[✔️] February 5, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Cost of carbon

[Richard Pauli]

/*February 5, 2023*/

/[ Money talking about the social cost of carbon,  4 min audio and 
transcript   ] /
*The EPA is updating its most important tool for cracking down on carbon 
emissions*
February 4, 2023
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
REBECCA HERSHER

The EPA is updating its most powerful climate policy tool: a single 
number called the social cost of carbon. The new number is more 
accurate, but is also raising ethical concerns 
"https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1152080009/1154474066"

Transcript

    SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
    The Environmental Protection Agency is updating its most important
    tool for trying to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions. That tool
    is a single number called the social cost of carbon. NPR's Rebecca
    Hersher reports the new number is simultaneously more accurate and
    an ethics nightmare.

    REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: Imagine trying to add up all the human
    costs of emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - the cost of
    lost crops and flooded homes and lost wages when people can't safely
    work outside, plus the cost of climate-related deaths. That is
    basically how the EPA figures out the social cost of carbon. And
    right now the official number is $51. The EPA wants to increase that
    to $190. Daniel Hemel is a law professor at New York University.

    DANIEL HEMEL: So going from $51 to $190 - that's a move in the right
    direction.

    HERSHER: The right direction, because most climate experts agree
    that the current number is too low. It underestimates the human cost
    of greenhouse gas emissions. A higher number would make it easier to
    do expensive things that cut emissions. For example, replacing all
    of America's power plants with renewable energy right away - that
    would be expensive. If the benefits to humanity are paltry, maybe it
    doesn't make sense. But if the benefits to humanity are really big
    then the government should do it. At least that's the idea. Tamma
    Carleton is a climate economist at the University of California,
    Santa Barbara. She says the social cost of carbon is the single most
    powerful climate policy tool that the federal government has.

    TAMMA CARLETON: So we don't have other avenues for large-scale
    climate policy at the federal level. This is our main tool.

    HERSHER: But the new number is controversial because of how the EPA
    is thinking about the lives that are lost from climate change. Noah
    Kaufman is a climate economist at Columbia University.

    NOAH KAUFMAN: The question is how to put a value on those deaths.

    HERSHER: Like, a dollar value - basically, how much is a life worth?
    Now, the EPA says on its website that they are not putting a dollar
    amount on human life. Instead, the agency says it, quote, "uses
    estimates of how much people are willing to pay for small reductions
    in their risks of dying." The EPA declined to answer NPR's questions
    for this story. Hemel says, in reality, the EPA's social cost of
    carbon does put a dollar amount on human lives.

    HEMEL: You'll hear agencies say, we're not valuing lives. I don't
    know. They kind of are. They're deciding how much it's worth it to
    spend in order to save a life.

    HERSHER: And because climate change is global, they're thinking
    about lives all around the world for the first time. That's one
    reason the new social cost of carbon number is higher. But not every
    death is being counted equally. The EPA uses higher dollar amounts
    for deaths in higher-income countries and lower dollar amounts for
    deaths in lower-income countries. Or, as Paul Kelleher, a
    bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, puts it...

    PAUL KELLEHER: The badness of a death from climate change in India
    is treated as not as bad as exactly the same death if it happened at
    exactly the same time in the United States.

    HERSHER: According to the EPA's calculations, one climate-related
    death in the U.S. has about as much value as nine deaths in India,
    or five deaths in Ukraine, or 55 deaths in Somalia. Vaibhav
    Chaturvedi is a climate economist at the Council on Energy,
    Environment and Water, an influential climate think tank in New
    Delhi, India.

    VAIBHAV CHATURVEDI: Anybody in the developing world would kind of
    probably think in this kind of way. It is inherently inequitable to
    use this sort of approach.

    HERSHER: Chaturvedi says the U.S. government should put the same
    value on every life, morally, but also logically, because America's
    greenhouse gas emissions endanger people everywhere, and especially
    in low-lying and low-income countries where people are more
    vulnerable to rising seas and extreme weather. Hemel, the law
    professor, agrees.

    HEMEL: I think we send a problematic message to Americans when we
    use a method for assigning values to lives outside the United States
    that ends up valuing light-skinned people from the Global North more
    than dark-skinned people from the Global South.

    HERSHER: And there are practical implications as well. A recent
    study found that if the EPA assigned the same value to all lives,
    their newly proposed social cost of carbon would approximately double.

    CHATURVEDI: That would mean the U.S. government will have to enhance
    the pace of action because now the cost of carbon would be much
    higher, the social cost will be much higher.

    HERSHER: And the higher the social cost of carbon, Chaturvedi points
    out, the more incentive there is for the U.S. to reduce greenhouse
    gas emissions quickly, which would save more lives around the world.
    Kelleher is more blunt about the implications of the EPA's choice.

    KELLEHER: Is a grave, moral mistake.

    HERSHER: He says it's just not true that the lives of richer people
    are worth more.

    KELLEHER: It's important to get it right because these are life and
    death decisions. Every molecule of carbon dioxide matters. Every ton
    of carbon dioxide matters. And so small changes in these dollar
    numbers - for example, the social cost of carbon - will make a big
    difference to who lives, who dies, how good their lives are, how bad
    their deaths are.

    HERSHER: The EPA is accepting public comments on its proposed social
    costs of carbon until February 13.

    Rebecca Hersher, NPR News.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/04/1152080009/the-epa-is-updating-its-most-important-tool-for-cracking-down-on-carbon-emission

- - *
*

/[ tell the EPA what to do ]/
*EPA External Review Draft of “Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse 
Gases: Estimates Incorporating Recent Scientific Advances”*
This is a basic page to solicit public comment on the "Report on the 
Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases: Estimates Incorporating Recent ...

(Washington, November 11, 2022) -- In the regulatory impact analysis of 
EPA’s November 2022 Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 
“Standards of Performance for New, Reconstructed, and Modified Sources 
and Emissions Guidelines for Existing Sources: Oil and Natural Gas 
Sector Climate Review,” in addition to using the current Social Cost of 
Greenhouse Gas Interagency Working Group’s (IWG) recommended interim 
values for the social cost of greenhouse gases (SC-GHG), EPA has 
included a sensitivity analysis of the climate benefits of the proposed 
rule using a new set of SC-GHG estimates. These estimates incorporate 
recent research addressing recommendations of the National Academies of 
Science, Engineering, and Medicine (2017).

EPA is soliciting public comment on the sensitivity analysis and the 
external review draft of the accompanying technical report, “Report on 
the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases: Estimates Incorporating Recent 
Scientific Advances,” that explains the methodology underlying the new 
set of SC-GHG estimates, in the docket for the proposed Oil and Gas 
rule. EPA is also conducting an external peer review of the report.

For more information, click on the topic of interest below:

•    Draft Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases
•    Estimation Code and Replication Files
•    Submitting Comment on the “Report on the Social Cost of Greenhouse 
Gases”
•    External Peer Review of the “Report on the Social Cost of 
Greenhouse Gases”

https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/scghg




/[ Complicated treasure ]/
*As Greenland’s Ice Melts, Glacial Sand Deposits May Offer a Welcome 
Economic Opportunity*
BY PRIA MAHADEVAN |JANUARY 31, 2023

Greenland’s ice sheet is losing 280 billion tons of mass per year, and 
some models suggest that its glaciers may be melting up to 100 times 
faster than expected. But flowing off those glaciers comes a potential 
economic boom: sand. Each season, millions of tons of sediment flow from 
melting glaciers into the ocean, adding landmass to the largest island 
in the world. According to a research paper published in Nature last 
fall, three out of four Greenlanders support extracting and exporting 
sand — so long as they’re the ones in charge of managing the resource.
- -
“When we think about climate change adaptation, it almost always has a 
negative connotation,” she said in an interview with GlacierHub. “And 
this is like the opposite. This is saying, climate change is happening — 
hey, this is something that could be beneficial to us.” In the paper, 
she and her coauthors refer to this as “opportunistic climate 
adaptation,” which they argue “remain[s] poorly understood relative to 
relative to predictors of defensive adaptation.”...
- -
Bendixen recalled how her previous research on the potential of sand 
mining often received some pushback from environmental conservationists, 
governments, and media. She noted that Arctic communities tend to be 
viewed by westerners as pristine areas of the world that should be 
preserved with no change to traditions or landscapes at all. But such 
clear support from the communities themselves for the exploration of 
industrial sand mining runs counter to that notion.

“To me, it shows that Greenlanders are saying, ‘We don’t care what the 
rest of the world thinks — we want to try and look at this ourselves, 
and see if this is relevant.’”

At first glance, sand may seem like an exceptionally ordinary material; 
our beaches and deserts are covered in it. Our modern lives revolve 
around sand, from concrete to computer screens to glass containers. But 
not all sand is created in the same way. Sand from deserts has been 
weathered primarily by wind, which grinds down the sand in multiple 
directions. Bendixen compares desert sand to marbles — smooth, rounded 
grains that don’t compress well for industrial use.

But sand created by glacial deposits is different. Unlike the desert 
sand, glacial sand primarily arises from two different physical 
processes. The first process is the slow movement of glaciers atop a 
landmass, eroding the rock underneath it. “Just imagine a kilometers 
thick body of ice that grinds through the landscape — it disrupts the 
surface so much,” Bendixen said. The second process occurs as glaciers 
melt into streams and rivers, whether as a result of seasonal 
variability or large-scale climate change. The flow of water slowly 
erodes the land underneath it — and it creates a specific kind of sand.

“In rivers, you have a variety of grain sizes and more angularity,” 
Bendixen explained. “You don’t have the scooping back and forth by the 
wind, you just have a unidirectional flow.” The unidirectional flow 
results in angular sand grains, which compress much better under heat 
and pressure. This makes glacial sand deposits ideal for industrial 
consumption, particularly for creating concrete.

Over the years, that type of angular sand has gotten harder and harder 
to find. After decades of rapid development, the world now faces a 
global shortage of sand due to a combination of overexploitation and 
degradation. That’s where Greenland’s sand mining operations may come 
in. On a warming planet with melting glaciers, the world’s largest 
island is poised to be full of that angular, high-quality sand.

Jane Lund Plesner, an exploration geologist who co-authored the paper, 
offered her perspective as a native Greenlander in an email to 
GlacierHub: “[S]and is a source which is unlikely to run out, and could 
be a potential long-term operation, especially with the global 
shortage.” Plesner, who works for mineral company Amaroq Minerals Ltd., 
added that, “sand extraction, if done responsibly, could benefit the 
people of Greenland, providing jobs for locals, and help diversify the 
Greenlandic economy.”

Economic diversification has long been a goal of Greenland’s government. 
The country relies heavily on fishing, and half of Greenland’s national 
budget is funded by Danish block grants. One of the ways the government 
has tried to move away from this financial reliance is by investing in 
mining projects. In 2019, it pursued an economic assessment on mining 
and exporting glacial sand. The results, published last year, conclude 
that large-scale sand extraction would be economically unfavorable at 
present. Since sand is heavy and costly to transport, Greenland’s export 
partners would most likely be nearby countries like U.S., Canada, 
Denmark, and the UK; all of these nations have a sufficient sand supply 
at present. However, Greenland’s government still left open the 
possibility of pursuing sand extraction in the future, given the 
uncertainty of international markets and global sand supply.

Greenlanders are no stranger to extractive industries, with a more than 
200-year history of exporting copper, zinc, and other precious metals 
like gold and platinum to international markets. However, not all kinds 
of mineral extraction have been universally welcomed by Greenlanders. 
One of the biggest recent flashpoints involved pushback against the 
completion of the Kvanefjeld (Kuannersuit in Greenlandic) mine in the 
southern part of the country, which would have been owned by an 
Australian company. The mine contains some of the world’s largest 
deposits of rare earth minerals and uranium. While rare earth minerals 
are a critical component of electric vehicle batteries and solar 
photovoltaics, their extraction can create negative environmental and 
health impacts in surrounding areas. Persistent local opposition to the 
project from the nearby Indigenous communities played a significant role 
in Greenland’s parliamentary elections in 2021, resulting in success for 
candidates opposed to uranium mining.

Mariane Paviasen was one of the leaders in the opposition to the uranium 
mine in southern Greenland, and was elected to Greenland’s parliament — 
called Inatsisartut in Greenlandic — during that 2021 election. 
Importantly, Paviasen’s strong opposition to uranium mining does not 
necessarily apply to sand extraction — so long as Greenlanders 
themselves are in charge. As she told Mongabay in September, “If mining 
companies could do it without polluting and contaminating the area […] 
that would be acceptable. But they also have to talk with nearby 
inhabitants.”

Currently, Paviasen is trying to find ways for Greenlanders to more 
directly benefit from extractive industries in general. The central 
legislation that governs mineral extraction in Greenland is the Mineral 
Resources Act, which Inatsisartut passed in 2010. The law gives 
Greenland the right to manage all natural resources and requires both a 
social and environmental impact assessment for any new extraction 
projects. However, so far most of those mining permits have gone to 
foreign companies, resulting in little economic benefit to locals. 
Although Paviasen was not available for an interview with GlacierHub, 
she shared a speech she gave to Inatsisartut last fall.

“Since the Mineral Resources Act came into force, many of us thought 
that we finally got the opportunity to get income from something other 
than fish,” Paviasen said in her speech. “The great expectations and 
great words have not been fulfilled to this day. You could say that is 
embarrassing, because you could say that most citizens have gained 
nothing but unfulfilled hope.”

The sentiment is not uncommon. In their survey, Bendixen and her 
co-authors found that three quarters of Greenlanders opposed an 
international partnership for future sand mining; those living near 
former mining projects were even less likely to support foreign involvement.

However sand extraction may look in the future, it is clear that the 
majority of Greenlanders want control over these development decisions. 
Bendixen recalls her work with Greenland high school students, who will 
inherit a landscape altered by climate change regardless of what 
decisions are made about sand mining. She recalled one high school 
student she met who summarized the situation particularly well.

“He said, ‘Greenland has not contributed to climate change, but we sure 
are experiencing it,’’ she recalled. “If [Greenlanders] can benefit from 
it, then who are the rest of the world to say that they should not?”

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/01/31/as-greenlands-ice-melts-glacial-sand-deposits-may-offer-a-welcome-economic-opportunity/ 


- -

/[  new, fresh sand everywhere after the ice melts ]/
Published: 18 August 2022*
**Opportunistic climate adaptation and public support for sand 
extraction in Greenland*
Mette Bendixen, Rasmus Leander Nielsen, Jane Lund Plesner & Kelton Minor
Abstract
Climate change leads to the deposition of substantial amounts of 
sediment along the coasts of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) amid rapidly 
growing global demand for these resources. Yet, little is known about 
what the predominantly Inuit population of Kalaallit Nunaat thinks about 
adaptation opportunities arising from the melt of the Greenland Ice 
Sheet. Here we conduct a nationally representative survey (N = 939) of 
Kalaallit (Greenlanders’) views on glacially derived sand extraction, 
finding that large majorities support extracting and exporting sand but 
oppose foreign involvement. This pattern of support persists at both the 
national and subnational levels. Public preferences largely align with 
Kalaallit Nunaat’s current mineral policy mandating environmental and 
economic impact assessments of new resource opportunities. In addition, 
those aware of human-caused climate change have significantly higher 
odds of both supporting sand extraction and prioritizing environmental 
impact assessment. Our results reveal broad support for domestically 
involved, environmentally assessed and economically appraised 
opportunistic adaptation to Greenland’s melting ice sheet and 
accumulating sand resources.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00922-8



/[ Bloomberg news reports on consequences  ]/
*Burning Trees in the Amazon Melts Snow in the Himalayas*
Scientists have found that the Earth’s largest rainforest and its 
so-called third pole are connected by atmospheric currents that carry 
heat and rain across the planet.

ByLaura Millan Lombrana
January 26, 2023

Trees set ablaze in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest could contribute to 
melting glaciers in the Himalayas and Antarctica because distant 
ecosystems that regulate the Earth’s climate are more closely connected 
than previously thought.

Scientists have discovered a new atmospheric pathway that originates in 
the Amazon, runs along the South Atlantic, then across East Africa and 
the Middle East until it reaches central Asia, according to a paper 
published this month in Nature Climate Change. That connection, which 
stretches 20,000 kilometers (12,400 miles) across the globe, means that 
when the Amazon warms, so does the Tibetan Plateau, whereas the more it 
rains in the Amazon, the less it rains in Tibet.
The study is among the first to investigate the interaction between 
ecosystems at risk of reaching a climate tipping point that would 
transform them irreversibly. More significantly, the newly-discovered 
pathway suggests that the collapse of one ecosystem could destabilize 
others too, leading to a cascade of tipping events across the planet.

“Tipping cascades are a risk to be taken seriously,” Hans Joachim 
Schellnhuber, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact 
Research and a co-author of the report, said in a statement. 
“Inter-linked tipping elements in the Earth system can trigger each 
other, with potentially severe consequences.”

Scientists are only beginning to investigate the connections between 
far-flung components of the planet’s climate system. That knowledge is 
essential to understanding the full impact of global warming, which is 
caused by greenhouse gas emissions and is already raising sea levels and 
leading to more severe floods, drought and wildfires on every continent.

Deforestation in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and home to 
a quarter of land species, reached its  fastest pace in at least 15 
years last year. The southeastern part of the rainforest, which plays a 
vital role in absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide from the 
atmosphere, has become a net source of carbon emissions during the dry 
season, a 2021 paper concluded.

The latest report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
saw an increased probability that the Amazon will cross a tipping point. 
The question now is what that might mean for the Himalayas, one of the 
world’s great reserves of fresh water, which is already seeing 
unprecedented glacial melt.

“The Amazon region is of course an important Earth system element by 
itself,” said Jingfang Fan, a researcher with the Beijing Normal 
University and the Potsdam Institute. But the research “confirms that 
Earth system tipping elements are indeed inter-linked even over long 
distances — and the Amazon is one key example how this could play out.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-27/amazon-climate-disaster-could-cascade-across-earth-new-study-shows

- -

[ in the Southern Hemisphere it is summertime ]
*At least 23 dead as dozens of wildfires torch forests in Chile*
By Fabian Cambero and Natalia A. Ramos Miranda
February 4, 2023
SANTIAGO, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Dozens of wildfires blazing though Chile 
caused the government to extend an emergency order to another region on 
Saturday, as a scorching summer heat wave complicates efforts to control 
fires that have claimed at least 23 lives so far.

More than 1,100 people have sought refuge in shelters while at least 979 
people have been reported injured by the raging fires, according to an 
official briefing later on Saturday.

he latest emergency order covers the southern region of Araucania, next 
to the previously declared Biobio and Nuble regions, located near the 
middle of the South American country's long Pacific coastline.

"Weather conditions have made it very difficult to put out (the fires) 
that are spreading and the emergency is getting worse," Interior 
Minister Carolina Toha told reporters at a news conference in the 
capital Santiago.

"We need to reverse that curve," she added, noting that on Friday 76 
more fires had ignited.

Another 16 fires sparked to life on Saturday, according to officials, as 
local temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere summer exceeded 104 
degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius).

The sparsely populated three regions covered by the emergency orders are 
home to many farms, including where grapes, apples and berries are grown 
for export, plus extensive tracts of forest land.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/firefighters-battle-dozens-wildfires-chile-emergency-extended-2023-02-04/



/[ when a Republican president explained the approach to global warming ]/
/*February 5, 1990*/
February 5, 1990: Addressing a special IPCC gathering in Washington, 
D.C., President George H. W. Bush acknowledges the reality of 
human-caused climate change, but says that solutions to the problem of a 
warming planet must not inhibit worldwide economic growth.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100811144431/http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=1514&year=1990&month=all 

http://c-spanvideo.org/program/PresidentialAddress28
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-02-05/news/mn-275_1_global-warming




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