[✔️] October 27, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Pew research on human future, Opinion oil favoritism, Scientists organizing, Hurricane Otis, Wireless charging, 2006 Senators urge Exxon

[Richard Pauli]

/*October *//*27, 2023*/

/[ Pew Research reports feelings of sadness ]
/*How Americans View Future Harms From Climate Change in Their Community 
and Around the U.S.*
63% expect climate impacts to worsen in their lifetime
BY ALEC TYSON AND BRIAN KENNEDY

When it comes to the personal impact of climate change, most Americans 
think they’ll have to make at least minor sacrifices over their lifetime 
because of climate change, but a relatively modest share think climate 
impacts will require them to make major sacrifices in their own lives.

July 2023 was hotter than any other month in the global temperature 
record, and the United Nations climate panel has warned of growing 
impacts from climate change barring major reductions in greenhouse gas 
emissions worldwide.

The Center survey of 8,842 U.S. adults conducted Sept. 25-Oct. 1, 2023, 
finds that 43% of Americans think climate change is causing a great deal 
or quite a bit of harm to people in the U.S. today. An additional 28% 
say it is causing some harm.

Looking ahead, young adults ages 18 to 29 are especially likely to 
foresee worsening climate impacts: 78% think harm to people in the U.S. 
caused by climate change will get a little or a lot worse in their lifetime.
About a quarter of Americans (23%) think they’ll have to make major 
sacrifices in their everyday lives because of climate change. A larger 
share (48%) expects to make minor sacrifices because of climate impacts 
and 28% of Americans expect to make no sacrifices at all.

Republicans and Democrats have much different expectations for how 
climate change will impact their lives. Just under half of all 
Republicans and Republican-leaning independents expect to make no 
sacrifices in their everyday lives because of climate change. By 
comparison, 88% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents expect 
to have to make at least minor sacrifices.

These partisan gaps are closely tied to differing expectations about 
national impacts: 86% of Democrats expect harms from climate change in 
the U.S. to get worse during their lifetime; just 37% of Republicans say 
the same.

More broadly, the public believes individual Americans can make less of 
a difference on climate change than other major actors. For example, 55% 
think the energy industry can do a lot to reduce the effects of climate 
change and 52% say this about large businesses and corporations. By 
comparison, far fewer (27%) say individual Americans can do a lot to 
reduce climate impacts.

Climate change consistently ranks lower than other national issues like 
the economy, health care and crime on the public’s list of national 
priorities for the president and Congress. Nonetheless, 74% say the U.S. 
should participate in international efforts to address the issue and 
majorities support a number of specific policies intended to reduce the 
effects of climate change, such as providing a tax credits to businesses 
for developing carbon capture and storage technologies.

*Views on climate activism*

Despite widespread concern about future climate impacts there has been a 
slight decline in participation in forms of climate activism. The survey 
finds 21% of of U.S. adults say they have participated in at least one 
of four climate-related activities in the last year, including donating 
money to a climate organization or attending a climate protest. This is 
down slightly from two years ago when 24% of Americans said they had 
participated in a climate-related activity.

Furthermore, Americans are largely skeptical that climate activism 
builds public support for the issue or spurs elected officials to act. 
Just 28% think climate activism makes people more likely to support 
action on climate change and only 11% say it is extremely or very 
effective at getting elected officials to act on the issue. For more, 
read Chapter 3 of the report, “Climate activism.”

Consistent with the slight decline in levels of climate activism, there 
has been no increase in personal concern on the issue in recent years. 
Overall, 37% say they personally care a great deal about the issue of 
climate change. This share is down 7 percentage points from 2018 and 
about the same as it was in 2016, the first time the Center asked the 
question...
- -
*Seven-in-ten Americans say they’ve felt sad about what is happening to 
the Earth,* when they’ve seen news and information about climate change 
recently. Half say they’ve felt motivated to do more to address the 
issue when they saw climate news and information recently.

A sense of optimism about progress is not widely held:*38% say they’ve 
felt optimistic we can address climate change* when they’ve seen news 
and information on the topic. A June 2023 Center survey found just 33% 
of Americans think the U.S. and other countries around the world will do 
enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Americans’ most common emotional reaction to climate news is feeling 
frustrated that there is so much political disagreement on the issue; 
79% say they’ve felt this way recently.

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/10/25/how-americans-view-future-harms-from-climate-change-in-their-community-and-around-the-u-s/



/[ Opinion fossil fuel  ]
/ *Oil Majors Double Down On Fossil Fuels While Climate Scientists Go To 
Prison*
ExxonMobil and Chevron both increased their stake in fossil fuels this 
month as they continue their destruction of the environment.
Something is seriously out of whack when ExxonMobil and Chevron double 
down on their plans to extract every molecule of fossil fuels on Earth 
while climate scientists go to jail for telling the truth about the 
nexus between burning oil and methane and a rapidly overheating planet. 
The Matrix had it right. Humans are a virus, one that will only stop 
when it has totally consumed its host.

October of 2023 is the month when Big Oil decided to go full tilt boogie 
into an increasingly dark future, despite overwhelming evidence that 
their activities are driving global heating that could kill billions of 
innocent people. The urge for profits is so great that nothing must be 
allowed to stand in its way.

As Reuters reports, two weeks ago ExxonMobil agreed to acquire Pioneer 
Natural Resources for nearly $60 billion. This week, Chevron, the second 
largest oil company in the world, agreed to pay $53 billion for Hess. 
The Exxon acquisition is the largest in the company’s history since it 
acquired Mobil Oil nearly 20 years ago.  The driving force behind the 
Chevron deal is that it gives it access to a new fossil fuels reserves 
being developed in Guyana, a country in northeast South America between 
Venezuela and Brazil.

*Limiting Emissions Of Fossil Fuels*
According to The Nation, Exxon has pledged to eliminate its carbon 
emissions by 2050 while increasing its oil and gas production. 
CleanTechnica readers may wonder how those two mutually exclusive goals 
can possibly be met. The answer is, by lying to the world. Companies who 
promote fossil fuels separate their emissions into three categories.

Scope 1 are emissions from a company’s own operations such as its 
factories, stores, and vehicles. Scope 2 are emissions from the 
production of electricity that a company purchases. Reducing this means 
buying or generating power from renewable sources like solar and wind. 
Scope 3 are emissions from the production of goods that companies buy 
from suppliers (“upstream”) and from customer use of products 
(“downstream”).
In the fossil fuels industry, Scope 3 emissions account for about 90% of 
the total, The Nation says, as burning oil produces much more carbon 
than drilling for it. But Exxon’s net zero pledge is carefully worded to 
avoid any mention of Scope 3 emissions. Exxon is promising only to make 
its own operations carbon neutral, including buying electricity, or 
generating its own, from renewable sources.
Exxon apparently sees a future where the company’s drill rigs will run 
on clean solar power while pulling up more fossil fuels, which will dump 
more carbon into the atmosphere when consumed. This is what “net zero” 
means in Exxon language.

*Profits From Fossil Fuels*
Both companies are flush with cash thanks to the Covid pandemic and 
Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. But such external concerns 
are of no interest to the executives at ExxonMobil or Chevron. Reuters 
says they intend to use their wealth to increase dividends to 
stockholders and to repurchase outstanding shares in their companies. 
Chevron said this week it plans to buy back $20 billion worth of stock 
every year for the next three years. That’s money that could be used to 
promote renewable energy technology or other techniques that might 
mitigate the searing heat expected worldwide in the years to come.

Exxon says it will spend 12% of its annual budget on climate solutions. 
The other 88% will be used to produce more fossil fuels that will make 
the climate emergency worse. But under the rules of commerce that 
nations adhere to today, that’s perfectly OK.

*Scientists Jailed In Germany*
What is not OK is mounting any kind of challenge to an idiotic system 
that approves such bizarre and destructive behavior. This week in 
Germany, the Munich Regional Court sentenced four climate scientists 
turned activists to fines totaling €1680 each. If they do not pay the 
fines, they will be required to serve 105 days of prison. The four were 
convicted of criminal damage and trespassing during their peaceful 
protest against Germany’s policy failure regarding the climate crisis 
last year in Munich.

In an email to CleanTechnica, Scientist Rebellion said the scientists 
argued their actions were necessary to stop a looming climate and 
ecological catastrophe by pressuring the government to act in line with 
international agreements and data supplied by the Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change. That data spells out the urgent need to 
transform the global economy and decarbonize global societies as quickly 
as possible. For the penalty, which was lower than the original 
sentence, the judge took into account that the major aim of the actions 
was not to damage property but to call attention to the climate crisis, 
which he called “the greatest challenge for humanity.”

Still, the law is the law. Those who cause the climate crisis are 
celebrated as heroes of capitalism, while those who protest are 
sanctioned and threatened with prison. Is there something wrong with 
this state of affairs?

The trial in Munich this week was the first of several court cases 
against 16 members of Scientist Rebellion. The cases begin one year 
after the academics’ protests, for which they were held in pre-trial 
detention for a week in Stadelheim Prison in Munich. As part of the 
protest campaign “Unite Against Climate Failure” in October 2022, the 
scientists participated in three nonviolent direct actions in Munich 
against the investment company BlackRock, the car manufacturer BMW, and 
the German government, for their responsibility as major contributors to 
the climate crisis.
On its website, Scientist Rebellion says, “Scientists have spent decades 
writing papers, advising governments, briefing the press: all have 
failed. What is the point in documenting in ever greater detail the 
catastrophe we face, if we are not willing to do anything about it?”

“Academics are perfectly placed to wage a rebellion. We exist in rich 
hubs of knowledge and expertise. We are well connected across the world 
and to decision makers. We have large platforms from which to inform, 
educate, and rally others all over the world, and we have implicit 
authority and legitimacy, which is the basis of political power. We can 
make a difference. We must do what we can to halt the greatest 
destruction in human history.”

*The Takeaway*
The Nation says Exxon believes it is swimming with the tide, not against 
it. The company recognizes that carbon emissions will have to be cut 
more than two-thirds from their current rate of 37 gigatons annually to 
11 gigatons by 2050 in order to limit global warming to 2° C (3.6 ° F) — 
the limit beyond which global catastrophe looms.

But Exxon simply believes this will not happen. In 2050, fossil fuels 
“will still be required to drive critically needed economic growth,” it 
predicts. Despite growth in renewable energy and carbon capture 
technologies, “oil and natural gas are still projected to meet more than 
half of the world’s energy needs by 2050.” Instead of falling to 11 
gigatons annually, the oil giant believes emissions will be more than 
twice that: 24 gigatons. And a significant portion of that will come 
from Exxon itself.

Although Exxon no longer denies that climate change is real, it believes 
that weaning the world off fossil fuels would come at an unacceptably 
high price. In a filing earlier this year with the Securities and 
Exchange Commission, the company said, “It is highly unlikely that 
society would accept the degradation in global standard of living 
required to permanently achieve a scenario like the IEA NZE [the net 
zero emissions simulation of the International Energy Agency].”

Which begs the question, too high a price for whom? Certainly not the 
billions of humans who would like not to be roasted to death by 
accelerating global temperatures, so we have to assume the ones who 
think the price will be too high are fossil fuels companies. In the 
final analysis, the wrong people are being threatened with prison in 
this situation. As Elie Wiesel, the noted chronicler of the horrors of 
the Holocaust often said, “There may be times when we are powerless to 
prevent injustice, but we must never fail to protest.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/10/25/oil-majors-double-down-on-fossil-fuels-while-climate-scientists-go-to-prison/

- -

/[ Scientist Rebellion organization ]/
*We are scientists, uniting against climate failure.
*Our Positions and Demands 
https://scientistrebellion.org/about-us/our-positions-and-demands/

    *We are scientists and academics*
    who believe we should expose the reality and severity of the climate
    and ecological emergency by engaging in non-violent civil
    disobedience. Unless those best placed to understand behave as if
    this is an emergency, we cannot expect the public to do so. Some
    believe that appearing “alarmist” is detrimental - but we are
    terrified by what we see, and believe it is both vital and right to
    express our fears openly.

    The population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and
    reptiles have seen an alarming average drop of 68% since 1970, along
    with an apparent collapse in the pollinator populations. At this
    rate, ecosystems around the world will collapse well within the
    lifespan of current generations, with catastrophic consequences for
    the human kind.

    Self-reinforcing feedbacks within the climate system, in which
    hotter climates cause additional heating (e.g. increased forest
    fires, thawing permafrost, melting ice) threaten to drive the Earth
    irreversibly to a hot and uninhabitable state. These effects are
    being observed decades earlier than predicted, in line with the
    worst-case scenarios predicted.

    Increasingly severe heatwaves, droughts and natural disasters are
    occurring year after year, while sea levels may rise by several
    meters this century, displacing hundreds of millions of people
    living in coastal areas. There is a growing fear amongst scientists
    that simultaneous extreme weather events in major agricultural areas
    could cause global food shortages, thus triggering societal
    collapse. For example, the drought in Syria (2011-2015) destroyed
    much of the country’s agriculture and livestock, driving millions
    into cities and sparking a civil war from which the world is still
    reeling. We face a crisis possibly hundreds of times more severe. To
    be informed is to be alarmed.

    Current actions and plans are grossly inadequate, and even these
    obligations are not being met. The rate of environmental destruction
    closely tracks economic growth, which leads to us extracting more
    resources from Earth than are regenerated. Governments and
    corporations aim to increase growth and profits, inevitably
    accelerating the destruction of life on Earth.

    To achieve decarbonisation on the required scale demands economic
    degrowth, at least in the short term. This does not necessarily
    require a reduction in living standards.
    For a just transition, the cost of degrowth must be paid for by the
    wealthiest, who have benefited enormously from the current
    destructive world order, while others have faced the consequences.
    A just transition to a sustainable system requires the wealth from
    the 1% to be used for the common benefit.
    The most effective means of achieving systemic change in modern
    history is through non-violent civil resistance. We call on
    academics, scientists and the public to join us in civil
    disobedience to demand emergency decarbonisation and degrowth,
    facilitated by wealth redistribution.

https://scientistrebellion.org/



/[ Hurricane Otis goes from Cat 1 to Cat 5 in 12 hours - explained well ]
/*Acapulco Destroyed by Category 5 Hurricane Otis
*Oct5 26, 2023
Paul Beckwith
Utter devastation.
Hurricane Otis went from a Category 1 hurricane to Category 5 in 12 
hours and then slammed into the modern tourist city of Acapulco, Mexico 
with almost no warning. This city of over 1 million people, with its 
oceanfront luxurious highrise buildings was utterly devastated.

Sea Surface temperatures of 31 C just off the coast amplified the storm 
and tightened up the eye too fast for people in the city to get prior 
warning.

The Category 5 direct bullseye hit was catastrophic; this is one of the 
largest cities ever to be hit by such a storm, the largest to hit 
Mexico’s Pacific coast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXXcg82ltyk



/[ Gee Wiz - electric aspiration - will it recharge my cell phone or my 
heart pacemaker? ]/
*Superfast Wireless Charging in Japan, a "Tesla Cybervan," & Gavin 
Newsom Courts BYD in China*
CleanTechnica
Oct 25, 2023
This may have been one of our more wide-ranging discussions on EV 
Obsession. It was certainly a fun one. Listen in to Jo and Zach discuss 
the following stories (links down at the bottom):

    0:00 — Intro
    0:30 — Superfast wireless EV charging for Japan!
    14:22 — Li Auto's ridiculous Mega MPV (looks like a "Tesla
    Cybervan") and its super-duper-fast charging rates
    25:32 — Iontra's "outside the battery" solutions to grow charging
    speed and extend battery life
    30:43 — California Governor Gavin Newsom's trip to China to test
    drive the BYD YangWang U8 and his potential presidential aspirations
    (warning: this segment gets truly political!)
    39:18 — Electric school buses from Indigenous students in the Red
    Lake School District
    41:19 — Volkswagen bringing the ID.4 and ID.Buzz Cargo to South Africa
    42:35 — The Rivian R1T winning the Rebelle Rally in Nevada and
    California
    45:05 — Subscriber Pitch

https://youtu.be/5i5MAk-TAdA



/[The news archive - looking back at when a Senator asked Exxon to stop 
it misinformation ]/
/*October  27, 2006*/
October 27, 2006: Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe 
(R-ME) urge ExxonMobil to stop funding climate-change-denying think tanks.

http://web.archive.org/web/20130303200905/http://www.rockefeller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=87f3ae3b-0f0d-44ee-af03-9080592901a4




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