[✔️] December 10, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*December 10, 2022*/

/[ fossil fuel unable to change ]/
*Oil firms have internally dismissed swift climate action, House panel says*
Documents show the fossil fuel industry ‘has no real plans to clean up 
its act’ and took steps to continue business as usual
Oliver Milman
Fri 9 Dec 2022
Some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies have internally 
dismissed the need to swiftly move to renewable energy and cut 
planet-heating emissions, despite publicly portraying themselves as 
concerned about the climate crisis, a US House of Representatives 
committee has found.

Documents obtained from companies including Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron 
show that the fossil fuel industry “has no real plans to clean up its 
act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for 
decades to come”, said Carolyn Maloney, the chair of the House oversight 
committee, which has investigated the sector for the past year.
- -
Climate campaigners said the committee’s work showed that the fossil 
fuel industry was continuing to lie over global heating by pretending to 
act on the issue.

“The key revelation in this report is that big oil has no intention of 
actually following through on its climate commitments,” said Jamie Henn, 
director of Fossil Free Media.

“It isn’t transitioning to clean energy, it’s doubling down on methane 
gas, and it’s actively lobbying against renewable energy solutions. This 
is the big tobacco playbook all over again: pretend you care about a 
problem, but continue your deadly business as usual.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/09/oil-gas-companies-fossil-fuel-industry-house-committee/
/

/- -
/

/[  Not a surprise ]/
*US panel accuses ‘Big Oil’ of disinformation over climate plans*
House Oversight Committee says oil companies are ‘lying’ about promises 
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
9 Dec 2022
A United States congressional committee has accused oil companies of 
spreading “disinformation” and “lying” about their climate change 
mitigation efforts by obscuring their long-term investments in fossil fuels.

The House Oversight Committee released internal industry documents from 
major oil companies on Friday that it said showed that the firms were 
not acting on their public pledges to reduce emissions and instead 
engaging in “greenwashing”.
“Today’s new evidence makes clear that these companies know their 
climate pledges are inadequate, but are prioritizing Big Oil’s record 
profits over the human costs of climate change,” the panel’s chairwoman, 
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, said in a statement.

“It’s time for the fossil fuel industry to stop lying to the American 
people and finally take serious steps to reduce emissions and address 
the global climate crisis they helped create.”

The panel said a “key part” of the oil companies’ climate plans has been 
to sell off, or divest, oil and gas fields to smaller firms to lower 
their own emissions – a move that simply shuffles those emissions to the 
next company and “will not actually reduce emissions”.

“Even as it publicly announced support for Paris Agreement goals, BP 
continues to invest in a future dependent on fossil fuels,” the 
committee also found...
It pointed to an internal review document in which the company described 
its plan to significantly “increase development in regions with oil 
potential” in the US, and to “focus primarily on projects in current 
basins that generate the highest rate of return”.

The documents were obtained by Congressional subpoenas as part of the 
committee’s broader investigation into “the fossil fuel industry’s role 
in spreading climate disinformation and preventing action on climate 
change”.
In an internal email, “one BP executive asserted … that BP had ‘no 
obligation to minimize GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions’ and that the 
company should only ‘minimize [GHG emissions] where it makes commercial 
sense’,” the panel said on Friday.

“The same BP executive concluded that ‘the benefits of any proposal to 
adopt a lower GHG option needs to be balanced against the cost to do 
so.'”...
BP did not respond immediately to a request for comment from the Reuters 
news agency.

At Shell, spokesperson Curtis Smith, in an internal email released by 
the panel, said about divesting from assets in Canada’s oil sands, 
“True, we transfer CO2 liability when we divest.”

On Friday, Reuters cited Smith as saying that the House panel’s probe 
failed to uncover evidence of a climate disinformation campaign....
“In fact, the handful of subpoenaed documents the Committee chose to 
highlight from Shell are evidence of the company’s extensive efforts to 
set aggressive targets, transform its portfolio and meaningfully 
participate in the ongoing energy transition,” Smith said...
The Democratic-led House panel’s memo comes as scientists and the United 
Nations continue to warn of catastrophic consequences if the climate 
crisis is not addressed.

In November, the UN said the past eight years are on track to be the 
hottest ever recorded. And experts have blamed the climate crisis for 
intensifying national disasters, including hurricanes, heatwaves and 
wildfires.

“Big Oil has misled the American public for decades about the reality of 
the climate crisis,” Ro Khanna, chair of the subcommittee on the 
environment, said in Friday’s statement. “It’s past time to hold the 
entire industry accountable for its role in funding and facilitating 
that disinformation.”

Democrats are set to become a minority in the House of Representatives 
early next month after Republicans, who have pushed for increased 
domestic energy production, narrowly won control of the chamber in 
November’s midterm elections.

Despite the congressional Democrats’ call for oil companies to reduce 
emissions, President Joe Biden last month urged the firms to “expand 
supply and lower prices at the pump”.

The White House also moved to release millions of barrels of oil from 
the country’s strategic reserves before the elections earlier this year 
amid soaring prices partly sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/9/us-panel-accuses-big-oil-of-disinformation-over-climate-plans



/[ where are people moving ? ]/
*Despite a Changing Climate, Americans Are ‘Flocking to Fire’*
Over the past decade, Americans have migrated to areas of the country 
with high wildfire risk, indicating that climate disasters are not yet 
prioritized in moving decisions.
By Grace van Deelen
December 8, 2022
Despite an increase in wildfire risk spurred by climate change, 
Americans are moving to wildfire-prone areas and prioritizing lower 
housing costs and amenities such as temperate weather and recreational 
opportunities over risk of natural disasters.

An analysis of U.S. migration data from the past decade published today, 
“Flocking to fire: How climate and natural hazards shape human migration 
across the United States,” shows that Americans have been moving into 
certain “migration hot spots” in the West, Pacific Northwest and South 
that have high risk of wildfires, as well as to metro areas with high 
summer temperatures.

The authors write that this “dangerous public health trend” is 
“increasing the number of people in harm’s way,” especially as both 
fires and heat waves increase in frequency due to climate change. 
Experts concerned about public safety in these high-risk population 
centers urge Americans to understand their environmental risks before 
moving.

Migration trends are influenced by a number of factors such as job 
availability, housing costs, and cultural or political fit. Americans 
also consider so-called “natural amenities,” like a mild climate, 
variation in the landscape and water bodies, when they determine where 
to move. Such amenities act as migration “pulls,” and incentivize people 
to live nearby...
According to the study, led by a team from the University of Vermont and 
published in the journal Frontiers in Human Dynamics, the areas pulling 
Americans most strongly are also those where residents are at higher 
risk of natural disasters like wildfires and summer heat. Cities 
identified as migration hotspots included Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, 
Phoenix, Denver, Austin, Dallas, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte and 
Washington, D.C., while large swaths of the Pacific Northwest, Rocky 
Mountains and the South also received a higher influx of people than 
surrounding areas.

Places with high wildfire risk, said Clark, tend to also have dramatic, 
varied landscapes, and might be farther outside of urban areas, both 
qualities attractive to people looking to move. The Rockies and Pacific 
Northwest, both named as migration hotspots, offer plenty of 
opportunities for outdoor recreation and have a milder, drier climate 
than other parts of the U.S. The hotspots in the South, such as 
Nashville, Charlotte, Atlanta and parts of Texas, could be attracting 
people due to historically lower living costs, said Clark.

“It’s not that people are attracted to wildfires,” said Mahalia Clark, a 
doctoral student at the University of Vermont and the lead author on the 
study. “Something else about those counties is attractive in spite of 
wildfires.”..
Americans aren’t only moving towards places with high wildfire 
risk—they’re also moving into metro areas that face high summer 
temperatures. Heat in urban areas can be particularly deadly, as the 
urban heat island effect can exacerbate temperatures, causing 
dehydration, heat stroke and other public health concerns. Cooler 
“climate havens” in the Midwest and Northeast have not been receiving 
much migration, according to the analysis.

The study shows that “the public has not fully acknowledged the climate 
emergency,” said Elizabeth Fussell, a professor of population studies 
and the environment at Brown University who was not involved in the 
study, in an email.

*Risk Perception and Priorities*
The research found that all things being equal, hurricane risk and 
probability of heat waves seemed to influence migration more than 
wildfire risk, with hurricanes and heat waves deterring migration to 
certain parts of the country.

One reason why Americans aren’t taking fire into account, said Clark, 
could be a simple lack of awareness about where fires are most likely to 
occur. For example, she said, wildfire risk is high in the mountain 
West, but wildfires also frequently impact parts of the South and 
Midwest, as well. People might be “totally unaware” that there is any 
risk at all in the city they’re moving to, she said.

Fires tend to be more random than other natural disasters, too, said 
Gillian Galford, a professor of environmental science at UVM and a 
co-author on the study. Fire’s randomness could be a reason why people 
perceive the risk of fire to be lower, though more research is needed to 
fully answer the question of risk perception, she said. Fussell said 
fires tend to damage fewer human structures than hurricanes, which could 
explain the discrepancy. A 2021 study by Fussell found that only the 
most destructive wildfires caused a migration response.

Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University who has studied climate 
adaptation, said he’s not surprised that Americans aren’t prioritizing 
wildfire risk. “When people are weighing environmental risk or climate 
risks together with the opportunities for growth and relative access to 
affordable housing,” he said, “the scale is just heavily tipped in favor 
of the household economy.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08122022/climate-change-migration-us/

- -

/[ published in Frontiers Journal of Original Research ]/
*Flocking to fire: How climate and natural hazards shape human migration 
across the United States*
Mahalia B. Clark, Ephraim Nkonya and Gillian L. Galford
As global climate change progresses, the United States (US) is expected 
to experience warmer temperatures as well as more frequent and severe 
extreme weather events, including heat waves, hurricanes, and wildfires. 
Each year, these events cost dozens of lives and do billions of dollars' 
worth of damage, but there has been limited research on how they 
influence human decisions about migration. Are people moving toward or 
away from areas most at risk from these climate threats? Here, we 
examine recent (2010–2020) trends in human migration across the US in 
relation to features of the natural landscape and climate, as well as 
frequencies of various natural hazards. Controlling for socioeconomic 
and environmental factors, we found that people have moved away from 
areas most affected by heat waves and hurricanes, but toward areas most 
affected by wildfires. This relationship may suggest that, for many, the 
dangers of wildfires do not yet outweigh the perceived benefits of life 
in fire-prone areas. We also found that people have been moving toward 
metropolitan areas with relatively hot summers, a dangerous public 
health trend if mean and maximum temperatures continue to rise, as 
projected in most climate scenarios. These results have implications for 
policymakers and planners as they prepare strategies to mitigate climate 
change and natural hazards in areas attracting migrants.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2022.886545/full



/[  Lithium is somewhat dangerous -- requiring careful handling ]/
*The state of the lithium-ion battery recycling market*
A conversation with battery analyst Yayoi Sekine of BNEF.
David Roberts
DEC 9, 2022
The coming decade is going to see a rapid rise in demand for electric 
vehicles and the batteries they contain. Currently, the materials that 
compose those batteries are mined and processed in countries with 
problematic environmental and labor standards.

One part of crafting a more humane and secure battery supply chain is 
working to reduce demand for virgin materials by recycling the materials 
already in use. That means recycling the lithium-ion batteries found in 
vehicles — lots of them.

Since we are on the very front end of a rapid S-curve rise in demand for 
EVs, a comparatively small number of such lithium-ion batteries need 
recycling today. But that will change, soon, as early EVs tax their 
original batteries.

To get a grasp on the current state of play in the battery-recycling 
market, I contacted Yayoi Sekine, an analyst who works as head of energy 
storage at Bloomberg NEF. We talked about current demand for battery 
recycling, the companies meeting that demand, the technologies used to 
recycle batteries today, and the coming growth in the industry.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-state-of-the-lithium-ion-battery



/[The news archive - looking back at video]/
/*December 10, 2008 */
December 10, 2008: On MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," Brian Hardwick 
of the Alliance for Climate Protection denounces a 
borderline-blasphemous holiday marketing campaign by the coal industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaGun1X8E2s


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