[✔️] April 13, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
👀 Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Wed Apr 13 10:44:01 EDT 2022
/*April 13, 2022*/
/[ Information battles for hearts and minds - Poll results ]/
*Majorities in US back climate change proposals: Gallup*
BY CHLOE FOLMAR - 04/11/22
The majority of Americans are in favor of six recent climate change
proposals from the Biden administration, according to the annual Gallup
environment poll released Monday.
Gallup found that American adults are most supportive of tax credits to
incentivize environmentally friendly living and less supportive of
government limits and policies.
President Biden proposed a $2 trillion bill last year that included each
of the six policies considered by the random sample of 1,017 adults
surveyed.
A large majority of survey respondents, 89 percent, favored providing
tax credits to incentivize installing clean energy systems in homes, and
three-quarters favored tax incentives for businesses to use clean energy
systems...
- -
These numbers differ along party lines.
Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 68 percent said
they would prioritize the economy over the environment, while 75 percent
of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they would
prioritize the environment.
Before the pandemic, the share of Americans that prioritized protecting
the environment was significantly higher, comprising about two-thirds of
respondents.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3263848-majorities-in-us-back-climate-change-proposals-gallup/
/[ symbolic feather in the wind ] /
*Biden taps ethanol to help lower fuel prices as consumer inflation surges*
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-allow-higher-ethanol-fuel-sales-summer-check-gas-prices-2022-04-12/
- -
/[ Video - shows why corn-based ethanol is a dumb idea - 24% more dumb ]/
*America Was Wrong About Ethanol - Study Shows*
Mar 4, 2022
Engineering Explained
Using Corn For Fuel Seems Like A Dumb Idea In Light Of New Research
Ethanol makes up 10% of most of the gasoline sold in the United States.
A large part of why Ethanol is so prevalent is that the Renewable Fuel
Standard, created in 2005, wanted to reduce the emissions of the fuels
we use. Ethanol created from corn is renewable, because the corn takes
carbon from the atmosphere to grow, creating a cycle that minimizes how
much carbon is added to the atmosphere. At least, that's the story we
were told.
New research out of University of Wisconsin - Madison, suggests that
"the carbon intensity of corn ethanol is no less than gasoline and
likely at least 24% higher." What's the solution? We need to choose
options that have a greater percentage of net emissions reductions, so
that we don't unintentionally increase emissions if regulators estimated
predictions are incorrect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU
/[ NYTimes audio presentation - worth a click to hear ] /
*Biden's Climate Shift*
The war in Ukraine has led the president to retreat on his ambitions
climate policies...
Coral Davenport -
On the campaign trail and when he first came to office, President Biden
had ambitious plans to deal with climate change, including promises to
reduce fossil fuel production.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, however, Mr. Biden has largely
stopped making the case for these plans, instead turning his focus to
pumping as much oil and gas as possible.
What is behind the president’s retreat on climate?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/12/podcasts/the-daily/biden-climate-ukraine-war.html
/
/
/[ AKA runaway, self-reinforcing ]/
*NOAA: Record increases in atmospheric methane may be evidence of a
climate-related feedback loop*
For the second year in a row, data gathered by NOAA show a record annual
increase in atmospheric methane. Methane is one of the most powerful
greenhouse gasses, second only to carbon dioxide...
- -
Given that relatively short lifespan, NOAA scientists are concerned that
recent record increases in methane are evidence of a climate-related
feedback loop.
“We think there are some signals that are acting on top of the long-term
increase and that’s possibly related to the natural wetland emission,”
said Xin Lan, a researcher with NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory.
Wetlands contain lots of decaying organic matter. That decay process
releases methane. Rain can accelerate that release. As the atmosphere
warms, it's able to hold more moisture and produce more rain over those
wetland areas, leading to more methane release.
“And if that is the case, that could indicate something quite
concerning, which was the climate feedback that we think that might be
happening already,” Lan said...
https://www.kcra.com/article/noaa-increases-atmospheric-methane-climate-related-feedback-loop/39694802#:~:text=NOAA%3A%20Record%20increases,to%20carbon%20dioxide.
/[ Book Review in the //Journal nature ]/
*Climate change — four decades of missed opportunities*
The United States should learn from its mistakes on decarbonization.
Alexandra Witze - 11 April 2022
- -
_Fire and Flood: A People’s History of Climate Change, from 1979 to the
Present_
Eugene Linden - - Penguin (2022)
- -
Linden argues that extreme weather events,such as prolonged droughts in
Australia and
hurricanes in the Caribbean and North America, are now so pronounced and
obvious that
they might force political change when previous discussions could not.
Yet the path forward
is not so clear. The clocks of public awareness and of business
interests, especially, continue
to lag behind the reality of what’s transpiring.
The outlook becomes even more bleak towards the end.
- -
Linden concludes that the global response to COVID-19 shows that the
world is ill-equipped to deal with any complex, far-reaching problem.
Tribalism, autocracy
and misinformation are on the rise, and even the promise of jobs in a
decarbonized economy
is not enough to trump those forces. Will the collapsing Russian economy
drive many nations
back to a reliance on fossil fuels, or will the fuel shock caused by
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
accelerate the transition to renewable energies?
That, like so many other things in these uncertain times, remains to be
seen.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00998-4
https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-022-00998-4/d41586-022-00998-4.pdf
/[ The //magazine //Foreign Policy examines International institutions $] /
*The World Bank and IMF Are Getting It Wrong on Climate Change*
Rich donor countries are working to deprioritize poverty reduction and
economic development in the global south.
By Vijaya Ramachandran
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/11/the-world-bank-and-imf-are-getting-it-wrong-on-climate-change/
/
/
/[ from E&E News and Scientific American on activism ]/
*Scientists Risk Arrest to Demand Climate Action*
A growing international movement called Scientist Rebellion calls on
world leaders to end the burning of fossil fuels
By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News on April 11, 2022...
In both cases, their demands were clear: faster, stronger climate action
from world governments and an end to the burning of fossil fuels.
“It was my first experience with civil disobedience for any reason,”
said Abramoff, a climate scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who
emphasized that her activism is conducted on her own behalf and does not
reflect the positions of her institution. She also spoke with E&E News
only on her own behalf.
- -
In Los Angeles, four scientists were arrested after handcuffing
themselves to the entrance of a Chase bank. In Germany, scientists
demonstrated outside the Ministry for Economy and Climate Protection. In
England, they protested outside Shell PLC headquarters. They pasted
documents to government buildings in Mexico, occupied an oil and gas
company’s headquarters in Italy, and threw fake blood onto the facade of
the National Congress in Spain.
Scientist Rebellion estimates that a total of around 1,000 scientists in
25 countries participated in last week’s demonstrations, often wearing
lab coats to identify themselves...
- -
On the door behind them, they posted a forest-green sign stating, “We
are nature defending itself.”
“The scientists of the world have been ignored, and it’s got to stop,”
Kalmus said in an emotional speech as he stood chained to the bank’s
door. “It’s time for all of us to stand up and take risks and make
sacrifices for this beautiful planet that gives us life, that gives us
healthy air.”
Police eventually arrested all four scientists after they declined to
clear the area. They were later released...
- -
“I feel actually genuinely desperate and terrified,” he said. “I can see
so clearly where we’re heading in terms of climate change, and I don’t
sense any momentum or any intention on the part of world leaders to
actually genuinely take care of this planet and take care of this
problem, which really does require ending the fossil fuel industry as
quickly as possible.”...
https://www.eenews.net/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-risk-arrest-to-demand-climate-action/
/[ Watch out for Hydrogen - a reactive element ] /
*Hydrogen 1 times worse than CO2 for climate, says new report*
By Loz Blain
April 11, 2022
Hydrogen will be one of humanity's key weapons in the war against carbon
dioxide emissions, but it must be treated with care. New reports show
how fugitive hydrogen emissions can indirectly produce warming effects
11 times worse than those of CO2.
Hydrogen can be used as a clean energy carrier, and running it through a
fuel cell to produce electricity produces nothing but water as a
by-product. It carries far more energy for a given weight than lithium
batteries, and it's faster to refill a tank than to charge a battery, so
hydrogen is viewed as a very promising green option in several
hard-to-decarbonize applications where batteries won't cut the mustard –
for example, aviation, shipping and long-haul trucking.
But when it's released directly into the atmosphere, hydrogen itself can
interact with other gases and vapors in the air to produce powerful
warming effects. Indeed, a new UK Government study has put these
interactions under the microscope and determined that hydrogen's Global
Warming Potential (GWP) is about twice as bad as previously understood;
over a 100-year time period, a tonne of hydrogen in the atmosphere will
warm the Earth some 11 times more than a tonne of CO2, with an
uncertainty of ± 5.
- -
Does this mean "green hydrogen" should be avoided in the race to zero
emissions?
No. The UK Government report explains that "the increase in equivalent
CO2 emissions based on 1 percent and 10 percent H2 leakage rate offsets
approximately 0.4 and 4 percent of the total equivalent CO2 emission
reductions, respectively," so even assuming the worst leakage scenario,
it's still an enormous improvement.
"Whilst the benefits from equivalent CO2 emission reductions
significantly outweigh the disbenefits arising from H2 leakage," it
continues, "they clearly demonstrate the importance of controlling H2
leakage within a hydrogen economy."
https://newatlas.com/environment/hydrogen-greenhouse-gas/
/[ Informed and classic video from last year -- what will 3C look
like? ] /
*See what three degrees of global warming looks like | The Economist*
Oct 30, 2021
The Economist
If global temperatures rise three degrees Celsius above pre-industrial
levels, the results would be catastrophic. It’s an entirely plausible
scenario, and this film shows you what it would look like.
00:00 - What will a 3°C world look like?
00:57 - Climate change is already having devastating effects
02:58 - How climate modelling works
04:06 - Nowhere is safe from global warming
05:20 - The impact of prolonged droughts
08:24 - Rising sea levels, storm surges and flooding
10:27 - Extreme heat and wet-bulb temperatures
12:51 - Increased migration and conflict
14:26 - Adaptation and mitigation are crucial
Read our briefing about a three degree world: https://econ.st/3nJiXYS
View all of The Economist’s climate change coverage:
https://econ.st/3b1RwU2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo
/[ Westervelt on the front lines of propaganda warfare ]/
*DOCUMENTS SHOW HOW POLLUTING INDUSTRIES MOBILIZED TO BLOCK CLIMATE ACTION*
Since its inception, the IPCC itself has been the target of corporate
obstructionism.
Amy Westervelt - April 12 2022
One key entity in that movement was the Global Climate Coalition, which
emerged in 1989 as a project of the National Association of
Manufacturers, with founding members from the coal, electric utility,
oil and gas, automotive, and rail sectors. Many scholars have noted the
influential role the GCC played in obstructing climate policy in the
1990s, but the first peer-reviewed paper on the group, published this
week, reveals that the original and lasting intention of the GCC was to
push for voluntary efforts only and torpedo international momentum
toward setting mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Casting doubt on the science was part of that strategy from the
beginning — the paper points to a 1994 communications strategy, for
example, that suggested industry spokespeople downplay IPCC findings
with following talking point: “The IPCC reports no evidence that
directly links manmade GHG emissions to changes in global average
temperatures.” Also common, though, were the delay tactics we still see
today, particularly the economic argument against acting on the climate
crisis and the jingoistic argument that America shouldn’t allow the rest
of the world to tell it what to do.
“People have been very stuck on this idea that the industry strategy
went from climate denial to delay,” said the paper’s author, Brown
University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle. “That’s historically
inaccurate. It was always about delay, and the PR guys viewed casting
doubt on climate science as one of their key talking points, but not the
only one and not the central one.”
Leaning on economic and cultural arguments came naturally for the public
relations teams working on climate. Those arguments were first developed
to help companies like Standard Oil and American Tobacco stave off
regulation at the turn of the 20th century and have been deployed
consistently, and effectively, ever since.
Brulle points to the GCC’s involvement in the passage of the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC — the
framework underpinning the annual Conference of the Parties meetings of
global leaders to discuss international climate commitments — as a prime
example of how industries have suggested voluntary action as a way to
preempt government regulation. “They supported that because it was
toothless. It was all about the need to further study the problem and
for corporations and governments to take voluntary action.”
Melissa Aronczyk, a media studies scholar at Rutgers University, also
documented the influence that the GCC and its primary PR person, E.
Bruce Harrison, had on the UNFCCC process in “A Strategic Nature: Public
Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism,” a new book
written with Maria Espinoza. “Harrison was invited as communications
counsel to the CEOs who were participating at that Earth Summit in Rio
[de Janeiro] in 1992,” Aronczyk explained. That was the summit at which
global leaders drafted and adopted the UNFCCC. Notably, the
U.N.-appointed organizer of that conference was Maurice Strong, a former
oilman who believed that no effective climate treaty could be passed
without buy-in from corporate interests.
“Because business communities had been invited to the conference and
because they knew that their buy-in was so important, they planned
extensively in the lead-up to the conference to be able to present what
they call their own sustainable development charter. It was a
nonbinding, nonlegal document that proposed a voluntary, self-regulating
approach,” Aronczyk said. “And as you can imagine, this charter did not
contain anything that would have really transformed how companies did
business. … But it paid a lot of lip service to the idea of going green,
and because they got out in front of the actual conference, they were
really able to put that document forward and stave off other kinds of
more binding legislation.”
The GCC worked to steer the Conference of the Parties and the IPCC in
this direction as well. Many of the source documents Brulle cites in his
paper, including Harrison’s 1994-1995 communications plan for the GCC,
show this strategy explicitly. “The economic consequences of future
actions by the COP are likely to attract more attention than statements
about scientific uncertainties,” Harrison’s plan reads. “Especially if
the economic stakes can be made apparent to ‘people on Main Street.’” It
goes on to lay out specific messages that GCC members should emphasize
to the press, politicians, and the public, including: “Voluntary
programs for reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions are allowing industry
to balance economics and environmental performance without impairing
competitiveness.”
What’s also painfully obvious in these documents is just how close the
international process came to forcing action on climate in the 1990s —
the decade in which it would have had the most impact. The 1994-95 GCC
communications plan shows that the group and the industries it
represented were losing the fight and that momentum was building for a
binding international treaty that would mandate emissions reductions.
“Dozens of U.N. agencies, international organizations and special
interest groups are driving events — regardless of economic costs and
remaining scientific uncertainties — toward a conclusion inimical to the
interests of the GCC and the U.S. economy,” the plan reads.
A few pages later it notes, “The window for influencing U.S. decisions
on future U.N. actions is relatively narrow. During the next 18-24
months there will be a number of critical decision points as the Parties
to the FCCC advance toward the COP’s 1997 deadline for elaborating new
policies and measures.”
The 1997 Conference of the Parties was, of course, when the Kyoto
Protocol was introduced; the international agreement mandated emissions
reductions for certain countries, something the Clinton administration
had already indicated it supported. It was a make-or-break moment for
industries concerned about the impact that mandatory emissions
reductions would have on their bottom line, and the GCC redoubled its
efforts.
First it targeted key U.S. politicians. Working with Sens. Chuck Hagel
and Robert Byrd, Brulle writes, the group rounded up support for an
amendment to set strict criteria for any international climate accord.
“This effort contributed to the passage of the Byrd-Hagel Amendment in
July 1997,” Brulle writes. “This amendment required that any climate
accord would have to include [emissions] reductions by developing
countries and could not result in serious harm to the U.S. economy.
These provisions damaged the credibility of the U.S. because it showed a
lack of consensus among the different branches of government about an
international climate accord.”
That argument stands in stark contrast to the fossil fuel industry’s
narrative today, which holds that out-of-touch climate elitists are
trying to force emissions reductions on countries that deserve to use
fossil fuels to develop. Passage of the Byrd-Hagel amendment was the
GCC’s first big victory after its success in shaping the UNFCCC. In the
wake of that victory, GCC members poured $13 million into a PR campaign
centered on the argument that the international accord would raise
gasoline prices and harm the economy. The tag line of the anti-Kyoto
campaign was “It’s not global and it won’t work.”
“They get a map of the globe and they start cutting out the countries
that don’t have to comply,” Brulle said. “And then they hold up this map
with all of these holes in it, and they said, ‘This is unfair. It won’t
work and it’s not fair.’ And that’s what they ran on. And guess what? It
works! It was very effective. And you still hear that today when folks
argue against climate policy by saying, ‘What about China? What about
India?’”
The group also commissioned third-party economists and policy analysts
to bolster its argument that mandatory emissions cuts would spell death
for the American economy. “It was very much, play up the economic
impact, play up the threat to the ‘American way of life,’” Brulle said.
“When you can attack the science, do that, but always, always play up
the economics.”
That’s particularly interesting in the context of recent research in
which some of the same economists the GCC hired have admitted that their
models were deeply flawed. The paper “Weaponizing Economics,” published
last year by Stanford University researcher Ben Franta, shows that the
economists working for the GCC and other anti-climate policy groups in
the 1990s were using models that inflated the cost of climate policy
while ignoring entirely the economic benefit of avoiding climate impacts.
Franta found that the same small group of economists was being routinely
commissioned not only by the GCC but also the American Petroleum
Institute (a founding GCC member) and various conservative think tanks;
every time a policy was proposed that would limit carbon dioxide or
other greenhouse gas emissions, this same model would get trotted out,
and industry spokespeople and politicians would warn that acting on
climate change would put companies out of business and cost the average
American family thousands of dollars.
“Eventually their analyses became conventional wisdom,” Franta said.
“The scientific merchants of doubt ultimately failed; their power waned.
But this, the economics part, their power did not really wane in the
same way. And you know, the implications are larger. I mean, it’s a
fraudulent economic product. And now we have economists who worked on
those models saying, by their own admission, that this analysis that
showed it would be too expensive to act on climate is not true. And this
has been going on for decades. So now the question is, what do we do
about this?”
Brulle’s recent findings make it that much more concerning that the IPCC
allowed mentions of obstructionism and vested interests to be scrubbed
from its summary for policymakers. “That document was like Star Wars
without Darth Vader,” he said. “This research gives us a history of what
actually happened. It puts Darth Vader back in the story.”
https://theintercept.com/2022/04/12/ipcc-report-global-climate-coalition/
- -
/[ Brulle on attacks of dis-information and mis-information. New
documents added to archive ]/
*Advocating inaction: a historical analysis of the Global Climate Coalition*
Robert J Brulle
Published online: 11 Apr 2022
*ABSTRACT*
Ever since climate change became a political issue in the late
1980s, a number of industry coalitions have formed to oppose
mandatory carbon emissions reductions. One key coalition was the
Global Climate Coalition (GCC). This paper conducts a historical and
empirical review of the activities of this coalition. This review
shows that the GCC engaged in four distinct activities to obstruct
climate action: 1) monitoring and contesting climate science, 2)
commissioning and utilizing economic studies to amplify and
legitimate their arguments, 3) shifting the cultural understanding
of climate change through public relations campaigns and 4)
conducting aggressive lobbying of political elites. Through these
activities, the GCC played an important role in obstructing climate
action, both in the U.S. and internationally. Further analysis of
similar coalitions can aid in our understanding of the organized
opposition to climate action.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2022.2058815
https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2022.2058815
full paper available at
https://www.cssn.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GCC-Paper.pdf
/[The news archive - looking back]/
*April 13, 2012*
In the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review, "Democracy Now" host Amy
Goodman observes:
"The Pentagon knows it. The world’s largest insurers know it. Now,
governments may be overthrown because of it. It is climate change, and
it is real. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, last month was the hottest March on record for the
United States since 1895, when records were first kept, with average
temperatures of 8.6 degrees above average. More than 15,000 March
high-temperature records were broken nationally. Drought, wildfires,
tornadoes and other extreme weather events are already plaguing the
country."
Mitt Romney is on track to be the Republican candidate for president,
with the support of former challengers like Perry. They are already
attacking President Barack Obama on climate change. The American
Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has been promoting legislation in
statehouses to oppose any climate legislation and rallying members of
Congress to block federal action, especially by hampering the work of
the Environmental Protection Agency. As the Center for Media and
Democracy has detailed in its “ALEC Exposed” reporting, ALEC is funded
by the country’s major polluters, including ExxonMobil, BP America,
Chevron, Peabody Energy and Koch Industries. The Koch brothers have also
funded tea party groups like FreedomWorks, to create the appearance of
grassroots activism.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/apr/13/climate-change-a-hot-issue/
=======================================
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