Daily Climate Links: 4/8/2016

Warning for investors, not just environmentalists, in fossil fuel spending. Don Pittis, CBC.

What if pipelines, oilsands and power plants don't last long enough to pay off? 

new research raises concerns about the valuation of any future investments, saying they may not last long enough to pay off. 

The report, published in the academic journal Applied Energy, does not focus directly on pipelines or oilsands development. Instead, it addresses electrical power plants driven by fossil fuels. 

The innovation of the report, however, is to extend the concept of "stranded assets" beyond fossil fuels still in the ground. It says they now include the plant and equipment used to turn those resources into energy used by our economy.

"If the 2 C target is to be taken seriously, then current and future assets will have to be written off before the end of their economically useful life (become stranded assets) or we will have to rely on large-scale investments down the line in carbon capture and storage technologies that are as yet unproven and expensive," says the report.

Americans believe 2015 was record-warm, but split on why. Gallup.

• 69% of Americans believe reports of record-high temperatures
• Republicans are least likely to believe the reports
• 49% think reason for record warmth is human-caused climate change
• 46% think reason for record temps was natural changes
• 72% of Democrats but just 27% of Republicans attributed climate change to human activity

Climate Change is Natural? And That Doesn’t Freak You Out? Triple Pundit.

Why do some people feel better that climate change is a “natural” process, that we have had no part in it and therefore no control over? 

If you ask me “natural” climate change is much scarier than a man-made one, particularly one for which said natural cause is unknown