Rang-tan.
“South Park” apologizes to Al Gore and admits it was wrong about global warming. Matthew Rozsa, Salon. Nov. 8, 2018.
The latest episode of “South Park” attempts to make up for its past of denying the reality of global warming
FOURTH NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT. Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States. Nov. 23, 2018.
The National Climate Assessment (NCA) assesses the science of climate change and
variability and its impacts across the United States, now and throughout this century.
New Research Shows That Only Two [of the top 10] Large Petroleum Companies Have Meaningful Emission Reduction Targets. Kyle Field, CleanTechnica. Nov. 9, 2018.
Absent a public commitment to reducing emissions, these companies have made it clear that the people of the world will have to rely on regulators to mandate emission reductions. Pulling back the curtain on the business implications of the missing targets reveals businesses that see little incentive and little risk to proactively complying with the global imperative to reduce emissions or the risk of future regulations that have the potential to have a financial impact on the company.
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"It is encouraging to see two major oil and gas companies, Shell and Total, setting out long-term ambitions to reduce carbon emissions intensity in a way that is compatible with the government pledges made at the Paris climate agreement,” Professor Simon Dietz, leading TPI’s Research at the Grantham Institute, London School of Economics said. “However, there is a long way to go. None of the ten largest global oil & gas firms currently set a path that would align them with limiting global warming to 2°C or below before 2050."
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The most awkward of the findings from the research was that half of the companies – Chevron, EOG Resources, ExxonMobil, Occidental and Reliance – have no quantified targets to reduce internal or external emissions … at all. This, my friends, is the failure of the system and speaks loudly to the fact that the oil and gas majors of the world might be talking a good game when it comes to climate change, emissions and the energy transition, but in reality, are doing nothing about it.
Fossil Fuel Companies Spend Next To Nothing On Renewable Energy. Steve Hanley, CleanTechnica. Nov. 13, 2018.
A new report from CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, gives the lie to all that greenwashing claptrap. Based in the UK, CDP has spent decades tracking how much various companies contribute to climate change and how much they spend trying to fix it, according to Popular Mechanics. The report finds that the 24 largest fossil fuel companies in the world spent a paltry 1.8% of their 2018 operating budgets on renewable energy investments.
Policies of China, Russia and Canada threaten 5C climate change, study finds. Jonathan Watts, Guardian. Nov 16, 2018.
Ranking of countries’ goals shows even EU on course for more than double safe level of warming
What Is Canada Waiting For To Start Its Transition? Imre Szeman, University of Waterloo via The Beam. Nov. 1, 2018.
In Canada, genuine changes in public attitudes toward the environment seem to be afoot.
In January 2018, a poll conducted by Environics Research revealed that an overwhelming number of Canadians supported the growth and development of the country’s renewable energy sources. 93% of poll participants backed solar, 91% approved of hydroelectricity, and 86% wanted more wind projects. More than three times as many Canadians reported that the reduction of greenhouse gases should guide the ongoing development of natural resources, as opposed to the creation of energy jobs (34% to 10%). This represents a remarkable shift in a country whose entire history and economy has been deeply linked to resource extraction.
The public opinion captured in this poll hasn’t instigated a shift in government policy — at least not entirely so. While the Canadian federal government has released draft legislation for its national carbon-pricing scheme (which starts at $20 CAD per tonne in 2019 and grows quickly to $50 CAD per tonne in 2022), the government’s own projections suggest that it will only have achieved half the emissions needed to meet its 2020 target. In recent months, a number of European countries, regions and cities have announced aggressive new policies designed to generate their own German-style Energiewende, and to do so in short order. Canada, by contrast, has committed itself to continued fossil fuel extraction, through the approval of projects such as $7.4 billion CAD Trans Mountain pipeline designed to move oil from the Athabasca Tar Sands to the Pacific coast, and the Keystone XL project, green-lighted by the Trump Administration as one of its first acts of state.
The logic can’t help but strike one as bizarre: Canada will get around to meeting its emissions targets, but only by first putting huge additional amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. To most, the actions of the government are cynical and self-interested — a way of keeping energy-rich provinces (such as Alberta) happy while paying lip service to Canada’s international commitments. It’s not the best way to deal with the environment. And it’s clearly out of step with what most Canadians want.
The unofficial Canadian policy of both/and — both extractive industries and greenhouse gas reduction — combined with the retreat of the US federal government on almost anything having to do with the environment — impedes efforts to address and prepare the nation to cope with the consequences of global warming.
What might Canada do instead?
Now is the time for Canada to get serious about developing a national energy transition policy.
Even though federal and provincial governments have acknowledged the need for a transition (followed by meek program and policy gestures), no such energy transition policy exists. Such a policy would directly and concretely speak to the need to shift from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy. It would outline programs and interventions that would make this happen sooner rather than later. And it would make clear that this transition can’t be left to the energy market or be shaped by the price for energy. Carbon pricing does very little, in the end, to transform a country’s energy landscape, nor does it properly capture the carbon liabilities that come with fossil fuel extraction. The recent report by David Janzen and Ian Hussey ‘What the Paris Agreement Means for Alberta’s Oil Sands Majors’ demonstrates that the carbon liabilities of Canada’s five biggest companies in the oil sands far outweigh their assets and market capitalization.
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Unfortunately, these bottom-up worker initiatives face a federal government (and many Canadian provincial governments) that seems to believe that fossil fuels will be the primary source of jobs for the near future. In a country built up around extraction, protecting the environment is imagined as coming at the expense of jobs; on the flip side, Canadians seem to think that energy jobs can’t but come at a cost to the environment. Yet this is a false dichotomy, which reflects the desire of both industry and government to keep things just the way they are instead of innovating transition policies that protect the environment and produce good jobs.
Instead of taking on the challenge and opportunity of developing new transition policies capable of curbing greenhouse gas emissions and creating jobs for a economy undergoing transformation, governments play worried citizens off of one another (in the hopes of keeping votes at the ballot box), while fossil fuel companies generate profits in a declining yet still destructive industry. Like citizens of countries around the world, Canadians are ready to take on the work of the environment and do jobs that work for the environment. They just need some help from their governments; they need an energy transition plan, one that focuses on them and not on markets and profit.
The Rise and Fall of Trudeau’s ‘Grand Bargain’ on Climate. Donald Gutstein, TheTyee.ca. Nov. 14, 2018.
From the new book on Canada and global warming: ‘The Big Stall.’
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When Trudeau the elder created Petro-Canada and introduced the National Energy Program, Keynesianism still reigned supreme. Government intervention in the economy was legitimate. By the time of Trudeau the younger, neoliberalism had transformed economic and political thinking, decreeing that only the market can make decisions.
Neoliberalism reduces the role of government to creating and enforcing markets, and propping them up when they fail, as in the 2008 financial meltdown. Otherwise, just get out of the way.
Climate change, oilsands and the carbon tax are at the heart of Alberta's 2019 battleground. Trish Audette-Longo & Mike De Souza. National Observer. Nov. 12, 2018.
Alberta officials are signalling they have no idea how to clean up toxic oilsands tailings ponds. Emma McIntosh & David Bruser, National Observer. Nov. 23, 2018.
Climate change: Oceans soaking up more heat than estimated. Matt McGrath, BBC. Nov. 1, 2018.
The world has seriously underestimated the amount of heat soaked up by our oceans over the past 25 years, researchers say.
Their study suggests that the seas have absorbed 60% more than previously thought.
They say it means the Earth is more sensitive to fossil fuel emissions than estimated.
This could make it much more difficult to keep global warming within safe levels this century.
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The researchers involved in the study believe the new finding will make it much harder to keep within the temperature rise targets set by governments in the Paris agreement.
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The report suggests that to prevent temperatures rising above 2C, carbon emissions from human activities must be reduced by 25% more than previously estimated.CORRECTION:
High-profile ocean warming paper to get a correction. Science Mag. Nov. 14, 2018.
The overall conclusion that oceans are trapping more and more heat mirrors other studies and is not inaccurate, but the margin of error in the study is larger than originally thought, said Ralph Keeling, a professor of geosciences at Scripps and co-author of the paper.
Polar amplification dominated by local forcing and feedbacks. Nature Climate Change. Nov. 19, 2018.
Climate change on track to make world 'uninsurable': IAG. James Fernyhough, Australia Financial Review. Nov. 15, 2018.
Insurance giant IAG has warned a failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could result in a world that is "pretty much uninsurable", with poorer communities likely to bear the brunt of the effects.
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"There is some commentary globally that in a 4-degree world, the world becomes pretty much uninsurable."
This week 16 of the world's biggest insurers, including IAG and QBE, launched an initiative with the United Nations to develop new risk assessment tools in an effort to make insurance accessible and affordable.
Participating insurers, which also include AXA, Allianz, and Swiss Re, will work with climate scientists to develop a better understanding of the new and unpredictable weather events resulting from climate change.
The focus of the initiative is on responding to climate change, rather than preventing it.
However, Ms Johnson said the future of insurance depended upon limiting global temperature rises, which could only be achieved by a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
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While the Paris agreement officially aims to keep global temperature rises below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, current policies would result in far higher temperature rises.
According to Climate Action Tracker, a German-government backed initiative, under current policies global temperatures are on track to rise by 3.4 degrees by the end of the century.
Will Steffen, professor emeritus at Australian National University and member of the Climate Council, predicted rises would be even higher.
"I suspect on current trajectories it will be more like 4 degrees. So we're not on a good track at all," he told The Australian Financial Review.
Principles for Sustainable Insurance.
A global sustainability framework and initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative
A global sustainability framework and initiative of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative
Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN. Jonathan Watts, Guardian. Nov. 3, 2018.
The world must thrash out a new deal for nature in the next two years or humanity could be the first species to document our own extinction, warns the United Nation’s biodiversity chief. Ahead of a key international conference to discuss the collapse of ecosystems, Cristiana Pasca Palmer said people in all countries need to put pressure on their governments to draw up ambitious global targets by 2020 to protect the insects, birds, plants and mammals that are vital for global food production, clean water and carbon sequestration.
“The loss of biodiversity is a silent killer,” she told the Guardian. “It’s different from climate change, where people feel the impact in everyday life. With biodiversity, it is not so clear but by the time you feel what is happening, it may be too late.”
Is The Evidence of Global Warming Too Scary For Humans To Cope With? Paul Craig Roberts. Nov. 2, 2018.
The book, Unprecedented Crime, about which I reported, caused me to start thinking more seriously about man-made global warming. I already was thinking about it, because capitalism owes its profits to the costs that it imposes on the environment, costs that are external to the capitalist entity. I have been thinking about this since I addressed “external costs” in my 2013 book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism. I am thinking that if man-made global warming is indeed in the cards, as the current evidence supports, the external costs of capitalism will far exceed the total value of all the goods produced over the course of the industrial revolution. Past material comforts will be paid for by future curtailment of life on Earth.
US could meet Paris emissions pledge with ‘natural climate solutions’, study says. Robert McSweeney, CarbonBrief. Nov. 14, 2018.
study:
Natural climate solutions for the United States. Joseph E. Fargione et al, Science Advances. Nov. 14, 2018.
Abstract
Limiting climate warming to <2°C requires increased mitigation efforts, including land stewardship, whose potential in the United States is poorly understood. We quantified the potential of natural climate solutions (NCS)—21 conservation, restoration, and improved land management interventions on natural and agricultural lands—to increase carbon storage and avoid greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. We found a maximum potential of 1.2 (0.9 to 1.6) Pg CO2e year−1, the equivalent of 21% of current net annual emissions of the United States. At current carbon market prices (USD 10 per Mg CO2e), 299 Tg CO2e year−1 could be achieved. NCS would also provide air and water filtration, flood control, soil health, wildlife habitat, and climate resilience benefits.
INTRODUCTION
Limiting global warming below the 2°C threshold set by the Paris Climate Agreement is contingent upon both reducing emissions and removing greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere. Natural climate solutions (NCS), a portfolio of discrete land stewardship options, are the most mature approaches available for carbon conservation and uptake compared to nascent carbon capture technologies and could complement increases in zero-carbon energy production and energy efficiency to achieve needed climate change mitigation. Within the United States, the maximum and economically viable mitigation potentials from NCS are unclear.
Here, we quantify the maximum potential for NCS in the United States and the portion of this maximum that could be achieved at several price points. We consider 21 distinct NCS to provide a consistent and comprehensive exploration of the mitigation potential of conservation, restoration, and improved management in forests, grasslands, agricultural lands, and wetlands, carefully defined to avoid double counting (details in the Supplementary Materials). We estimate the potential for NCS in the year 2025, which is the target year for the United States’ Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement to reduce GHG emissions by 26 to 28% from 2005 levels....
Warming assessment of the bottom-up Paris Agreement emissions pledges.
Yann Robiou du Pont &
Malte Meinshausen. Nature Communicationsvolume. Nov. 16. 2018.
Peak Oil & Drastic Oil Shortages Imminent, Says IEA. Dr. Harry Brinkmann, CleanTechnica. Nov. 22 2018.
467 ways to die on a warming globe. Clive Hamilton, The Guardian. Nov. 27, 2018.
Last week Donald Trump, who calls climate science a hoax, visited a California devastated by wildfires. When asked whether his visit would change his mind about climate change he said “No”. What else could he say? The journalist was asking him if he would change who he was.
Yet it’s too easy to blame the world’s slowness to act on crazy American deniers.
Because, in a way, we are all climate science deniers.
The full truth of what humans have done is almost impossible to take in. To fully embrace the message of the climate scientists means giving up the deepest presupposition of modernity – the idea of progress. Relinquishing our belief in progress means we must let go of the future, because we have been taught from infancy that the future is progress.
In our minds, replacing the old future defined by progress with a new future defined by endless struggle requires a period of grieving. Not many people have the stomach for that.
While most people in most countries accept the truth of climate science, they don’t accept its implications.
An Economist's Guide to Climate Change Science. Solomon Hsiang and Robert E. Kopp. JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES. Nov. 2018.
Abstract
This article provides a brief introduction to the physical science of climate change, aimed towards economists. We begin by describing the physics that controls global climate, how scientists measure and model the climate system, and the magnitude of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide. We then summarize many of the climatic changes of interest to economists that have been documented and that are projected in the future. We conclude by highlighting some key areas in which economists are in a unique position to help climate science advance. An important message from this final section, which we believe is deeply underappreciated among economists, is that all climate change forecasts rely heavily and directly on economic forecasts for the world. On timescales of a half-century or longer, the largest source of uncertainty in climate science is not physics, but economics.
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