[TheClimate.Vote] March 17, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Wed Mar 17 09:11:15 EDT 2021

/*March 17, 2021*/

[crevasse in capitalism - or maybe just a PR dodge]
*‘Reading the writing on the wall’: why Wall Street is acting on the 
climate crisis*
The industry has backed polluters for decades. Now, amid growing 
pressure, Wall Street says it’s going green
by Dominic Rushe
16 Mar 2021
Wildfires burned nearly 10.4m acres across the US last year. The most 
costly thunderstorm in US history caused $7.5bn in damage across 
Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. As the climate crisis swept 
the globe on a biblical scale it left in its wake a record number of 
billion-dollar disasters.

And yet out of these ashes has emerged an unlikely savior: Wall Street. 
After decades of backing polluters and opposing legislation to rein them 
in, finance says it’s going green...
- -
“There is a general consensus – not unanimity – that we have to do 
more,” he said.

Roadblocks remain, not least the “nightmare” of a US political system 
that has sucked the climate crisis into the divisive culture wars of 
American politics.

“The main thing that can go wrong is our politics,” said Stiglitz. 
“Everything is pointing in the right direction, technology, global 
consensus. The one thing that is not is climate change which is 
proceeding at a pace and with manifestations that are really 
depressing,” he said.

But even that is “actually accelerating our willingness to deal with it”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/16/wall-street-climate-crisis-emissions 

[Opinion from The Hill]
*Here's what young conservatives think about climate change*
BY KYLE MEYAARD-SCHAAP AND KIERA O'BRIEN, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 03/16/21

        A majority of Republicans aged 18 to 38 believe the government
        is doing too little to address climate change, with 78 percent
        saying the U.S. should prioritize alternative energy...
        - -
        As we raise this big tent, each segment of the movement will
        raise their own tent pole, reaching their respective communities
        as only they can. Rather than watering down our ambition in the
        name of consensus, a commitment to a rapid, economy-wide
        transition away from fossil fuels and climate justice for all
        must be the price of entry. Disagreements on how to get there
        will be aired in good faith and ideas will be honed and refined.
        Tactics and strategies will diverge, but our common aim will rhyme.

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/543403-heres-what-young-conservatives-think-about-climate-change

[getting advice from "those firms"]
*‘Garbage’ models and black boxes? The science of climate disaster planning*
Scientists warn that the data may be too unreliable to guide the 
precautions that governments, businesses and retirement fund managers 
must take in the coming decades.
By ZACK COLMAN - 03/16/2021
A new breed of data-crunching consultants has emerged to help big 
corporations and federal agencies assess the long-term dangers they face 
from climate change — everything from flooding risks for electrical 
substations to drought threats for supply chains.

But while those firms’ computerized projections may help satisfy 
shareholders' and activists' demands for fuller risk disclosures and 
stronger actions to counter the threats, scientists warn that the data 
may be too unreliable to guide the precautions that governments, 
businesses and retirement fund managers must take in the coming decades, 
creating a false sense of security.

Even worse, the climate analytics firms often shield their data models 
from public scrutiny as proprietary information, unlike the computer 
models that academic and government researchers typically rely on for 
their less granular projections of the warming planet. That makes it 
impossible to independently validate their work, scientists say.

“Do these guys know what they are doing? I’m not convinced that they 
do,” said Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center at Columbia 
University, who has reviewed some firms’ methodologies. “Your models are 
garbage. And, unfortunately, that’s a problem.”

“It’s not that [they] have some special sauce,” said Rutgers University 
climate scientist Robert Kopp, who contributes to climate analytics 
service firms Rhodium Group and First Street Foundation, which publish 
their methodologies. “[They] don’t want to talk about what you’re doing.”

Federal agencies that set public climate policy have been turning to 
these firms to weigh the flood risks to homes and for post-disaster 
rebuilding efforts to ensure new structures can withstand the effects of 
the changing climate.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Emergency Management 
Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of 
Housing and Urban Development, Federal Housing Finance Agency and NASA 
all have met with such firms to explore tools purporting to help protect 
taxpayers, banks and homes from rising seas, worsening rainstorms and 
severe droughts linked to climate change.

Some firms deny that they've shielded their methodologies from clients, 
saying that transparency is important to build confidence in their work, 
even if they don't broadly disseminate their models.

"Our methodology is documented, shared with and discussed with any 
customer that wants that level of detail, and over and over again we 
pass scrutiny on the methodology," Jupiter Intelligence CEO Rich Sorkin 
said. "We are heavily opposed to black boxes, but there's a big 
difference between black boxes and publicly disclosing to everyone in 
the world exactly how things are in the most detailed level."

HUD has hired Jupiter Intelligence as part of a $150,000 coastal 
modeling project to weigh flood protection systems against various 
sea-level rise scenarios. Rhodium Group, which publishes its 
methodology, received a $179,000 National Science Foundation grant last 
year to study the public health effects and socioeconomic costs of 
rising temperatures and wildfires.

Other providers that use more familiar catastrophe models common in the 
insurance industry are drawing scrutiny, too. KatRisk LLC netted 
$463,000 in federal contracts last year to work on FEMA's flood 
insurance program. Many have suggested, however, that such models do not 
adequately assess future climate change, leaving federal policy looking 
backwards.

The proliferation of providers has attracted attention from an expanding 
roster of federal agencies. FHFA issued a request for information on 
climate change in January and held a March 4 listening session with 
several service providers to gauge climate risk to mortgages held by 
government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"To better understand the risk posed to the Enterprises, along with our 
RFI, we are assessing various natural disaster and climate datasets," 
spokesperson Raffi Williams said in an email.

Demand for the services of climate analytics firms is growing as 
companies seek more sophisticated tools to plan for climate outcomes. 
Among the big names that have engaged them are oil giant BP, electric 
utilities Hawaiian Electric and ConEd, cities such as Miami and New York 
and property investment company CBRE Global Investors.

Many of the firms build their analytical models off government-funded 
research, a practice that is akin to private weather companies that use 
a backbone of data supplied by the National Weather Service to customize 
their products. But unlike shifts in climate, weather forecasting is 
short term, and scientists worry that companies hiring the analytics 
providers won't keep up with the latest science or will hand off their 
risk management duties to the firms, leaving themselves vulnerable to 
nasty surprises.

“The market doesn't know what it’s asking for, which is a huge part of 
the problem," said Chris Sampson, co-founder and director of Fathom, a 
flood risk modeling firm that published its methodology in a 
peer-reviewed science journal. "You've got providers trying to generate 
solutions when we’re not even sure what the question is to ask yet."

Companies are likely to see increasing requirements to quantify the 
physical risks they face from climate change. Last month, the Securities 
and Exchange Commission began reviewing voluntary climate guidelines it 
issued in 2010 for public companies and could make such reporting mandatory.

That's coming amid a surge in shareholder proposals for greater 
transparency on climate risks and the rise of ESG investing that focuses 
on environmental, sustainability and governance metrics. And in addition 
to the new crop of small firms, the demand for data is beginning to 
attract big players, such as the so-called “moonshot factory” called X 
run by Google's parent, Alphabet.

“Can we bring you a new tool? Can we bring you new data?” Sarah Russell, 
team lead at X, said at a climate risk conference this month describing 
her firm’s strategy of reaching out to companies recently hit by 
disasters or floods to ink new clients. “It’s only after you’ve been hit 
when you realize you’ve been working with garbage data.”

The growing emphasis on broader disclosures in the U.S. is in line with 
efforts by government agencies around the world, many of which are 
adopting rules inspired by frameworks like the Task Force on 
Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, a voluntary climate risk 
disclosure reporting regime.

Many experts believe the SEC will adopt the task force guidelines in 
some fashion to align with mandatory rules in the EU and Japan, though 
some hope that both guidelines and any forthcoming U.S. disclosure rules 
beef up transparency around companies' physical risk vulnerabilities. 
The task force, for example, largely absolves companies of reporting 
risks from specific hazards like extreme winds, heat, drought, wildfires 
and ocean acidification that are linked to climate change, according to 
a report by the World Resources Institute.

But that type of rigorous disclosure regime will rely heavily on the 
climate analytics firms, which do not yet operate under a set of best 
practices or standards. Some climate experts warn that the advisers are 
overconfident given that current climate models simply aren’t designed 
to deliver on companies' requests for narrow, specific predictions over 
10, 20 or 30 years — the traditional investment and planning timeline 
that concerns investors, homeowners and corporations.

“How do we [companies] make our decisions in the future based on climate 
outputs?” KatRisk CEO Dag Lohmann asked during the recent conference. “I 
find it a very complicated question. We need these detailed, 
location-level models for that.”

Emilie Mazzacurati, founder of climate analytics firm Four Twenty Seven, 
which was bought by credit-ratings agency Moody’s in 2019, said 
customers are demanding specificity, yet no industry standards exist to 
weed out bad actors. That creates a danger that some advisers will 
overpromise and say they can deliver that type of forecast.

“There's a lot of pressure from clients that we experience from the 
market saying, ‘Where's this data?’” said Mazzacurati, who is now the 
head of climate solutions with Moody's. “It takes a lot of commitment, 
dedication to say ‘No,’ and pass on deals and just tell the client 'I'm 
sorry, that this is where we're stuck, because this is how far the data 
will go.'”

Mazzacurati and Sorkin, of Jupiter, said they walk customers through 
their methodologies and show them the limitations of the models.

Sorkin said his firm helps inform the kind of scenario analysis that 
companies use for capital planning decisions for assets with 20- to 
30-year lifetimes. Much of his firm’s work has focused on Global 2000 
companies, which face mandates from boards or shareholders to become 
better attuned to climate risk.

“Everyone's racing to build that capacity so that they understand what 
tools like ours are good for and what they're not good for,” he said. 
“In every new market, there are charlatans and cheats. Customers are 
kind of slowly learning and sometimes easily deceived. And our view is 
the market will sort that out over time.”

Jupiter, though, has also drawn skepticism from some climate scientists 
for the level of granularity it offers clients: effects of weather and 
climate on a scale of 1 square kilometer. A recent article in the 
science journal Nature Climate Change cast doubt on that level of 
detail, saying that climate information on scales less than 1,000 
kilometers for a few years or decades into the future is “complex.”

Climate models like those used by the United Nations' Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change project out to the year 2100, with the effect of 
human-caused effects becoming clearer later in this century as they 
diverge from natural climate variability. But those scales are on 
continental and, at best, regional levels. Beyond that, modelers can 
turn to historical data, but relying on that alone could improperly 
project out recent trends for future years.

Sorkin, however, said Jupiter isn’t trying to predict what climate will 
be like at that granular level in 30 years. Instead, it uses local 
terrain information and other data that his firm overlays with climate 
models to ensure engineering standards for infrastructure and investment 
decisions account for future, climate change-affected conditions.

Jupiter, like Four Twenty Seven, doesn’t post the inner workings of its 
methodology publicly for peer review. The assumptions each firm uses to 
inform their processes are considered proprietary.

Such data points are consequential variables of the value proposition 
service providers offer — and could cause potential points of 
disagreement within the scientific community were they to be revealed. 
But Sorkin called that argument a “red herring,” saying he would open 
his firm’s methodology to any third party that wants to assess it.

Curtis Ravenel, a member of the TCFD's secretariat, said if the climate 
analytics advisers are to keep the confidence of their clients, they're 
going to have to open their processes for review.

“You need transparency,” Ravenel said. “If you want to build trust in a 
market for the use of this kind of analytical tool, you've got to let 
the users understand the various assumptions and inputs.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/16/climate-change-murky-models-476316

- -

[Beckwith points out some dire models from recent papers]
*Earth Catastrophe Warning to the World: The 2021 Climate Change 
Science: Parts 1 and 2*
Paul Beckwith -- Mar 16, 2021
When I presented at COP25 (Conference of Parties 25th edition) in 
Madrid, Spain I worked a lot with Peter Carter, Regina Valdez, Heidi 
Brault, Charles Gregoire, and of course the amazing Stuart Scott.
All of the videos that I filmed are of course on my blog 
http://paulbeckwith.net and on my YouTube channel Paul Beckwith.

Peter, of course, has his amazingly detailed website called Climate 
Emergency Institute https://www.climateemergencyinstitute... and Stuart 
(with huge help from Heidi and Charles) has his called Facing Future 
Earth   https://www.facingfuture.earth/ while Regina does a lot of 
great work with Climate Reality.

In preparations for COP26 in Scotland or virtual, depending of the 
course of the virus this year, the gang and I are putting out a video a 
week under our new group name Climate Emergency Forum.

In this first video of a four part series, I go through key points on a 
subsection of Peter’s website called 2021 Climate Science World Warning 
https://www.climateemergencyinstitute... where an initiative to warn 
key decision makers in governments and the United Nations is ongoing.

My main focus in this video series is to discuss in detail the main 
points in Peter’s 90+ slide deck called 2021 Climate Science World 
Warning https://files.secure.website/wscfus/8...

Topics include:
- Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Acceleration
- Cumulative atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and 
carbon dioxide equivalent are all tracking or exceeding the UN IPCC 
worst case scenario
- warming of the planets atmosphere, land, and oceans are all setting 
new record limits as they inexorably rise at accelerating rates
- Arctic changes are the fastest on the planet and have huge risks to 
our societies and global ecosystems
1.  Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W3IbdwvdXk
2.  Part 2  https://youtu.be/xw5mK6XRVV8

[James Hansen calls for activists]
*Activists**
*James Hansen - 16 March 2021
Activism is not fun.  The pay is bad (usually zero or less).  It’s hard 
work to get any attention.  Hard-core activists (not dilettantes like 
Bill McKibben and me) put a lot on the line, even their lives.  The 
commitment and bravery of indigenous people is inspiring.  The hardest 
thing about activism is that it often seems to have little effect, if any.

The Race to Save the World, a film by Joe Gantz, will be released on 
Earth Day, April 22.  The link is to a 9-minute trailer.  The film 
realistically captures characters who take real risks and the impacts on 
their loved ones and on themselves.  Implicitly it raises questions 
about the best way to achieve environmental goals.  It’s not like 1970 
when the public could see pollution in the air and in the water – 
activists could bring 20,000,000 people into the streets for the first 
Earth Day.

My first acquaintance with activists was at Coal River Mountain, a 
protest against mountaintop removal led by Larry Gibson and Judy Bonds.  
Surely, we have solved that horrific assault on the environment by now, 
right?  Nope.  Vernon Haltom of Coal River Mountain Watch tells me that 
it’s still happening and leases for such mining are still being 
obtained.  Can somebody please let Joe Biden, John Kerry and Gina 
McCarthy know about it?  Judy Bonds and Larry Gibson are no longer with 
us, having died young, as is all too common in Appalachia.

We need activists.  Gantz’ film spurs us to think about how to be more 
effective.  I will give my opinions in the last chapter of Sophie’s 
Planet (Chapter 50: Fighting on All Fronts).  You can be the heroine 
riding on the back of a wild thing to fight the evil alliance of 
government and exploiters, but the battles will be fought on engineering 
drawing boards, in the courts, and at the ballot box.  You don’t need to 
lie down before a train or get arrested to make a difference.  The 
challenge is great because of the role of money in our government (and 
in environmental organizations).  Realistic definition of the problems 
is an essential step toward solution.  We can still make our democracies 
work, but it’s hard work – it will require a lot of people.
Online page -- https://mailchi.mp/caa/activists?e=c4e20a3850
PDF file - 
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/20210316_Activists.pdf

[RealClimate discussions of Carbon Tax]
*Looking for help with an electricity tax-swap idea*
Filed under: Solutions — group @ 3 March 2021
Guest commentary from Yoram Bauman

Everyone from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Elon Musk thinks that 
putting a price on carbon is an important step in tackling climate 
change. Politically, however, carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems 
face an uphill battle, in part because they could drive up the prices of 
household basics like gasoline and electricity. There are many worthy 
proposals for addressing this concern, mostly focused on the idea of 
using carbon pricing revenue to pay for things like per-capita 
dividends, green investments, or reductions in payroll taxes.

But what if you could put a price on carbon without driving up consumer 
prices? In California, for example, the impact of the cap-and-trade 
system on residential electric bills is reduced substantially by the 
semi-annual Climate Credits that households receive on their bills.
The purpose of this post is to invite feedback on and ask for help with 
an even more direct way to do this that might work in about 20 states, 
some cities, and perhaps in other countries as well. The gist is that 
many jurisdictions impose taxes on electricity consumption—sales taxes, 
gross receipts taxes, value-added taxes—and that replacing these 
existing taxes on electricity with a carbon tax on fossil-fuel generated 
electricity can come close to delivering a carbon tax “for free”. ...
- -
Details and Caveats

        -- The main impact of carbon pricing in the electricity sector
        is changing utility behavior rather than changing consumer
        behavior, i.e., making renewables more attractive than fossil
        fuels rather than reducing the amount of electricity
        consumption. This situation is arguably unique to the
        electricity sector, so this tax-swap idea is probably not
        applicable in other sectors.
        -- These carbon prices—mostly in the range of $10-$20 per ton
        CO2—are modest but not insignificant. A $10 carbon tax is
        approximately 1 cent per kWh of coal-fired power, half that for
        natural gas, and nothing for non-fossil sources.
        -- The analysis above focuses on residential consumption of
        electricity but could be broadened to cover commercial
        consumption of electricity (and in rare cases even industrial
        consumption) as long as they also pay existing taxes on
        electricity that could be swapped out for a carbon tax. Note
        that many jurisdictions exempt entities like industrial
        consumers, schools, hospitals, and government agencies from
        existing electricity taxes; these same exemptions could be
        carried over to the carbon tax.
        -- In the short run, the carbon tax rate could be set to
        generate roughly the same amount of revenue as the sales tax or
        other existing tax that it’s replacing. In the long run, carbon
        tax revenue would decline as carbon emissions decline. It’s
        possible to reduce these losses—for example, by increasing the
        carbon tax rate over time, or by reinstating the existing sales
        tax after, say, 20 years—but there’s also a strong case for
        simply sunsetting taxes on electricity. For one thing, the push
        to “electrify everything” will be easier if electricity is
        cheaper. Perhaps more importantly, most states exempt grocery
        store food from sales tax because of regressivity concerns about
        impacts on low-income households, and taxes on residential
        electricity are even more regressive. The revenue loss from
        sunsetting taxes on residential electricity would be roughly
        one–third of the revenue loss from existing tax exemptions for
        groceries.
        -- The carbon tax would ideally be based on the carbon content
        of electricity consumed by each utility’s customers in the state
        (e.g., on data similar to what’s in these ESG reports) rather
        than on the carbon content of electricity generated in the
        state. As a result, the tax swap works best in states where
        electric utilities have similar carbon profiles. To the extent
        that they have different carbon profiles, there would be a net
        savings for customers of low-carbon electricity and a net cost
        for customers of high-carbon electricity.
        -- It might be possible to pursue similar ideas at the municipal
        level—where there are often extremely high taxes on
        electricity—but municipalities may be limited by state law
        regarding the types of taxes they can impose. Municipalities may
        also have a stronger reliance on this revenue than states...

- more at 
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/03/looking-for-help-with-an-electricity-tax-swap-idea/#more-23450

[Dr Jennifer Atkinson podcast]
*Episode 3: Eco-Grief: Our Greatest Ally? *
If you suffer from climate grief, you know what it's like to feel 
hopeless, alone, or bewildered by society's business-as-usual response 
to our existential threat. Wanting those feelings to go away is normal, 
but grief can lead to awareness and compassion in ways that actually 
advance political action and climate solutions. Paradoxically, grief can 
also provide a kind of strength and clarity when conventional hopes are 
shaken. As climate activist Tim DeChristopher once said, “In happy times 
the weight of despair is oppressive, but in stormy times that weight is 
an anchor that can get you through.” This episode explores the value of 
grief as a way to overcome collective denial as we move into an 
uncertain climate future. While most environmentalists are urging us to 
focus on hope, Dr. Jennifer Atkinson points out that grief and hope 
aren't mutually exclusive, and for many, grief may even be our best ally 
in an age of climate crisis

"Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken 
belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the 
pain. What you have not done is feel you are beyond that pain."
—Kahlil Gibran
https://www.drjenniferatkinson.com/facing-it

[an interesting analysis]
*Why The United States Can't Handle Crises*
Mar 12, 2021
Second Thought
Covid-19, climate change, natural disasters, constant recessions, 
homelessness, declining life expectancy and quality of life, economic 
inequality...it seems like the United States is perpetually in crisis, 
and more often than not we fail to meet the challenge. Why is that? In 
this episode, we'll explore the root cause of America's inability to 
handle crises.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q1Zver84Q4

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 17, 2013*

March 17, 2013: New York Times columnist Tom Friedman muses on the 
economic benefits of a federal carbon tax.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/friedman-its-lose-lose-vs-win-win-win-win-win.html?_r=0

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