’s not a very big step.”

To learn more about the proposed rule, visit the Department of 
Environmental Protection’s website here: 
https://floridadep.gov/rcp/beaches-funding-program/content/resilience-and-coastal-protection-rules-development
https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2021/02/18/florida-celebrates-sea-level-rise-planning-tool-after-years-behind-the-curve/



[Sea ice melt is a huge influence]*
**A Smorgasbord of Actions and Reactions in the Arctic causing Global 
Climate System Disruption*
Mar 1, 2021
Paul Beckwith
In the last few videos I chatted about the amazing new research showing 
that the entire Arctic Ocean was filled with freshwater covered by very 
thick shelf ice and sea ice, not just once, but twice in the last 
150,000 years.

Now I talk about a slew of recent research papers on some of the 
ramifications one consequences of our changing Arctic on the overall 
climate system.

Specifically, I discuss:
(a) How the climate has changed rapidly during periods of rapid sea-ice 
decline in the Arctic
(b) How Arctic sea-ice plays a pacemaker role in abrupt global climate 
change
(c) How Arctic sea ice loss in the past is linked to abrupt climate events
(d) How salt concentrations in ice cores can unveil DO 
(Dansgaard-Oeschger) events’ recipe
(e) How abrupt climate change events from the past could help predict 
the ones ahead
(f) How rapid Arctic warming in the past has shifted Southern Hemisphere 
ocean winds
(g) How uneven warming around the globe shifts the equatorial rain band 
and mid latitude westerlies
(h) How ozone depletion can trump (sorry for using this word) Greenhouse 
gas increases in Jet stream shift
(I) How record high Arctic freshwater flows to the Labrador Sea, 
affecting local and global oceans

Lots of topics, but please Google the article titles I discuss for more 
information; they are all open source...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFGLsQS_3Nw



[inevitable]
FEBRUARY 26, 2021
*Flood-prone Miami to spend billions tackling sea level rise*
by Leila MacOr
The US city of Miami is to invest billions of dollars to tackle its 
vulnerability to rising sea levels, a reality that already affects the 
daily lives of residents used to constant flooding.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava said Friday she will 
protect communities hardest hit by rising sea levels, which eat away at 
beaches and leave residents particularly vulnerable to flooding during 
hurricane season.

"We must continue to focus on restoration, preservation and protection 
of this sacred space," she told a news conference.

"And so we will be together investing billions of dollars... in our 
infrastructure so that we can lift this community and others that are so 
affected by sea level rise," she added.

She cited "adaptation action areas" as a first priority to be studied, 
which would include raising low-lying roads, and waterproofing and 
converting southern Florida's widely used septic tanks into sewage systems.

The area, with extensive wetlands and sitting on porous stone that acts 
like a sponge, makes the state one of the most at risk from rising sea 
levels.

The problem is so visible that, during the summer rainy season, it is 
common to see Miamians kayaking along flooded avenues and cars sunk up 
to their windows.
The city of Miami Beach—which is part of Miami-Dade County—invested 
millions of dollars in raising the level of many of its streets in 2016.

And some private entrepreneurs have proposed creative, if expensive, 
ways to adapt to the challenge.

For example, Miami residents are used to seeing a houseboat that often 
docks near the port, although it has also appeared in other waters 
around Biscayne Bay.

It is valued at $5.5 million and adjusts to rising sea levels.

"It looks like a house, but technically it's a boat," said Nicolas 
Derouin, co-founder and managing director of Arkup, the Miami-based 
company that created this floating "villa" with a drop-down terrace over 
the sea.

The house, covered with a roof of solar panels, remains stable thanks to 
four hydraulic pillars that fix it to an underwater bed.

The Environmental Protection Agency says the sea level could rise by 
30am to 120 cm over the coming century.
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-flood-prone-miami-billions-tackling-sea.html


[common sense]
*In Wake of Texas Crisis, Advocates Say State Must Require Utilities 
Prepare For Climate Change*
Miriam Wasser - March 1, 2021
An unusually cold winter storm left millions of people in Texas without 
power and water last month, and left many in New England to ask, “Could 
that happen here?”

According to experts at the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, 
the answer is “yes.” Well, sort of.

Get up to speed on the local coronavirus outbreak and other news Boston 
is talking about. Add our daily newsletter to your morning routine. Sign 
up now.

Though the exact scenario that played out in Texas is probably unique to 
Texas — we don’t frack natural gas here, our pipelines and wind turbines 
are weatherized, we pay power generators to be ready for unexpected 
peaks in demand, and we are part of an electric grid that spans the 
entire eastern half of the country — the infrastructure we rely on to 
bring us electricity, gas and water is ill-prepared for the coming decades.

 From severe winter and summer storms to brutal heat waves, extreme 
rainfall, sea level rise and coastal flooding, the effects of climate 
change are already apparent here in the northeast. And scientists say 
they’re only going to get worse.

Climate change is "going to put our power infrastructure in a more 
vulnerable situation. And that jeopardizes reliable service for 
thousands of Massachusetts residents, which affects not only the cost 
that they pay in rates, but also their health and safety,” says Deanna 
Moran, Director of Environmental Planning at the Conservation Law 
Foundation (CLF).

Look at what just happened in Texas, she adds. The cold snap and power 
outages killed at least 80 people, and is likely going to cost the state 
billions in physical damages and economic losses; some experts predict 
the final price tag will top that of Hurricane Harvey, which cost $125 
billion.

"That's the latest example of what we're trying to avoid here in 
Massachusetts," she says...
- -
“The DPU is the Commonwealth's primary regulator of investor owned 
utilities, and it's in charge of ensuring safe and reliable service,” 
Moran says. “So this really falls very squarely in their statutory mandate.”

According to the petition, utilities should address how they’ll modify 
operations in the face of extreme weather, move or protect critical 
infrastructure, prepare disaster response plans for a variety of future 
climate outcomes and, importantly, update these plans every few years.

“We can no longer rely on historical trends to inform our 
decision-making, especially where it concerns critical infrastructure 
that has implications for public health and safety,” the petition states.

Though not involved in the CLF petition, Attorney General Maura Healey 
told WBUR in an email that she has many of the same concerns about how 
our energy infrastructure will fare in the future.

“What happened in Texas last week – the extreme winter weather, the 
millions without power, and the heartbreaking deaths that resulted – is 
climate change,” she wrote. “It’s what happens when we burn too many 
fossil fuels and fail to weatherize our system. It’s why Massachusetts 
utilities need to proactively plan for mitigating climate and disaster 
risk.”...
- -
Should the DPU accept CLF's advice and begin the process outlined in the 
petition, the agency could look to New York as a model.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, New York mandated its utilities 
undertake a study similar to the one CLF has proposed. In 2019, Con 
Edison, the utility that serves over 10 million people in New York City 
and Westchester County, published its results.

Moran calls the report a “best-practice model.” Con Edison identifies 
infrastructure in flood-prone areas and looks at strategies to protect 
it against rising sea levels and storm surge. It also examines how 
hotter temperatures might affect electrical wires, and explores options 
for better real-time monitoring of gas pipes that are vulnerable to 
damage from storm surge or flooding. And importantly, the utility 
outlines a framework for weighing the cost of adaptation and mitigation 
with that of inaction.

Preparing our energy and water infrastructure for climate change will 
cost money upfront, Moran says. But in the long run its likely to save 
ratepayers a lot of money — hardening an electrical substation against 
sea-level rise is less expensive than dealing with a flooded one that 
causes prolonged power outages, she says.

We need to be doing longer-term planning so that we don't have to have 
Eversource and National Grid coming back into the DPU every year looking 
for cost recovery" after big storms and floods, Moran says. “Because at 
the end of the day, that falls on the ratepayers [who are already] 
paying a lot of money for this infrastructure to continually be 
destroyed and rebuilt.”
https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2021/03/01/clf-dpu-utilities-massachusetts-climate-change-preparedness



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 2, 2012 *

March 2, 2012: The Virginia Supreme Court brings an end to Virginia 
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's legal harassment of climate scientist 
Michael Mann.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-03-02/local/35448477_1_cuccinelli-global-warming-skeptics-climate-scientist


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