[✔️] May 11, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 11, 2022*/

/[ techno-fidius  -- solar powered camper van -- driving around -- video]
/*World's FIRST Solar Powered Campervan!*
May 10, 2022
Stella Vita is the World's first ever solar powered campervan capable of 
a staggering 600 Km on a single charge! Aptly described as a 
"self-sustaining house on wheels" it comes kitted out with a double bed, 
sofa, kitchen area, a shower, sink and toilet! This could just be the 
perfect way to go off-grid...! Robert went to meet the engineers at 
Eindhoven University of Technology to see it for himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vHuldVlpFA/
/

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/[  only if the power comes from wind or solar - (coal would be stupid) ] /
*Air-Conditioning Should Be a Human Right in the Climate Crisis*
We need to protect vulnerable people from killer heat without destroying 
the environment
By Rose M. Mutiso, Morgan D. Bazilian, Jacob Kincer, Brooke Bowser on 
May 10, 2022
A record-breaking heat wave is sweeping South Asia, threatening hundreds 
of millions of people with deadly temperatures well above 100 degrees 
Fahrenheit. As the world heats up, billions of people need 
air-conditioning. This 120-year-old technology used to be considered a 
luxury, but in the age of climate change, it is a necessity for human 
survival. Understandably, this has created anxiety over the climate 
threat of a world overrun with ACs. But the coming boom in 
air-conditioning is an essential shift toward reducing the enormous gap 
in cooling availability that exists between rich and poor people and 
nations—and toward producing a more equitable world.

Of the two billion AC units currently in use across the globe, the 
majority are heavily concentrated in wealthy countries in North America 
and East Asia (with Europe, which generally has a milder climate, in a 
distant third). In the hottest regions of the world, AC ownership is 
just 12 percent compared to more than 90 percent in the U.S. and Japan. 
But as populations become wealthier and temperatures continue to rise, 
this trend will change—dramatically....
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/air-conditioning-should-be-a-human-right-in-the-climate-crisis/



[ wildfires ]
*Firefighters in Northern New Mexico battling winds and large fires*
https://wildfiretoday.com/2022/05/10/firefighters-in-northern-new-mexico-battling-winds-and-large-fires/



/[ Read the text-over video pictures. Brief ]/
*Economic impact of heatwave in India | WION Originals*
May 9, 2022
WION
India is currently undergoing a severe heat wave. With our limited 
resources, most of us try to prevent rising temperatures. However, even 
if the heat wave does not affect you, the economic consequences will. 
Summers with more heat mean more electricity demand. When we run out of 
coal, you'll notice more frequent power outages. There are other 
economic impacts of heatwave in India.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIzgeFMfg5U



/[ warning of Stranded Assets  ]/
*Why our continued use of fossil fuels is creating a financial time bomb*
We're investing in things that will have little value if we move off 
fossil fuels.
JOHN TIMMER - 5/9/2022
The numbers are startling.
We know roughly how much more carbon dioxide we can put into the 
atmosphere before we exceed our climate goals—limiting warming to 1.5° 
to 2° C above preindustrial temperatures. From that, we can figure out 
how much more fossil fuel we can burn before we emit that much carbon 
dioxide. But when you compare those numbers with our known fossil fuel 
reserves, things get jaw-dropping.

To reach our climate goals, we'll need to leave a third of the oil, half 
of the natural gas, and nearly all the coal we're aware of sitting in 
the ground, unused.

Yet we have—and are still building—infrastructure that is predicated on 
burning far more than that: mines, oil and gas wells, refineries, and 
the distribution networks that get all those products to market; power 
plants, cars, trains, boats, and airplanes that use the fuels. If we're 
to reach our climate goals, some of those things will have to be 
intentionally shut down and left to sit idle before they can deliver a 
return on the money they cost to produce.

But it's not just physical capital that will cause problems if we decide 
to get serious about addressing climate change. We have workers who are 
trained to use all of the idled hardware, companies that treat the fuel 
reserves and hardware as an asset on their balance sheets, and various 
contracts that dictate that the reserves can be exploited.

Collectively, you can think of all of these things as assets—assets 
that, if we were to get serious about climate change, would see their 
value drop to zero. At that point, they'd be termed "stranded assets," 
and their stranding has the potential to unleash economic chaos on the 
world...
*Fantastic assets and how to strand them*
To explain stranded assets, Armon Rezai of the Vienna University of 
Economics and Business turned to actual strandings. If you have a boat 
and it runs aground, you can no longer derive any financial benefits 
from the boat—it remains an asset, but it's no longer useful. The same 
thing goes for any goods it was carrying, as well as the crew that was 
familiar with all its peculiarities.

While that sort of one-off disaster can definitely occur with fossil 
fuel production and use, it doesn't represent the sort of wholesale 
threat to all fossil fuel production that's at issue in the near future.

But there are many ways that assets can become stranded beyond freak 
events, and many of them are relevant to fossil fuels. Joyeeta Gupta of 
IHE Delft noted that assets could be stranded by something as simple as 
a brand falling out of fashion, leaving its owners with excess 
production capacity. Technological changes can also make a product 
obsolete, stranding all the infrastructure used to make, sell, and 
service it...
- -
But there's an added risk here: policy interventions by governments. 
Already, various governments have put a price on carbon emissions, 
launched carbon trading systems, and taken other actions to either 
discourage the use of fossil fuels or encourage the use of cleaner 
alternatives. (Of course, many of them have done that at the same time 
that they pursued other policies that promoted fossil fuel use.)

It's tempting to consider these stranding mechanisms in terms of trying 
to identify which of them will be decisive. But all of them can—and in 
fact are—acting in parallel. And if we want to reach our climate goals, 
they'll have to act much more quickly than they have been...
- -
On the financial side, there is some indication that the markets are 
starting to recognize the risks. "I think a key moment was in 2015, 
2016—if you look at the data, people started pricing in those risks," 
van der Ploeg said. "Investors like institutional investors; they want 
higher returns on dirty assets. So say there's a Shell or a BP or a 
steel factory—or cement or coal—they just had to pay quite a bit higher 
rate of return. And that's to compensate them for the transition risk."

Over time, as transitions away from fossil fuels become more common, 
these risks will increase, and demands for returns should scale 
accordingly as the process proceeds. "At some point, the music will 
stop, and then people will be running to the exit," he said.

Efforts to divest from fossil fuels have the potential to depress the 
price of fossil fuel assets and lay the groundwork for pricing in the 
risk of stranded assets. But so far, these efforts are having less of an 
impact. "Divestment may solve the problem if everybody divests 
simultaneously and the price falls and nobody wants to buy the shares," 
Gupta told Ars. "But the way I'm seeing divestment happen now, it's all 
behind closed doors, and people are buying the shares because they do 
not see a large-scale divestment process. So the vested interests 
remain, only they are new vested interests."

Van der Ploeg also praised the central banks of many countries, which 
were already aware of the risks of stranded assets and are taking steps 
to manage the situation. This is happening despite the fact that the 
government that created the bank is often doing nothing. "Governments 
seem to be oblivious. They don't seem to care," he said, later remarking 
on the potential for counterproductive government responses: "You don't 
know—just because it's stupid policy doesn't mean to say it's not going 
to happen."

All of that is focused on the large-scale risks of stranded assets. 
However, Gupta emphasized that every individual will also end up with 
some assets that are likely to be stranded. "I think the discussion 
about how each house, each business, and each university becomes 
independent of fossil fuel has yet to start," she said. "Every house, 
every person, every individual has to get involved."
*Further reading:*

    "Stranded assets and stranded resources: Implications for climate
    change mitigation and global sustainable development" in Energy
    Research & Social Science

    "Stranded Assets: Environmental Drivers, Societal Challenges, and
    Supervisory Responses" in Annual Reviews

    "Stranded Assets in the Transition to a Carbon-Free Economy" in
    Annual Reviews

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/why-our-continued-use-of-fossil-fuels-is-creating-a-financial-time-bomb/



/[ time to switch off carbon fuel ]/
*Avoid using gas as ‘transition’ fuel in move to clean energy, study urges*
Analysis says countries can save money by switching from coal straight 
to renewable energies
Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Mon 9 May 2022
Countries should move from coal to renewable energy without shifting to 
gas as a “transition” fuel to save money, as high gas prices and market 
volatility have made the fossil fuel an expensive option, analysis has 
found.

Natural gas has long been touted as a “transition” fuel for economies 
dependent on coal for their power needs, as it has lower carbon dioxide 
emissions than coal but requires similar centralised infrastructure, and 
gas-fired power stations take only a couple of years to build. Earlier 
this year, before Russia invaded Ukraine, the European Commission 
angered green campaigners by including gas as a “bridge” to clean energy 
in its guidebook for green investment.

High prices for gas, and the plummeting cost of renewable energies such 
as wind and solar power, have reversed that logic, according to analysis 
from TransitionZero. The cost of switching from coal to renewable energy 
has plunged by 99% since 2010, according to its report published on Tuesday.

The findings call into question the economic viability of the scores of 
gas and coal-fired power plants that are planned or under construction 
around the world. About 615GW of new gas plants, and 442GW of new 
coal-fired power stations, are planned for construction globally, 
according to the analysis...
- -
The analysis also found that the economics of moving from coal power to 
renewable energy, without using gas, were most favourable in Europe, 
where the price of coal has increased, in part because of EU policies 
and also because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/10/avoid-using-gas-transition-fuel-move-clean-energy-study-urges



/[ Yeah, well, me too.  A disturbing notion,  not widely considered ]/
*The ocean is losing its memory*
06 May 2022
As global temperatures rise, the uppermost layer of the ocean is less 
likely to have hot and cold spots that return yearly.
Global warming means that the world’s oceans are becoming less predictable1.

Patches of relatively hot or cold seawater can recur in the same 
location year after year — a phenomenon that shows that the ocean has a 
‘memory’ that persists over time. Models have suggested that this memory 
will fade by the end of this century as temperatures rise in the ocean 
and atmosphere.

Hui Shi at the Farallon Institute in Petaluma, California, Fei-Fei Jin 
at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and their colleagues explored 
what might cause this decline in ocean memory. By analysing sea surface 
temperatures, they found that the culprit in most of the world’s oceans 
is a thin layer of relatively warm water near the surface.

As air and water temperatures rise, this layer becomes shallower. It 
becomes less able to ‘remember’ ocean conditions from one year to the 
next as other processes become more dominant.

An ocean with an impaired memory makes it harder for scientists to 
predict how marine creatures, such as commercially important fish, will 
fare from year to year.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01246-5
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01246-5

- -

/[ research article ]/
*Global decline in ocean memory over the 21st century*
SCIENCE ADVANCES • 6 May 2022 • Vol 8, Issue 18 • DOI: 
10.1126/sciadv.abm3468

    Abstract
    Ocean memory, the persistence of ocean conditions, is a major source
    of predictability in the climate system beyond weather time scales.
    We show that ocean memory, as measured by the year-to-year
    persistence of sea surface temperature anomalies, is projected to
    steadily decline in the coming decades over much of the globe. This
    global decline in ocean memory is predominantly driven by shoaling
    of the upper-ocean mixed layer depth in response to global surface
    warming, while thermodynamic and dynamic feedbacks can contribute
    substantially regionally. As the mixed layer depth shoals,
    stochastic forcing becomes more effective in driving sea surface
    temperature anomalies, increasing high-frequency noise at the
    expense of persistent signals. Reduced ocean memory results in
    shorter lead times of skillful persistence-based predictions of sea
    surface thermal conditions, which may present previously unknown
    challenges for predicting climate extremes and managing marine
    biological resources under climate change.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm3468



/[  Aspen Ideas -- State governors meeting in Florida ] /
*Climate Politics: A Conversation with Governors*
The climate crisis represents a challenge of epic proportions for policy 
makers everywhere. And making progress - on everything from securing 
climate funding to navigating the impact of gas prices - inevitably 
means negotiating the complex politics of climate change. In this 
conversation, two governors share what works, what doesn’t, and what it 
takes to make a real difference at the state level.
Gov Kate Brown, Oregon
Gov Phil Murphy, New Jersey
Staff writer Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic
https://www.aspenideas.org/sessions/climate-politics-a-conversation-with-governors



/[ Gone from archives  ]/
*This important historical content is no longer available from the 
purported source *

    May 11, 2011: MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan and former Department of
    Homeland Security head Tom Ridge discuss the nexus between oil and
    terrorism.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/dylan-ratigan-show/42995814#42995814



/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*May 11, 2014*/
The New York Times reports:

    "In the New Mexico of the 1950s, the two brothers grew up steeped in
    the beauty of the landscape, the economics of energy and the power
    of science. They skied, fly-fished, explored on the family’s
    50,000-acre sheep ranch, watched oil towns go boom and bust, and
    talked of the nuclear weapons up the road at Los Alamos.

    "Today the work of Robert and William Nordhaus is profoundly shaping
    how the United States and other nations take on global warming.

    "Bill Nordhaus, 72, a Yale economist who is seen as a leading
    contender for a Nobel Prize, came up with the idea of a carbon tax
    and effectively invented the economics of climate change. Bob, 77, a
    prominent Washington energy lawyer, wrote an obscure provision in
    the Clean Air Act of 1970 that is now the legal basis for a landmark
    climate change regulation, to be unveiled by the White House next
    month, that could close hundreds of coal-fired power plants and
    define President Obama’s environmental legacy."
    - -
    Back in New Mexico, Bob recalled, he and Bill — the oldest and
    youngest brothers among four siblings — could not help noticing the
    changing world of energy around them. In the 1950s, he said, as the
    Los Alamos weapons program expanded, the state changed “from a
    pastoral economy, split between ranching, irrigated farming and
    extractive industries, to defense-related work, which was a whole
    different world.”

    They also paid close attention to the climate changes, and periodic
    droughts, that affected the family ski business and their lives
    outdoors.

“Growing up in New Mexico,” he said, “you’re aware of the very fragile 
ecosystem.”
http://nyti.ms/1jM33Gv

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