[✔️] August 21, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest

Sun Aug 21 07:40:19 EDT 2022

/*August 21, 2022*/

/[ Audio -- music debut - Heliosis is a form of heatstroke resulting 
from undue exposure to the sun...combined with high temperature ]/
*Hannah Eisendle: Heliosis, for orchestra (Premiere)*
Jul 28, 2022
Hannah Eisendle: Heliosis for orchestra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjZ8hrRJ9ls

/
/

/[  US West diminishing water flow ]/
*State Tensions Rise As Water Cuts Deepen On The Colorado River*
Colorado River states are attempting to devise a plan to make 
substantial cuts to their water use, but the Department of Interior 
announced that starting in January, they will face additional reductions.
By Aydali Campa
August 17, 2022
- -
As a 23-year-old drought intensified by climate change and 
overallocation continue to endanger the Colorado River water supply, 
Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will face more reductions in their 
allotments, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Tuesday.

According to new projections by the Department of Interior, the river’s 
main reservoir, Lake Mead in Nevada, will reach record low levels in 
January, triggering a “Tier 2a” shortage that calls for a collective 
reduction in Colorado River use by Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. About 80 
percent of the more than 720,000 acre-feet reduction will come from 
Arizona. California would not be impacted by the newly declared shortage 
because the reductions are based on previously negotiated levels.

“It is unacceptable for Arizona to continue to carry a disproportionate 
burden of reductions for the benefit of others who have not 
contributed,” Arizona officials said in a Tuesday statement after the 
shortage was announced.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17082022/colorado-river-cuts-drought/

/[ Stone carvings revealed as a river subsides in times of drought ]/
*Hunger stones, wrecks and bones: Europe’s drought brings past to surface*
Receding rivers and lakes have exposed ghost villages, a Nazi vehicle 
and a Roman fort
by Jon Henley Europe correspondent
- -
The so-called “hunger stone” at Děčín is one of dozens in central 
European rivers engraved to mark their levels during historic droughts – 
and warn future generations of the famine and hardship likely to follow 
each time they became visible.
- -
Czech researchers in 2013 described the stone as “chiselled with the 
years of hardship and the initials of authors lost to history”, saying 
it “expressed that drought had brought a bad harvest, lack of food, high 
prices and hunger for poor people.”

The earliest readable year on the Děčín stone is 1616. Traces of 
inscriptions relating to much earlier droughts, including 1417 and 1473, 
have been largely eroded over time. Ten later dry years, between 1707 
and 1893, are also recorded...
- -
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/19/hunger-stones-wrecks-and-bones-europe-drought-brings-past-to-surface

- -

/[from Interesting Engineering ]/
Hunger stones are a centuries-old practice where stones lining the 
dried-up river beds were carved to serve as a warning to future 
generations that a famine was around the corner, the Independent 
reported. This practice was followed across various rivers in Europe, 
some even dating back to the 15th century.
https://interestingengineering.com/science/european-rivers-drought-reveal-hunger-stones

/[  from those who have read a few pages of the 750 ]/
*The climate bill’s blind spot*
A closer look at the good and the bad of specific provisions in the 
historic climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.
Jonathan Thompson Aug. 18, 2022...
*Carbon tunnel vision *
The climate bill is historic and worth celebrating — but its drawbacks 
must be acknowledged

On Aug. 7, when the U.S. Senate finally passed its landmark climate 
bill, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the environmental community’s 
initial reaction was a burst of elation, a sense of unbridled joy that 
Congress — a powerful yet dysfunctional, do-nothing institution — would 
actually take meaningful action on climate change.

There is plenty in the 755-page bill for climate hawks to celebrate, 
including $369 billion for wind and solar tax credits, clean energy 
innovation, electric vehicle incentives and methane leak mitigation. But 
there’s also a buzzkill or two, with page 669 receiving the most ire: 
Before the federal government can issue a renewable energy right of way 
on public lands, it must offer at least 2 million acres per year for 
onshore oil and gas leasing. While the concession was necessary to get 
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., on board, it also directly contradicted the 
bill’s myriad emissions-cutting measures.

And so, the initial love fest quickly devolved into a cacophony of 
wildly divergent takes from across the climate advocacy spectrum. To 
some, like the analysts at the independent research organization Rhodium 
Group, the bill is a “game changer for U.S. decarbonization.” To others, 
such as Brett Hartl of the Center for Biological Diversity, it’s a 
“climate suicide pact.” And still other environmentalists fall somewhere 
in between.

But the debate over whether the bill will be good or not so good for the 
climate threatens to give us a case of carbon tunnel vision. By focusing 
exclusively on the climate impacts of a given policy or technology, one 
can overlook its on-the-ground effects on frontline communities and be 
blinded to the possible impacts on human rights and social justice as 
well as on ecosystems and public lands.

Now that the Inflation Reduction Act is law, it seems like a good time 
for even its most ardent supporters to step back and acknowledge its 
drawbacks, if for no other reason than to be ready to mitigate them when 
they begin to play out in the Western U.S. This is by no means a 
comprehensive list.

*The oil and gas leasing requirement*
*The Good:* But it’s not as bad as it sounds. The administration must 
only offer 2 million acres for lease. Over the past couple of decades, 
the government has put an average of 4.1 million acres per year on the 
auction block, yet oil companies have only bid on about one-fourth of 
them. So this does not represent an escalation of leasing or fossil fuel 
extraction. Also, its impacts should be offset by hikes on oil and gas 
royalties, minimum leasing bid amounts, and the rent oil and gas 
companies pay to sit on leases without drilling them. Plus, the bill 
ends noncompetitive leasing and charges companies to nominate land for 
leasing.
*The Bad: *This makes it virtually impossible for the Interior 
Department to impose a leasing pause or ban.
*Substantial increases in tax credits for carbon capture*
*The Good: *It further incentivizes hard-to-decarbonize industries like 
cement manufacturing to install expensive equipment to capture emissions 
and pump them underground.
*The Bad: *It could keep coal power plants operating that would 
otherwise shut down due to bad economics. Even if the carbon capture 
equipment were to reduce carbon dioxide emissions nearly to zero — which 
is highly unlikely — the plant would continue to burn coal, produce 
toxic coal combustion waste and spew harmful air pollution, all to the 
detriment of nearby communities. And the subsidies are paid even when 
the carbon is pumped into old oil fields to stimulate production.
*Oil and gas companies will be charged up to $1,500 for every ton of 
methane they emit*
*The Good:* It provides a hefty incentive for oil and gas companies to 
plug leaks and curb other emissions of methane and associated volatile 
organic compounds. It’s the federal government’s first-ever fee or tax 
on greenhouse gas emissions. The bill also requires oil and gas 
producers to pay royalties on all methane extracted from a well, not 
just on what is sold.
*The Bad: *The fee applies only to big producers that emit 25,000 metric 
tons of carbon dioxide equivalent or more per year, or an estimated 40% 
of the industry’s emissions. That leaves out thousands of oil and gas 
wells and other infrastructure owned by smaller operators, many of which 
leak methane and other harmful compounds and are located in or near 
underserved communities.
$7,500 credit for new electric vehicle purchases + tax break for 
“critical minerals” mining

*The Good: *It will make it a little bit easier for folks to ditch those 
dirty old internal combustion engines and buy more efficient, cleaner 
EVs. There’s also a $4,000 credit for buying used clean vehicles.
*The Bad: *The EV credit doesn’t extend to electric bicycles (or 
non-electric bikes, for that matter). Far more concerning is the 
requirement that a set percentage of the materials in the vehicles’ 
batteries be sourced domestically in order for the credit to apply. That 
will put pressure on companies to develop more “green metal” mines in 
the West and encourage the government to expedite mining permits, while 
a 10% tax-break for lithium, cobalt and nickel production will 
incentivize those projects. Already several public-lands lithium 
projects are encroaching on Indigenous homelands in Nevada and Arizona. 
The Build Back Better Act would have included mining law reform to 
mitigate some of the impact; the Inflation Reduction Act does not.
*A substantial tax credit for “clean hydrogen” production*
*The Good:* Hydrogen is a clean-burning fuel that can be used for 
trains, planes, automobiles, industry and to generate electricity. It 
can be expensive to produce; this will help.
*The Bad: *Hydrogen production comes in different “colors.” The credit 
would not only go to green hydrogen production (which uses renewable 
energy to extract the hydrogen from water), but also pink hydrogen 
(which uses nuclear power to extract it from water) and blue hydrogen 
(which extracts hydrogen from methane, using carbon capture to reduce 
emissions). So it would not only support nuclear power, but also methane 
— or natural gas — extraction, which affects frontline communities.
*$30 billion in tax credits for existing nuclear reactors to prevent 
them from closing + $700 million for U.S. uranium fuel production*
*The Good: *When a nuclear reactor — which generates electricity 
emissions-free — shuts down, utilities tend to compensate for the lost 
power by burning more natural gas or even coal, thereby increasing 
emissions. Keeping existing plants running can avoid those added 
greenhouse gases.
*The Bad:* Nuclear power proponents may be more deeply afflicted by 
carbon tunnel vision than any other climate advocacy group. They 
routinely discount the problems with radioactive waste, they scoff at 
the possibility of a meltdown or some other accident and, most egregious 
in my opinion, they completely ignore the damage the uranium mining and 
milling industry has already done to Western landscapes and communities, 
especially Indigenous communities.
Still, taking the good and the bad together, this is a truly historic 
piece of legislation. The first and last time Congress actually did 
anything about climate, as far as I can tell, was in 1979, when a few 
lines were included in the massive, fossil fuel-friendly Energy Security 
Act, calling for a study of carbon dioxide emissions and their effects 
on the climate. The National Research Council completed its Changing 
Climate report in 1983, concluding that continuing to pump carbon into 
the atmosphere via fossil fuel combustion would cause global warming.

But science was not enough for Congress, which did nothing. So the 
legendary astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan was brought in 
to testify. He patiently explained the greenhouse effect to a rapt 
bipartisan audience, and calmly implored them to act: “There is a 
tendency to say it’s not our problem,” he said, “but if you don’t worry 
about it now, it’s too late later on.” Did Congress listen? Nope. Well, 
a few people did: In the ensuing decades, Democratic lawmakers, and even 
a Republican or two, introduced climate bill after bill, each employing 
a different strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions. They all flopped.

When the Build Back Better legislation failed to garner enough support, 
even as climate change-exacerbated heat waves and floods and fires 
ravaged the West, it seemed as if the run of congressional climate 
failure would continue for another 37 years. But then, at last, Manchin 
came around. The result is far from perfect, but it’s something, and, 
perhaps, it’s only the beginning of a great deal more.
https://www.hcn.org/articles/landline-the-climate-bills-blind-spot?utm_source=Sightline%20Institute

[ Banking video discussions ]
*What Your Bank Really Does With Your Money | Climate Town*
Apr 21, 2022  Thanks, banks! Patreon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ7W6HFHPYs

/[ A cloud that is newly defined: Asperitas clouds ]/
*Earth's Rarest Cloud Type Finally Caught on Camera | Asperitas Clouds*
Aug 20, 2022  Why Asperitas Clouds - or Undulatus Asperatus - are so 
rare. Want to see the world through the eyes of a scientist? V
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX_uwZAgfOg

/[ Dunkelfaute -- a term used in the renewable energy sector to describe 
a period of time in which little to no energy can be generated with the 
use of wind and solar power -- a weather situation for stale, motionless 
air ]/
*Renewable Energy Storage: No Wind, No Sun, Now What?*
Aug 20, 2022
Solar panels and wind turbines are great, so long as the sun shines and 
the wind blows. But what if they do not? Well, then we store the energy. 
But how? In this video I explain how high the risk of a cold, dark, and 
windless period is -- the "cold Dunkelflaute", and what energy storage 
we need for intermittent renewables.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xsg9iK5yo

/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*August 21, 2007*/
August 21, 2007: U.S. District Judge Sandra Brown Armstrong rules that 
the George W. Bush administration violated the 1990 Global Change 
Research Act (signed into law, ironically enough, by Bush's father) by 
not producing a legally required climate assessment report. The report 
would finally be released in May 2008.
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2007/08/22/court-rules-that-bush-admin-unlawfully-failed-to-produce-scientific-assessment-of-global-change/ 

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/PRESS/global-warming-08-21-2007.html 

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/PROGRAMS/policy/energy/complaint-national-assessment.pdf 

http://web.archive.org/web/20080705212954/http://www.usda.gov/oce/global_change/sap_2007_FinalReport.htm 

=======================================
*Mass media is lacking, here are a few daily summariesof global warming 
news - email delivered*

=========================================================
**Inside Climate News*
Newsletters
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or 
once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines 
deliver the full story, for free.
https://insideclimatenews.org/
---------------------------------------
**Climate Nexus* https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News summarizes the 
most important climate and energy news of the day, delivering an 
unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant reporting. It also provides 
original reporting and commentary on climate denial and pro-polluter 
activity that would otherwise remain largely unexposed.    5 weekday
=================================
*Carbon Brief Daily https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up*
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief 
sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of 
subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours 
of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our 
pick of the key studies published in the peer-reviewed journals.
more at https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief
==================================
*T*he Daily Climate *Subscribe https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*
Get The Daily Climate in your inbox - FREE! Top news on climate impacts, 
solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered week days. Better than coffee.
Other newsletters  at https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/ 

/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

   Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and 
sender. This is a hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial 
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.