[✔️] May 10, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 10 , 2022*/

/[  BBC says ] /
*Climate change: 'Fifty-fifty chance' of breaching 1.5C warming limit*
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent
The likelihood of crossing a key global warming threshold has risen 
significantly, according to a new analysis.

UK Met Office researchers say that there's now around a fifty-fifty 
chance that the world will warm by more than 1.5C over the next five years.

Such a rise would be temporary, but researchers are concerned about the 
overall direction of temperatures.

It's almost certain that 2022-2026 will see a record warmest year, they 
say...
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61383391



[ no surprise, just disappointment ]
*Manchin calls EV tax credit expansion 'ludicrous'*
Once again, Manchin is blocking the Biden administration's climate goals.
Lisa Martine Jenkins April 29, 2022
Surprise, surprise: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin threw cold water on yet 
another aspect of his party’s approach to climate policy. While the 
Biden administration has proposed expanding the popular electric vehicle 
tax credit, Manchin called the idea “ludicrous” during a Senate budget 
hearing on Thursday.

Manchin’s colleagues are angling to resurrect certain provisions in the 
catatonic-if-not-entirely-dead Build Back Better bill, including one to 
increase the existing $7,500 credit for electric vehicle purchases to as 
much as $12,500. But Manchin, who also basically killed the $1.75 
trillion Build Back Better plan, isn't having it.

Manchin cited both existing waiting lists for EVs — especially in light 
of tangled supply chains for the vehicles — and high fuel prices as 
rationale for his resistance. He suggested that lawmakers instead direct 
more funding toward developing hydrogen resources to decarbonize the 
transportation sector (a complicated and potentially fraught 
proposition). In February, Manchin joined three Republicans to launch a 
working group to develop a hydrogen hub in West Virginia, which would 
allow for the continued use of fossil fuels and would be a major win for 
natural gas and coal producers in Manchin's state. The proposal has 
already passed the House, but getting Manchin on board will likely be 
necessary to get it through the Senate as well. Manchin has thrown a 
wrench in Democratic policy plans in the past, including the $1.75 
trillion Build Back Better spending plan, which included climate 
provisions that would have impacted clean energy deployment and carbon 
removal research...
https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/manchin-ev-tax-credits



/[ Information battles ]/
*​Climate denial is dead on Facebook. What replaced it is more insidious. ​*
"Energy independence" is no less braindead than saying sunspots cause 
climate change. But it's propagating across the social network largely 
free of fact checks.
Brian Kahn May 7, 2022
We've reached the point where flat-out climate denial is being stamped 
out. Newspapers have largely stopped quoting it and social networks and 
search engines have throttled its spread online. But the fossil fuel 
industry and its allies have found a new way to achieve the same ends of 
inaction: touting "energy independence." Protocol got an exclusive first 
look at an analysis by Media Matters showing how the meme based on a 
false premise propagates across Facebook with little or no oversight.

The analysis looked at the top 100 Facebook posts by interactions from 
September 2021 to April 2022 that spread climate and energy 
misinformation. A large portion of those posts focused on the idea of 
"energy independence" as a justification to drill for more oil and gas, 
yet only two of those were labeled for spreading misinformation.

The idea that the U.S. is woefully dependent on foreign oil and gas is, 
if we're being blunt, not true. The U.S. is a net exporter of liquid 
natural gas and oil (though the latter may shift this year). The concept 
that "energy independence" is tied to producing more oil and gas is also 
misinformation. To avoid heating the planet more than 1.5 degrees 
Celsius, a key climate guardrail, the International Energy Agency found 
last year the world needs to stop new fossil fuel exploration by the end 
of this year.

You wouldn't know any of this from the posts Media Matters identified, 
though. The drumbeat for more oil and gas extraction has kicked into 
high gear over the past few months as gas prices have spiked (this 
despite the fact that you can't just magically flip the oil switch and 
flood the market with cheap fossil fuels).

In a March 10 post highlighted in the report, Mike Rowe (yes, that guy— 
it's kind of his thing) said, "One minute, America was a net exporter of 
oil and natural gas. The next minute, we’re back to buying oil from 
despots and sheiks, with gas prices at an all-time high." Literally 
nothing has changed in the mythical "one minute" Rowe references. 
"Honest question," Rowe continues, "Why would we allow energy 
independence to slip through our fingers?” (We're not.)

The post has no fact-checking label and contains more misinformation and 
hand waving. But we're not going to spend all day talking about Mike 
Rowe here because there are other, even more egregious examples out 
there. A post by Media Research Center TV, a right-wing media watchdog, 
does have a fact-checking label for falsely claiming, "American energy 
independence has been lost under Joe Biden and the policies of the 
left." But it was still shared 29,000 times, reflecting the reality that 
even with moderation, misinformation is still pinging across Facebook.

"We have to have shared language around how we're defining 
misinformation, disinformation and malinformation," Allison Fisher, the 
director of the climate and energy program at Media Matters, told 
Protocol. "The wider definition that we're using includes anything 
that's trying to erode climate science or efforts to act on climate as 
misinformation. All of these achieve the same thing, though the intent 
can be a little bit different."

That intent is to delay action on addressing climate change by ending 
the use of fossil fuels. The longer misinformation about energy 
independence propagates, the greater the risk of it being treated as a 
political issue across the spectrum of left to right rather than a 
scientific one. That points for the need for more stringent 
fact-checking guidelines and even enforcement.

“This research and content illustrate that the policies that have been 
in place to address climate misinformation are inadequate,” Fisher said. 
“They’re just not working, either because they’re not being enforced, or 
they’re just inadequate to begin with.”
https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/facebook-climate-denial-energy-independence 




/[ Dave Roberts podcast audio ]/
*Volts podcast: Andy Frank on how to sell whole-home retrofits to 
skeptical consumers*
David Roberts - May 9, 2022
One of the greatest riddles of the decarbonization effort is the 
residential sector, responsible for about 20 percent of US 
energy-related carbon emissions. There are about 142 million housing 
units in the US, around 83 million of which are “owner-occupied.” 
Substantially changing them involves dealing with 83 million separate 
owners, each with their own circumstances and preferences.

Residential decarbonization seems incredibly difficult to scale up, and 
attempts to date have not been particularly successful. At the rate we 
are going, it will take hundreds of years to decarbonize America’s 
housing stock.

The crew at New York-based climate tech company Sealed is trying 
something new, imported from the commercial efficiency market. Rather 
than trying to persuade homeowners to buy and install things with their 
own scarce resources, Sealed covers all the upfront costs and 
coordinates the work with trusted contractors. Homeowners pay the 
retrofit back out of energy savings, which means Sealed only gets paid 
if there are, in fact, measurable energy savings.

This kind of pay-for-performance arrangement is called an energy 
services agreement (ESA). Listeners of my pod with Rob Harmon will 
recognize the concept: customers are paying for metered energy 
efficiency, in the same way they would pay for energy.

Sealed started small but is growing quickly, so I’m excited to talk to 
its president and co-founder Andy Frank about the frustrations and 
failures of residential energy efficiency to date, what he’s learned 
about homeowner preferences, and what kind of benefits come along with 
having a fully electrified home.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-andy-frank-on-how-to?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNjgzNTA5LCJwb3N0X2lkIjo1MzI3NTYzNiwiXyI6IjJhYVVSIiwiaWF0IjoxNjUyMTQ3NjUzLCJleHAiOjE2NTIxNTEyNTMsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xOTMwMjQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.wiEBQdt_XFl_dkUJJmPpVuVHeDv0TEgmfxMQUZSXBUg&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&s=r#play


/[  Important to know ] /
*Heat pumps do work in the cold — Americans just don’t know it yet*
These heating/cooling systems have been called the "most overlooked 
climate solution." Now they can work in temperatures far below freezing.
By Shannon Osaka - - May 9, 2022
Heat pumps – heating and cooling systems that run entirely on 
electricity – have been getting a lot of attention recently. They’ve 
been called the “most overlooked climate solution” and “an answer to 
heat waves.” And the technology is finally experiencing a global boom in 
popularity. Last year, 117 million units were installed worldwide, up 
from 90 million in 2010. As temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions 
rise, heat pumps, which can be easily powered by renewable energy, 
promise to provide a pathway to carbon-free home heating. Environmental 
activist Bill McKibben even suggested sending heat pumps to Europe to 
help wean the continent off Russian natural gas.

But despite this global surge in popularity, heat pumps in the U.S. are 
belaboring under a misconception that has plagued them for decades: That 
if the temperature falls to below 30 or even 40 degrees Fahrenheit, 
their technology simply doesn’t work. “Do heat pumps work in cold 
weather” is even a trending question on Google.

It’s a narrative that Andy Meyer, a senior program manager for the 
independent state agency Efficiency Maine, has spent the past decade 
debunking for residents in one of the U.S.’s coldest states.

“There were two types of people in Maine in 2012,” he said. “Those who 
didn’t know what heat pumps were — and those who knew they didn’t work 
in the cold.” But while that concern may have been true years ago, he 
said, today “it’s not at all true for high-performance heat pumps.” ...
- -
Air-source heat pumps — there are also geothermal heat pumps and 
water-source heat pumps — are poorly named and poorly understood. 
(According to one small 2020 study from the heating tech company Sealed, 
about 47 percent of homeowners in the U.S. Northeast had never even 
heard of heat pumps.) They are essentially reversible air conditioners: 
Like AC units, they can take heat from inside a home and pump it out to 
provide a cooling effect. But unlike air conditioners, they can also run 
backwards — drawing heat from outdoors and bringing it inside to warm a 
home.

That process of moving heat rather than creating it explains why heat 
pumps are mind-blowingly efficient. A gas furnace — which burns natural 
gas to create heat — can only reach around 95 percent efficiency. A heat 
pump can easily reach 300 or 400 percent efficiency; that is, it can 
make around 3 to 4 times as much energy as it consumes.

Air-source heat pumps — there are also geothermal heat pumps and 
water-source heat pumps — are poorly named and poorly understood. 
(According to one small 2020 study from the heating tech company Sealed, 
about 47 percent of homeowners in the U.S. Northeast had never even 
heard of heat pumps.) They are essentially reversible air conditioners: 
Like AC units, they can take heat from inside a home and pump it out to 
provide a cooling effect. But unlike air conditioners, they can also run 
backwards — drawing heat from outdoors and bringing it inside to warm a 
home.

That process of moving heat rather than creating it explains why heat 
pumps are mind-blowingly efficient. A gas furnace — which burns natural 
gas to create heat — can only reach around 95 percent efficiency. A heat 
pump can easily reach 300 or 400 percent efficiency; that is, it can 
make around 3 to 4 times as much energy as it consumes.
Soon, high-performance heat pumps were being produced that could warm a 
home even when outdoor temperatures were down to -31 degrees Fahrenheit. 
(Even in extreme sub-zero temperatures, there is still some amount of 
heat in outdoor air.) A heat pump’s efficiency does go down as it gets 
colder, but even in subzero temperatures high-end units can be over 100 
percent efficient. And in recent years, some of the country’s coldest 
states have gone all-in on the technology. According to a study in 
Environmental Research Letters, heat pumps could reduce CO2 emissions in 
70 percent of homes across the country; homes heated by inefficient 
electric heaters or fuel oil could particularly benefit. Utilities and 
states have started offering rebates for consumers to install heat 
pumps, even in colder states like New York, Massachusetts, or Maine. 
Many environmental groups and state agencies are working hard to 
convince residents that top-of-the-line heat pumps can function well in 
cold climates.

Efficiency Maine has been part of that trend. Early on, Meyer said, 
residents were deeply skeptical that a simple electric device could keep 
them warm in the state’s frigid conditions. But Efficiency Maine 
recruited installers, ran social media and radio ads, and released 
studies and reports showing that heat pumps could work. “It started in 
Northern Maine — a very close, tightly knit community,” Meyer said. Once 
a few people installed heat pumps, they began telling their friends, who 
told their friends, and so on. So far, Meyer says, Efficiency Maine has 
offered rebates for 100,000 heat pumps — in a state where there are less 
than 600,000 occupied housing units. Maine now has a higher rate of heat 
pump installations per capita than most European countries.
Other organizations are doing similar work. The Center for Energy and 
Environment in Minnesota has formed a collaborative with utilities to 
help boost heat pump adoption in the state; they also maintain a list of 
contractors who have been vetted to install the systems. The Northeast 
Energy Efficiency Partnerships, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit, has 
resources for installers and consumers, including a list of air-source 
heat pumps that operate well under the climate conditions of Northeast 
states. Some heat pumps are even being installed in Alaska, where 
average winter temperatures hover around a high of 23 degrees Fahrenheit.

One of the benefits of installing heat pumps is cost-savings. In Maine, 
many homes are heated with fuel oil or propane. At current prices, Meyer 
says, running a heat pump costs half as much as oil and one-third as 
much as propane. According to Efficiency Maine’s analysis, that can save 
homeowners up to thousands of dollars in annual energy costs. A 2017 
study by CEE similarly found that installing heat pumps in Minnesota 
could save residents between $349 and $764 per year, compared to heating 
with a standard electric or propane furnace.

There are some caveats. Lacey Tan, a manager for the carbon-free 
buildings program at the energy think tank RMI, says there is still a 
price premium for heat pumps: Some installers aren’t yet comfortable 
with how they work and try to reduce their risk by increasing up-front 
costs. In cold climates, some homes may want to have a back-up heating 
system for extremely frigid days or in the event of a power outage. (In 
Maine, Meyer says many homeowners use wood stoves as back-up for their 
heat pumps.)

But many experts believe more and more cold-weather heat pumps will be 
sold as homeowners learn about the new advances in the technology. Meyer 
says that Mainers who install heat pumps naturally begin to share their 
experience with friends and family. “We have over 100,000 salespeople 
who have already gotten heat pumps,” he said jokingly. “Not bad for a 
state where they ‘don’t work in the cold.’”
https://grist.org/housing/heat-pumps-do-work-in-the-cold-americans-just-dont-know-it-yet/



/[  Drought reveals the harsh past... more likely to come ]/
//*More human skeletal remains found at Lake Mead one week after a body 
was found in a barrel*
May. 7, 2022
The discovery of these remains comes almost exactly one week from when a 
body was found in a barrel at Lake Mead on Sunday afternoon. That 
discovery was near Hemenway Harbor boat launch. The body may date back 
to the 1980′s.
https://www.fox5vegas.com/2022/05/08/more-human-skeletal-remains-found-lake-mead-one-week-after-body-was-found-barrel/



/[The news archive - looking back at significant events ]/
/*May 10, 2005*/
The US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rules that 
the White House does not have to disclose information regarding the 
infamous 2001 Cheney Energy Task Force.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/10/politics/10cnd-cheney.html?_r=0

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4647599

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/05/11/court_backs_cheney_on_energy_meetings/


=======================================
*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.