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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>January 28, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[of course]<br>
<b>Biden: 'We've waited too long to deal with this climate crisis'</b><br>
In a sharp 180-degree turn from the Trump administration, Joe Biden
just began a briefing on what he is calling the White House’s
“Climate Day”.<br>
<br>
“We’ve waited too long to deal with this climate crisis,” he said,
using a phrase Trump never used, preferring to call climate change a
hoax or something dreamed up by Democrats and other mad liberals.<br>
<br>
Biden just referred to “the existential threat of climate change,
because it IS an existential threat”.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jan/27/joe-biden-donald-trump-impeachment-covid-coronavirus-climate-crisis-executive-orders-live-updates">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/jan/27/joe-biden-donald-trump-impeachment-covid-coronavirus-climate-crisis-executive-orders-live-updates</a><br>
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[Follow the money]<br>
<b>Rating agency S&P warns 13 oil and gas companies they risk
downgrades as renewables pick up steam</b><br>
Firms including Woodside, Chevron, Shell and Exxon Mobil, told they
could be downgraded within weeks<br>
Rating agency S&P has warned 13 oil and gas companies, including
the some of the world’s biggest, that it may downgrade them within
weeks because of increasing competition from renewable energy.<br>
<br>
On notice of a possible downgrade are Australia’s Woodside Petroleum
as well as multinationals Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Imperial Oil, Royal
Dutch Shell, Shell Energy North America, Canadian Natural Resources,
ConocoPhillips and French group Total.<br>
<br>
S&P said it was also considering downgrading four large Chinese
producers – China Petrochemical Corp, China Petroleum & Chemical
Corp, China National Offshore Oil Corp and CNOOC.<br>
<br>
The rating agency said it had increased its risk rating for the
entire oil and gas sector from “intermediate” to “moderately high”
because due to the move away from fossil fuels, poor profitability
and volatile prices.<br>
<br>
It said it also had a negative outlook for two other big oil and gas
companies, British multinational BP and Canadian group Suncor, but
did not plan to immediately reassess their credit ratings...<br>
- - <br>
A lower credit rating can make it harder or more expensive for
companies to borrow money. In particular, many fund managers will
not invest in companies with a junk rating.<br>
<br>
S&P’s move came after the world’s biggest funds manager,
BlackRock, said it might dump shares in big greenhouse gas emitters
in support of limiting global heating to 1.5C by 2050...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/27/rating-agency-sp-warns-13-oil-and-gas-companies-they-risk-downgrades-as-renewables-pick-up-steam">https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/27/rating-agency-sp-warns-13-oil-and-gas-companies-they-risk-downgrades-as-renewables-pick-up-steam</a><br>
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[The Guardian]<br>
<b>Climate crisis: world is at its hottest for at least 12,000 years
– study</b><br>
Scientists say temperatures globally at highest level since start of
human civilisation<br>
Damian Carrington - Environment editor<br>
<br>
Wed 27 Jan 2021 <br>
<br>
The world’s continuously warming climate is revealed also in
contemporary ice melt at glaciers, such as with this one in the
Kenai mountains, Alaska<br>
The world’s continuously warming climate is revealed also in
contemporary ice melt at glaciers, such as with this one in the
Kenai mountains, Alaska (seen September 2019). Photograph: Joe
Raedle/Getty Images<br>
The planet is hotter now than it has been for at least 12,000 years,
a period spanning the entire development of human civilisation,
according to research.<br>
<br>
Analysis of ocean surface temperatures shows human-driven climate
change has put the world in “uncharted territory”, the scientists
say. The planet may even be at its warmest for 125,000 years,
although data on that far back is less certain.<br>
<br>
The research, published in the journal Nature, reached these
conclusions by solving a longstanding puzzle known as the “Holocene
temperature conundrum”. Climate models have indicated continuous
warming since the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago and the
Holocene period began. But temperature estimates derived from fossil
shells showed a peak of warming 6,000 years ago and then a cooling,
until the industrial revolution sent carbon emissions soaring.<br>
<br>
This conflict undermined confidence in the climate models and the
shell data. But it was found that the shell data reflected only
hotter summers and missed colder winters, and so was giving
misleadingly high annual temperatures.<br>
<br>
“We demonstrate that global average annual temperature has been
rising over the last 12,000 years, contrary to previous results,”
said Samantha Bova, at Rutgers University–New Brunswick in the US,
who led the research. “This means that the modern, human-caused
global warming period is accelerating a long-term increase in global
temperatures, making today completely uncharted territory. It
changes the baseline and emphasises just how critical it is to take
our situation seriously.”<br>
<br>
The world may be hotter now than any time since about 125,000 years
ago, which was the last warm period between ice ages. However,
scientists cannot be certain as there is less data relating to that
time.<br>
<br>
One study, published in 2017, suggested that global temperatures
were last as high as today 115,000 years ago, but that was based on
less data.<br>
- -<br>
Lijing Cheng, at the International Centre for Climate and
Environment Sciences in Beijing, China, recently led a study that
showed that in 2020 the world’s oceans reached their hottest level
yet in instrumental records dating back to the 1940s. More than 90%
of global heating is taken up by the seas.<br>
<br>
Cheng said the new research was useful and intriguing. It provided a
method to correct temperature data from shells and could also enable
scientists to work out how much heat the ocean absorbed before the
industrial revolution, a factor little understood.<br>
<br>
The level of carbon dioxide today is at its highest for about 4m
years and is rising at the fastest rate for 66m years. Further rises
in temperature and sea level are inevitable until greenhouse gas
emissions are cut to net zero.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/27/climate-crisis-world-now-at-its-hottest-for-12000-years">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/27/climate-crisis-world-now-at-its-hottest-for-12000-years</a><br>
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<p><br>
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[ethical question]<br>
<b>Opinion: Federal agencies should disclose number of firefighters
hospitalized with coronavirus</b><br>
AuthorBill GabbertPosted onJanuary 27,
2021CategoriesUncategorizedTagscoronavirus, COVID-19, opinion,
transparencyLeave a commenton Opinion: Federal agencies should
disclose number of firefighters hospitalized with coronavirus<br>
Will they also cover up vehicle accidents, tree strikes, and
burnovers?<br>
<br>
The U.S. Forest Service and the four land management agencies in the
Department of the Interior have refused to disclose how many of
their firefighting personnel have been hospitalized due to the
coronavirus.<br>
<br>
To their credit, the FS has provided the numbers that have tested
positive throughout 2020, and as recently as January 19 spokesperson
Stanton Florea told Wildfire Today that since the pandemic started
642 have tested positive. Of those, 569 have recovered, Mr. Florea
said, but 74 have not yet fully recovered or returned to work as of
January 19. But he said they did not know how many had been
hospitalized.<br>
<br>
I attempted to obtain similar information from the Department of the
Interior, but after several days of delays, receiving no data, and
the request being elevated to higher levels, spokesperson Richard
Parker wrote in an email, “We respectfully decline to comment
further on this topic at this time.”<br>
<br>
Four land management agencies in the DOI employ fire personnel,
Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish &
Wildlife Service, and National Park Service.<br>
<br>
There is no legitimate reason for the DOI or the Forest Service to
be secretive about the effects of the pandemic on their firefighting
personnel. If they refuse to say how many have been sickened by the
coronavirus because of their jobs, what’s next? Will they cover up
other injuries and fatalities, such as tree strikes, vehicle
accidents or rollovers, broken femurs, concussions from rolling
rocks? Will the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center have to stop
issuing reports about accidents which can provide learning
opportunities? Or have they already?<br>
<br>
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) does
not prevent the agencies from releasing anonymized summary data that
does not identify individuals. For example, anyone can go to the
Centers for Disease Control website and get COVID statistics at the
county level. Numbers available on a day by day chart include cases,
deaths, percent positivity, and new hospital admissions (COVID).
Below are the stats for Clay County, South Dakota which has fewer
residents, 13,864, than there are wildland firefighters in the
federal agencies. This does not invade anyone’s privacy or violate
HIPPA.<br>
<br>
It is not asking too much for the agencies that employ around 15,000
firefighters to maintain and release the same information available
for Clay County residents, few of whom are serving their country
battling wildfires in a job that was already dangerous before the
pandemic.<br>
<br>
Firefighting is hazardous in the best of times. Refusing to disclose
the number of infected or hospitalized fire personnel prevents these
tactical athletes from making an assessment of the degree of
additional risk they are in. Providing this life and death data is
the least we can do to help fire personnel make decisions about
risking their health … or not.<br>
<br>
It is immoral and unethical to keep this information secret.<br>
<br>
The upper levels of the BLM have been in turmoil for the last two
years. During the entire Trump administration no BLM Director was
confirmed, and 200 Washington office employees were told their jobs
were being moved thousands of miles away to western states. The term
“hollowed-out” has been used to describe the management of the
agency. And in the Forest Service, 250 researchers in Washington
quit after being faced with forced relocations according to
Propublica.<br>
<br>
Maybe under the new administration the cloud of secrecy over the
effects of the coronavirus on forestry and range technicians will be
lifted and transparency will become more normal.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/01/27/opinion-federal-agencies-should-disclose-number-of-firefighters-hospitalized-with-coronavirus/">https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/01/27/opinion-federal-agencies-should-disclose-number-of-firefighters-hospitalized-with-coronavirus/</a><br>
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[ethical food video]<br>
<b>21st Century Eating: Ethical and Environmental Reasons for going
Plant-Based</b><br>
Jan 27, 2010<br>
Oxford Climate Society<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M061GIpzWd8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M061GIpzWd8</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
January 28, 1969 </b></font><br>
<p>January 28, 1969: The notorious Santa Barbara, California oil
spill takes place.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/jqd_VTADHzM">http://youtu.be/jqd_VTADHzM</a><br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/30/3453277/oil-spill-heard-round-the-world/">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/30/3453277/oil-spill-heard-round-the-world/</a><br>
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