[✔️] April 20, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Wed Apr 20 07:51:55 EDT 2022
/*April 20, 2022*/
/[ NYT reports ] /
*Biden Restores Climate to Landmark Environmental Law, Reversing Trump*
A new rule requires agencies to analyze the climate impacts of proposed
highways, pipelines and other projects, and gives local communities more
input...
- -
The final rule announced Tuesday would require federal agencies to
conduct an analysis of the greenhouse gases that could be emitted over
the lifetime of a proposed project, as well as how climate change might
affect new highways, bridges and other infrastructure, according to the
White House Council on Environmental Quality. The rule, which takes
effect in 30 days, would also ensure agencies give communities directly
affected by projects a greater role in the approval process...
- -
The final rule announced Tuesday would require federal agencies to
conduct an analysis of the greenhouse gases that could be emitted over
the lifetime of a proposed project, as well as how climate change might
affect new highways, bridges and other infrastructure, according to the
White House Council on Environmental Quality. The rule, which takes
effect in 30 days, would also ensure agencies give communities directly
affected by projects a greater role in the approval process...
- -
The new rule also proposes giving federal agencies the authority to work
closely with communities to develop alternative approaches to projects.
Historically, the law’s process has been one of the most important tools
available to local communities to try to amend or stop projects that
could cause significant harm.
The final rule represents the first phase of a two-step regulatory
process. Administration officials said that, in the coming months, it
would propose another set of broader changes to the law.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/climate/biden-climate-nepa-trump.html
/[ 1h 25 min video Check your local PBS station or click link below ] /
*THE POWER OF BIG OIL - PART ONE: DENIAL*
Apr. 19, 2022 - - 1h 25m
FRONTLINE examines the fossil fuel industry’s history of casting doubt
and delaying action on climate change. This three-part series traces
decades of missed opportunities and the ongoing attempts to hold Big Oil
to account.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-power-of-big-oil/
/[ the Senator heads a small family monopoly that will benefit - coal ]/
*Joe Manchin Warns Against Turning to Iran for Oil as Biden Eyes Deal*
Senator Joe Manchin warned the Biden administration against turning to
Iran for oil as the White House continues to eye a new nuclear deal with
the country.
The United States has been in negotiations to restore the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (colloquially known as the Iran Deal) for
months after exiting in 2018 under former President Donald Trump, but no
plan has been reached yet.
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-manchin-warns-against-turning-iran-oil-biden-eyes-deal-1699062
/[ report from Space.com - real event could make a nice Sci Fi movie
plot ] /
*New message to aliens will reflect on Earth in danger of climate crisis*
By Keith Cooper -- April 19, 2020
A new attempt to reach out to intelligent life in the universe will
broadcast information and music about our environment.
A radio signal designed to bring Earth's climate crisis to the attention
of alien life will be beamed to the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system in October.
The message has been devised by METI International, a group of
scientists, sociologists, historians, anthropologists and artists who
have come together with a common belief that humanity would benefit from
beaming messages to the stars rather than just waiting to receive a
message from aliens. (METI stands for Messaging Extraterrestrial
Intelligence, as opposed to SETI, the more passive Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence.) The Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station in
Cornwall, U.K., will broadcast the climate-change message on Oct. 4 to
coincide with the beginning of World Space Week, which this year has the
theme of "Space and Sustainability."
"Any aliens receiving our message won't be surprised to hear about our
climate crisis," Douglas Vakoch, President of METI International, told
Space.com. "They've had decades to observe our plight from afar."...
- -
The TRAPPIST-1 system is 39 light-years away, so if anyone there does
detect a message, we should not expect a reply for at least 78 years.
However, the likelihood is that technologically advanced alien life will
be far older than we humans, since the universe is 13.8 billion years
old and we're just newcomers on the scene. . .
- -
The message's authors hope that this age gap could offer hope for humans
facing the climate crisis. If an alien species has managed to survive
perhaps millions or even billions of years, then experts assume that
they will have long ago solved any climate issues they may have faced
and would now exist in a stable society. Hearing from such aliens might
give us confidence that we can solve our own climate problems.
Furthermore, Vakoch said he thinks that they may be intrigued to hear
from a younger species — us — who are experiencing a stage in their
development that the aliens' distant ancestors may also have experienced.
"By giving aliens insight into the mind of a species that is uncertain
about its future, but that is still ready to reach out, we may be
offering unique insights to a civilization that has long since left
behind such instability and uncertainty," Vakoch said. "Our candid
self-reflection may just be intriguing enough to prompt a response."...
- -
This year's broadcast will be the second interstellar message that METI
International have transmitted; the first was the Sónar Calling message
in 2018, sent in conjunction with the Sónar music festival in Barcelona.
Other notable interstellar transmissions include Frank Drake's famous
Arecibo Message sent in 1974 and four messages beamed into space from
the Evpatoria radio telescope in Crimea by the late Russian radio
astronomer Alexander Zaitsev.
Some SETI experts condemn actively sending messages to extraterrestrial
life. Many researchers consider such communications unauthorized
diplomacy that could potentially spell danger for humans because we
cannot predict what the consequences of making contact with
technological aliens would be for our society.
If one is to send a message, the TRAPPIST-1 system is a good choice,
since it is home to seven rocky worlds orbiting a red dwarf star.
Several of the system's planets may be habitable, with planet 'e' being
the most promising to support life as we know it.
However it's unlikely that METI International will hit pay dirt so soon.
"If we get a reply from we'll know that the universe is chock-full of
intelligent life," Vakoch said. "More realistically, we may need to
repeat transmissions like the one to TRAPPIST-1 to hundreds, thousands,
even millions of stars before we reach one that is inhabited by radio
astronomers."
https://www.space.com/climate-change-message-to-aliens
/[ war calamities as both trauma and opportunity for innovative change
- opinion from Foreign Policy journal ] /
*The Ukraine Crisis Offers a Rare Chance for Energy and Climate Cooperation*
Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed some difficult truths about the
world’s energy needs.
By Jason Bordoff, a columnist at Foreign Policy, and Meghan L.
O’Sullivan, the Jeane Kirkpatrick professor of the Practice of
International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.
APRIL 18, 2022
- -
A key reason for the lower oil prices was the Biden administration’s
recent announcement of the largest release of oil in U.S. history from
the nation’s strategic stockpiles, followed by a smaller, but still
sizable, release from European countries. In explaining this move, U.S.
President Joe Biden acknowledged a difficult truth: More fossil fuels
are required at this time to meet the world’s current energy needs. But
Biden also acknowledged another difficult truth: The world needs to move
much more quickly toward a clean energy future.
This energy two-step is the only way the world can successfully navigate
both the current crisis with Russia and ensure a cleaner energy future.
Achieving both of these objectives will take forming a coalition that
bridges the current divides in the energy debate as well as brings
together climate scientists, environmentalists, national security hawks,
and the oil and gas industry in support of meeting energy needs today
but sharply reducing demand for fossil fuels tomorrow.
While talk of any bipartisan coalition may seem pollyannish, there is a
precedent for such a coalition. In 2004, in the wake of the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, conservative
national security hawks reached out to environmental activists to urge
Congress to cut oil use in half by 2025 because oil imports were both a
national security and environmental risk. Nearly 20 years later, this
coalition—which lost its glue due to the U.S. fracking boom—is hardly
remembered, and U.S. oil demand remains unchanged...
- -
Shale oil and gas are actually well suited to the transition because
their production declines very steeply when absent continued investment.
As a result, shale production can be more quickly phased down as clean
energy causes oil and gas use to fall. The investments that are needed
include not only those that support supply in the United States but also
expand LNG shipments to Europe if that continent is to meet its energy
needs securely without reverting to coal.
On the other side of the grand bargain, the oil and gas industry needs
to get on board with the energy transition more fully and acknowledge
that reliance on such fuels over the medium and long term poses hazards
to the United States’ environment, economy, and national security. Doing
so offers an opportunity for industry to acknowledge the inevitable
course toward a clean energy future, especially as the growing urgency
to address climate change and dramatic cost declines in clean energy
will now combine with the national security imperative to reduce oil and
gas use made evident by the Ukraine crisis.
Measures to boost oil and gas production in the short term should be met
not only with stringent requirements for high environmental standards,
such as eliminating methane leaks and flaring, but also with binding
commitments by companies to immediately support stronger measures that
will reduce oil and gas use over the longer term.
Strong policy signals, backed by a wider consensus, including industry,
and judicious government permitting will help ensure that any additional
investments in hydrocarbon infrastructure do not exceed what is needed
to meet energy needs while also accelerating a transition.
This will require more than paying lip service to bills with little
chance of passing; in exchange for an easier time supplying energy
today, it will require oil and gas companies to support a broader
variety of measures to reduce hydrocarbon use in the future, such as the
clean energy components of Biden’s Build Back Better legislation.
The long-term climate benefits of such measures would vastly exceed the
emissions associated with the additional infrastructure and production
needed to keep the lights and heat on today. Moreover, companies should
disclose their lobbying on climate to ensure their private efforts on
Capitol Hill are aligned with their public statements.
The energy transition will be as complex and geopolitically fraught as
it is necessary. Smoothing its jagged path requires more societal
consensus. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, for all its tragedy, offers
an opportunity to forge such a consensus—not by lurching to the left or
to the right but by bringing together a motley coalition to collectively
seize the future without forsaking the present.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/18/ukraine-russia-war-oil-energy-climate-gas-prices/
/[ happens anywhere on Earth ]/
*Cooking Releases Aerosols in Atmosphere That Pollutes the Environment:
Study*
By IANS14 - April 18, 2022
Organic aerosols released in cooking may stay in the atmosphere for
several days because of nanostructures formed by fatty acids, finds a study.
These aerosols have long been associated with poor air quality in urban
areas, but their impact on human-made climate change is hard to gauge.
That's because of the diverse range of molecules found within aerosols
and their varying interactions with the environment.
"Cooking aerosols account for up to 10 per cent of particulate matter
(PM) emissions. Finding accurate ways to predict their behaviour will
give us much more precise ways to also assess their contribution to
climate change," said lead author Dr Christian Pfrang of the University
of Birmingham.
Experts at the Universities of Birmingham and Bath probed the behaviour
of thin films of oleic acid — an unsaturated fatty acid commonly
released when cooking.
In the study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, they used
a theoretical model combined with experimental data to predict the
amount of aerosols generated from cooking that may hang around in the
environment.
"We're increasingly finding out how molecules like these fatty acids
from cooking can organise themselves into bilayers and other regular
shapes and stacks within aerosol droplets that float in the air, and how
this completely changes how fast they degrade, how long they persist in
the atmosphere, and how they affect pollution and weather," said
co-author Dr Adam Squires, of the University of Bath.
Previous research suggests that gas cooking produces about twice as much
PM2.5 as electric. It also produces nitrogen oxides (NOx), including
nitrogen oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO),
and formaldehyde (CH2O or HCHO). All of these pollutants are health
risks if not properly managed.
https://weather.com/en-IN/india/pollution/news/2022-04-18-cooking-releases-aerosols-in-atmosphere
/[ another new podcast about our situation ]/
*‘We’re trying to turn the magnet towards optimism’: Cate Blanchett on
her new climate crisis podcast*
Miranda Sawyer
Sun 17 Apr 2022
In Climate of Change, old friends actor Cate Blanchett and clean energy
entrepreneur Danny Kennedy aim to offer ordinary people real-life
solutions to environmental disaster
Cate Blanchett is Australian. I mention this fact because I’d forgotten
it, somehow, so her manner of speaking – upbeat, front-footed,
Aussie-accented – comes as a surprise. And I’ve spent quite some time
hearing her talk over the past couple of days, as she has a new podcast,
Climate of Change, which she hosts with her friend Danny Kennedy,
another Australian. Kennedy is the CEO of an environmental non-profit,
New Energy Nexus, and runs the California Clean Energy Fund. Their
podcast, as you may have guessed from the title, is about the climate
emergency. But before you come over all world-weary and
what’s-the-point, before you get tetchy about preachy celebrities
telling us stuff we already know, you might as well stop. Blanchett is
already there.
“You can recycle up the wazoo, Miranda,” she says (told you she’s
Australian), “but it can just make you feel more cross and isolated and
panicky… I get that. What we’re trying to do with the podcast is to turn
the magnet towards optimism in these incredibly pessimistic times.”
We’re talking via video link, but Blanchett has her camera turned off.
Kennedy, who’s in his office in Oakland, California, hasn’t and he
wanders around, showing us the view from the window (just some more
offices, really). Blanchett’s location is a secret, due to heavy-handed
PRs and her natural privacy, though I’d guess she’s in the UK (she lives
in Sussex).
- -
She and Kennedy made Climate of Change earlier this year, mostly in a
studio in east London. They have some strong guests: Adam McKay, the
director of Don’t Look Up, makes an appearance, as does Prince William,
to talk about his Earthshot prize. (He explains it very well, actually;
it sounds much more interesting than I’d realised.) Still, at the start
of the series, in common with many climate emergency podcasts, the
discussion can feel rather broad, with smudgy chat about tech and
innovation and the “disruptive decade”. At one point, someone says: “We
are the stories we tell ourselves”, which might be true but doesn’t help
that much with the gas bill. By episode two, however, the show is
focusing on real-life solutions and these are undoubtedly encouraging.
We meet a Filipino woman who’s designed a clean energy lamp that local
fisherpeople can use; the Londoner who’s brought gardening to train
stations; the designer of living sea walls that encourage plants and
fish to thrive. One California company, OhmConnect, has such a good idea
about reducing at-home use of electricity that I try to sign up. But
it’s not yet available in the UK...
- -
What they’re trying to do with the podcast, says Kennedy, is appeal to
people like me. To show us tired recyclers that the answers to
environmental catastrophe are already out there. “I think the choir has
heard the doom and gloom song for a long time,” he says, “and sung it
from the song sheet, like a good choir would. What they haven’t been
taught is the song about solutions and the fact we’ve got them.”
“A lot of people are feeling fatigued,” says Blanchett. “I think we need
a sense of, ‘No, don’t worry, these changes are happening.’ Because they
are.”
Blanchett and Kennedy met in Sydney in the early 1990s. They were part
of the same social circle – Kennedy wrote a play with Andrew Upton, now
Blanchett’s husband. Later, in 2008, Blanchett and Upton were appointed
co-artistic directors of Sydney Theatre Company and decided to try to
make the building, an old timber-and-glass warehouse, as ecologically
sound as possible. They enlisted Kennedy to help. He brought in
consultants – “one guy called Gavin Gilchrist: Cate, if you recall, the
fellow who did the toilet flushes” – and helped redo the insulation to
make the building “tighter and better, even though it was a pretty old,
leaky, wooden construction”...
- -
The biggest proposal was the installation of solar energy panels, which
proved difficult to get past heritage rules and the general cynicism of
Sydney’s county council. “We were met by a lot of internal scepticism
and external opposition,” remembers Blanchett. “You know: ‘What has this
to do with a cultural institution, what does it have to do with making
theatre, why are we bothering?’ So we thought: ‘OK, we’ll be at the
theatre company for 10 years and we have a whole suite of ambitions. And
the solar panels will probably be the last one we achieve, if we do.’
And it was the first one we achieved.”
It took two years. There are now 1,906 solar panels powering lights,
ventilation and air con across the building. Kennedy thinks that
Blanchett and Upton’s theatre project was “a catalystic moment” that
kickstarted a sense in Australia that solar power was viable and
cost-effective; the country is now, he says, the biggest solar market in
the developed world. Blanchett thinks of it as a “symbolic gesture”
that, when added to an industry shift, “all adds up”.
So she and Kennedy have known each other for ages (Blanchett recently
found some old photos of his daughters when they were little) and then,
last summer, Kennedy came to stay with Blanchett and her family in
Cornwall. They took him to the Eden Project, which he loved, and the
podcast project was started there. They visited “these old mines that
are engaged in modern, clean-energy transition minerals and materials
production – I’m a geek, I love that,” he says. For Blanchett, the show
was “a much more primal urge. We sort of had to. I had so many
questions.”...
- -
The biggest proposal was the installation of solar energy panels, which
proved difficult to get past heritage rules and the general cynicism of
Sydney’s county council. “We were met by a lot of internal scepticism
and external opposition,” remembers Blanchett. “You know: ‘What has this
to do with a cultural institution, what does it have to do with making
theatre, why are we bothering?’ So we thought: ‘OK, we’ll be at the
theatre company for 10 years and we have a whole suite of ambitions. And
the solar panels will probably be the last one we achieve, if we do.’
And it was the first one we achieved.”
It took two years. There are now 1,906 solar panels powering lights,
ventilation and air con across the building. Kennedy thinks that
Blanchett and Upton’s theatre project was “a catalystic moment” that
kickstarted a sense in Australia that solar power was viable and
cost-effective; the country is now, he says, the biggest solar market in
the developed world. Blanchett thinks of it as a “symbolic gesture”
that, when added to an industry shift, “all adds up”.
So she and Kennedy have known each other for ages (Blanchett recently
found some old photos of his daughters when they were little) and then,
last summer, Kennedy came to stay with Blanchett and her family in
Cornwall. They took him to the Eden Project, which he loved, and the
podcast project was started there. They visited “these old mines that
are engaged in modern, clean-energy transition minerals and materials
production – I’m a geek, I love that,” he says. For Blanchett, the show
was “a much more primal urge. We sort of had to. I had so many questions.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3154/international-sea-level-satellite-takes-over-from-predecessor/
/[ media discussion with a respected historian ]/
*Capitalism & the Apocalypse: Mike Davis in Conversation*
Apr 15, 2022
Haymarket Books
Join Salvage and Haymarket Books for a discussion of Capitalism & the
Apocalypse with writer and activist Mike Davis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ice shelves larger than the largest U.S. states collapse, and barely
make headlines. Imperial powers return to brinksmanship and open
conflict, and our politicians assure us they are ready and willing
to build more charnel houses. Plague floats like a film over our
collective future, and we’re asked to face it with a stiff upper lip
for the sake of the Economy. And these are just the most recent of
the festering horrors to grow from capitalism and threaten the very
existence of humanity.As the profit system has spawned disaster
after disaster, few analysts, pundits, or commentators can claim to
have addressed the mounting number of catastrophes with as much
insight or clarity as Mike Davis. And none have combined his
unflinching honesty with an unwavering commitment to the necessity
of a revolutionary break from our entire social system.From his
magisterial City of Quartz, to the more recent The Monster Enters,
Davis has been cataloging and raging against capitalism’s slow
burning (though rapidly accelerating) apocalypse(s) in his
invaluable books for decades. He will join our Salvage Live hosts,
Annie Olaloku-Teriba and Richard Seymour, for an urgent discussion
of the crises we face, and what it means to confront them with eyes
open and desolation in our hearts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Speakers:
Mike Davis is professor emeritus of creative writing at UC Riverside. He
joined the San Diego chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1962
at age 16 and the struggle for racial and social equality has remained
the lodestar of his life. His City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in
Los Angeles challenged reigning celebrations of the city from the
perspectives of its lost radical past and insurrectionary future. His
wide-ranging work has married science, archival research, personal
experience, and creative writing with razor-sharp critiques of empires
and ruling classes.
Annie Olaloku-Teriba is a writer and podcaster whose research focuses on
how neoliberalism has transformed the theory and practice of ‘race.’
Richard Seymour is a writer and broadcaster from Northern Ireland and
the author of numerous books about politics including Against Austerity
and Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. His writing appears
in The New York Times, the London Review of Books, the Guardian,
Prospect, Jacobin, and innumerable other places including his own
Patreon. He is an editor at Salvage magazine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSQ3UYl29D0
/[ The news archive - looking back at a significant event ]/
*April 20, 2002*
The Guardian reports:
"The head of the international scientific panel on climate change, which
has called for urgent action to curb global warming, was deposed
yesterday after a campaign by the Bush administration, Exxon-Mobil and
other energy companies to get him replaced.
"At a plenary session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) in Geneva, Robert Watson, a British-born US atmospheric scientist
who has been its chairman since 1996, was replaced by an Indian railway
engineer and environmentalist, R K Pachauri.
"Dr Pachauri received 76 votes to Dr. Watson's 49 after a
behind-the-scenes diplomatic campaign by the US to persuade developing
countries to vote against Dr Watson, according to diplomats. The British
delegation argued for Dr Watson and Dr Pachauri to share the chairmanship.
"The US campaign came to light after the disclosure of a confidential
memorandum from the world's biggest oil company, Exxon-Mobil, to the
White House, proposing a strategy for his removal."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/20/internationaleducationnews.climatechange
=======================================
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