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<font size="+2"><font face="Calibri"><i><b>May</b></i></font></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b> 20, 2023</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font> <br>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ David Roberts is a wise and serious
interviewer - 50 min audio ]</i><br>
</font><font face="Calibri">MAY 19. 2023 <br>
<b>The trouble with net zero</b><br>
A conversation with Holly Jean Buck.<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">- -<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">Over the course of the 2010s, the term
“net-zero carbon emissions” migrated from climate science to
climate modeling to climate politics. Today, it is ubiquitous in
the climate world — hundreds upon hundreds of nations, cities,
institutions, businesses, and individuals have pledged to reach
net-zero emissions by 2050. No one ever formally decided to make
net zero the common target of global climate efforts — it just
happened.<br>
<br>
The term has become so common that we barely hear it anymore,
which is a shame, because there are lots of buried assumptions and
value judgments in the net-zero narrative that we are, perhaps
unwittingly, accepting when we adopt it...<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-trouble-with-net-zero?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=193024&post_id=119631811&utm_medium=email#details">https://www.volts.wtf/p/the-trouble-with-net-zero?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=193024&post_id=119631811&utm_medium=email#details</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ careful with your campfire -- ]</i><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><b>2/3s of the Extra Dry Air that
encourages Wildfires comes from Humanity burning Fossil Fuels</b><br>
JUAN COLE<br>
05/18/2023<br>
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The earth’s atmosphere can make
things wet or dry them out depending on the water vapor pressure.
When there is a Vapor Pressure Deficit, it dries the earth out.
VPD is defined as “a measure of atmospheric water demand defined
as the difference between the amount of water vapor in the air and
the amount of water vapor that air would hold at saturation.” If
there is a lot less water vapor than the atmosphere would normally
hold, all other things being equal, you have a bigger deficit. A
dry atmosphere also makes the earth beneath it drier. Dry land
conditions are conducive to wildfires. The dryness of the
atmosphere can also be seasonal. But more than 66% of the
summertime vapor pressure deficit in the West has been caused by
human activity in burning fossil fuels.<br>
<br>
Kristina Dahl et al. conclude that carbon dioxide emissions put
out by 88 major carbon producers contributed 48% of the long-term
rise in Vapor Pressure Deficit between 1901 and 2021. The paper is
published in Environmental Research Letters. Ms. Dahl is the
principal climate scientist for the Climate & Energy program
at the Union of Concerned Scientists.<br>
<br>
We’ve seen massive wildfires in the US and Canadian West in recent
years. You might think, well, there have always been wildfires.
But how big an area the wildfires burn, the length of the fire
season, the number of large fires each season, how high the fires
climb up into the hills, and the amount of forested land that
burns at “high severity” all vary. All of these measurements of
how bad the situation is have increased in the past few decades.
So not a random variation. Things have gotten very bad recently,
and that needs to be explained.<br>
<br>
It’s the 88 companies? It’s the 88 companies.<br>
<br>
Some 5 years ago, Tess Riley at The Guardian blamed most of global
climate change on 100 companies.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">12 News: “Heavy fuels, climate change create
uncertainty for Arizona wildfire season”</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ See the video ] </i><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsbHqPWeizw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsbHqPWeizw</a><br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Dahl and her colleagues concluded that of the
blackened earth left behind by forest fires from 1986 to 2021 in
the west of the two countries, these 88 companies caused the
carbon dioxide emissions that contributed to 37%, over a third, of
that burn area. In California, Oregon, Washington State and
Vancouver, etc. there has been a big increase in Vapor Pressure
Deficit, which in turn has caused more wildfires and contributed
to the prolonged Megadrought, which has lasted now for two decades
and used to be a once-in-five-hundred years event.<br>
<br>
So, no, there haven’t always been wildfires just like the ones we
have been experiencing recently. Some 88 companies selling
petroleum, coal, fossil gas and cement have made it twice as dry
as it would otherwise be, two-thirds drier in summer, and have
caused the wildfires to be over a third more destructive than they
otherwise would be.<br>
<br>
Even before this new study, researches had established that carbon
dioxide and methane produced by Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Cement
were responsible for more that 40% of the increasing temperatures
around the world, for a quarter of all the world’s sea level rise,
and for half of ocean acidification.<br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.juancole.com/2023/05/encourages-wildfires-humanity.html">https://www.juancole.com/2023/05/encourages-wildfires-humanity.html</a><br>
</font><br>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font> </p>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> <font face="Calibri"><i>[ Thousands
of jobs plunging thousands of leaks ] </i><br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b>New Report Finds Methane Mitigation
in Texas Could Create Thousands of Jobs</b><br>
Texas officials have vowed to oppose federal regulations aimed at
reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations. But the
report says plugging leaks and upgrading wells is poised to be a
big business in the Lone Star State.<br>
By Martha Pskowski<br>
May 17, 2023<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">A new report finds that methane
regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency could
spur job growth in Texas as oil and gas operators measure, monitor
and mitigate the harmful greenhouse gas.<br>
<br>
While Texas officials argue the methane regulations would kill
jobs, the report, published today by the Texas Climate Jobs
Project and the Ray Marshall Center at the University of Texas,
Austin, found that new federal methane regulations could create
between 19,000 and 35,000 jobs in the state. <br>
<br>
Oil and gas producing regions, including the Permian Basin, would
need a significant workforce to detect methane leaks, replace
components known to leak the gas and plug abandoned wells.
Previous research shows the methane mitigation industry is already
growing.<br>
<br>
In the absence of state methane rules, the EPA’s draft methane
rule, first issued in November 2021 and strengthened in a
supplemental filing last November, along with a new methane fee
under the Inflation Reduction Act, will have a major impact on oil
and gas operations in the Lone Star state. ..<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> <font face="Calibri">A 2021
Environmental Defense Fund report found that the methane
mitigation sector was already growing rapidly. The report
identified 215 firms manufacturing technology or providing
services to manage methane emissions in the oil and gas industry.
The number of manufacturing firms had increased by 33 percent from
2014 to 2021 and the number of service firms had increased by 90
percent between 2017 and 2021.<br>
<br>
The EDF report found that more companies mitigating methane had
employees located in Texas than any other state. Companies
headquartered in Texas include Solar Injection Systems in Odessa,
which manufactures solar-powered chemical injection pumps;
Cimarron Energy, an emissions control company in Houston, and CI
Systems in Carrollton, which commercializes infrared remote
sensing technology. <br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17052023/texas-methane-epa-regulations-jobs/">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17052023/texas-methane-epa-regulations-jobs/</a></font><br>
<br>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font> </p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ ESG == Environmental, Social and
Governance (ESG) -- are important factors ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> <font face="Calibri"><b>GOP Sending
Angry ESG Letters To Do Billionaire's Bidding</b><br>
There have been a few great pieces lately chronicling the $1.6
billion donation that Leonard Leo got to spread conservative
propaganda and disinfo.<br>
<br>
This week, Nina Burleigh at The New Republic went deep on Barre
Seid, the erstwhile billionaire who gave his $1.6 billion company
to Leo, providing the most comprehensive history of Seid that
we've seen to date. (We will just note that we flagged back in
2014 that Seid was funding climate denial and add that he was for
years a Hot News subscriber and Denier Roundup reader!) <br>
<br>
Earlier this month at Politico, Heidi Przybyla looked at how Leo
met billionaire Barre Seid through the supposedly nonpartisan
Federalist Society. Przybyla warns that "Leo appears to be
planning to use Seid’s money to create a new ecosystem of
conservative activism that he’s likening to a Federalist Society
for cultural institutions from schools to boardrooms." Sure
enough, Rebecca Davis O'Brien at The New York Times attempted to
track where the $182.7 million Leo spent in 2021 went. And while
tens of millions are getting tossed to and fro, unfortunately, "it
is impossible to directly trace where" all the money ended up,
thanks to deliberately opaque disclosure laws. <br>
<br>
So what'd all that money buy? We know millions of dollars are
changing hands, but what's Leo getting for all Seid's money? <br>
<br>
By the looks of it, the money bought a revival of McCarthy-era
communist witch hunts, only now the communists are supposedly in
Wall Street as well as Hollywood. While we can't trace where the
money went, we can see where the disinfo is coming from and
connect some dots. <br>
<br>
For example, on Tuesday and Wednesday, three successive stories
broke in right-wing media about Republicans sending threatening
anti-ESG letters. <br>
<br>
We can't know for sure, but odds are, had a billionaire not
dumped money into fighting against responsible investing that
incorporates environmental, social, and governance risks into
financial decisions, Fox News wouldn't be reporting that
Republicans are sending a letter pressing the Federal Reserve to
deny climate risks under the guise of the anti-ESG campaign that
Seid's money seeded. <br>
<br>
And we can probably assume that without Seid’s money, Republican
state attorneys general would be doing something more helpful with
their position as the state's top law enforcement officers than
sending threatening letters to insurance companies for factoring
in climate risk, again in keeping with the anti-ESG crusade. <br>
<br>
And of course, the Seid/Leo-funded State Financial Officers
Foundation (SFOF) wouldn't be pushing GOP state treasurers into
sending threatening letters to major financial institutions —
costing their states billions of dollars for their anti-ESG
efforts — without billionaire backing. <br>
<br>
But hey, who cares if the public's losing money, so long as
Leonard Leo and friends are rolling in it? Apparently not
Republicans!<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/ccworse?ecid=ACsprvsHvk45eEE-pxg-ZfS-wZq3kA9KtAAanKxeA9uzwRcuVHlDCsvvV6bo9CFx0uyRvUq52LH6&utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=259013569&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9TWjjO5bwEQOrq0bC6bpqgwL75MtczHpOy6QGO1iu4S8SWHhQToKZbF9iPIEJI6uf44oTmKsRAcJeGqZUC28zNKxz3XQ&utm_content=259013569&utm_source=hs_email">https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/ccworse?ecid=ACsprvsHvk45eEE-pxg-ZfS-wZq3kA9KtAAanKxeA9uzwRcuVHlDCsvvV6bo9CFx0uyRvUq52LH6&utm_campaign=Hot%20News&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=259013569&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9TWjjO5bwEQOrq0bC6bpqgwL75MtczHpOy6QGO1iu4S8SWHhQToKZbF9iPIEJI6uf44oTmKsRAcJeGqZUC28zNKxz3XQ&utm_content=259013569&utm_source=hs_email</a><br>
</font><br>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font> </p>
<font face="Calibri"> <i>[The news archive - looking back at how
Maureen Dowd understands GW Bush ]</i><br>
<font size="+2"><i><b>May 20, 2001</b></i></font> <br>
May 20, 2001: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd summarizes the
anti-conservation mentality of the George W. Bush administration:<br>
</font>
<blockquote><font face="Calibri">"We'll bake the earth. We'll brown
& serve it, sauté it, simmer it, sear it, fondue it,
George-Foreman-grill it. (We invented the Foreman grill.) We
might one day bring the earth to a boil and pull it like taffy.
(We invented taffy.)</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"If rising seas obliterate the coasts, our
marine geologists will sculpt new ones and Hollywood will get
bright new ideas for disaster movies. If we get charred by the
sun, our dermatologists will replace our skin.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"If the globe gets warmer, we'll turn up the
air-conditioning. (We invented air-conditioning.) We'll drive
faster in our gigantic, air-conditioned cars to the new beaches
that our marine geologists create.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"We will let our power plants spew any
chemicals we deem necessary to fire up our Interplaks, our
Krups, our Black & Deckers and our Fujitsu Plasmavisions.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"We will drill for oil whenever and wherever
we please. If tourists don't like rigs off the coast of Florida,
they can go fly fishing in Wyoming. We won't be deterred by a
few Arctic terns. We don't care about caribou. We don't care for
cardigans. Give us our 69 degrees, winter and summer. Let there
be light -- no timers, no freaky-shaped long-life bulbs. (We
invented the light bulb.)</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"We want our refrigerators cold and our
freezers colder. Bring on the freon. Banish those irritating
toilets that restrict flow. When we flush, we flush all the way.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"We will perfect the dream of nuclear power.
We will put our toxic waste wherever we want, whenever we waste
it. We have whole states with nothing better to do than serve as
ancestral burial grounds for our effluvium. It can fester in
those wide open spaces for thousands of years."</font><br>
</blockquote>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/opinion/liberties-drill-grill-and-chill.html?pagewanted=print">http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/opinion/liberties-drill-grill-and-chill.html?pagewanted=print</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</font>
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