“Climate Emergency Independents” emerge from Extinction Rebellion to stand for UK Parliament
Guardian 26th April 2019, Activists who took part in the Extinction Rebellion protests have announcedthey will stand in the European elections on a “climate emergency” ticket.
Under the name Climate Emergency Independents the new group, which is
separate from Extinction Rebellion, nine candidates will stand in the 23
May polls – seven in London and two in south-west England region. The group
said it was inspired by the mass civil disobedience demonstrations on the
streets of London over the past two weeks as well by Greta Thunberg and the
global school strikes movement she inspired.
Secretive Fossil Fuel Lobby Group, “Global Climate Coalition”, Manipulated UN Climate Programs
Global Climate Coalition: Documents Reveal How Secretive Fossil Fuel Lobby Group Manipulated UN Climate Programs, https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/25/global-climate-coalition-documents-secretive-fossil-fuel-lobby-un-programs By Mat Hope and Karen Savage • , April 24, 2019 A fossil fuel–backed industry group was able to influence the process behind the United Nations climate assessments for decades, using lobbyists and industry-funded scientists to manipulate international negotiations, a cache of recently discovered documents reveals.
The documents include hundreds of briefings, meeting minutes, notes, and correspondence from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). They were released Thursday by the Climate Investigations Center in collaboration with DeSmog and Climate Liability News. The documents date from 1989 and continue through 2002, when the lobbying group disbanded as its fossil fuel industry backers succumbed to public pressure to disavow its tactics.
The documents show how the GCC influenced international negotiations, manipulated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) process, and undertook a disinformation campaign designed to cast doubt on mainstream climate science.
What was the Global Climate Coalition?
The GCC was initially part of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), before becoming its own entity in 1995. NAMhas a long history of defending portions of its membership, including tobacco companies that were facing an onslaught of liability litigation, with aggressive tactics that include discrediting science, attacking scientists, and misleading the public.
Founding members of the GCC were mainly fossil fuel producers and utilities, including oil majors Shell, Texaco (now a part of Chevron), and Amoco (now part of BP); oil refiner and retailers ARCO (now a subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum) and Phillips Petroleum; coal miners BHP-Utah International and Peabody; and utilities American Electric Power and Pacific Gas and Electric.
Other companies, including Exxon, joined later — and the international oil giant would go on to be a key player in the group.
Revealed in the documents is a decades-long campaign that continued until 2002, intended to protect its members’ interests by denying and casting doubt on climate science. Internally, the group acknowledged the dangers of climate change and the scientific consensus that it is overwhelmingly driven by the burning of fossil fuels as early as 1995.
Influencing the UN’s Panel of Climate Scientists
The GCC took a particular interest in the operations of the UN’s official scientific advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produces the international climate assessments that form the basis for global climate policy and negotiations.
GCC representatives regularly met with IPCC scientists to lobby the panel to accept industry language in its reports, the documents show. Tax returns show hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on an “IPCC Tracker Fund” to monitor and lobby the IPCC’s meetings.
In one instance detailed in the documents, the GCC boasted its suggested language was “accepted almost in its entirety”after intensive lobbying by its representatives and after “assistance from several countries.”
The GCC also publicly questioned the validity of the IPCC’s peer-review process and launched public attacks on its scientists, while simultaneously using the IPCC’s status as a respected scientific body to promote the credentials of its own climate science denial research.
The GCC went beyond targeting climate science. In 1995, Exxon gave a presentation to the GCC on how to counter the evidence linking climate change to human health impacts.
In 1997, the GCC wanted to expand its reach with a network of state and local committees that would educate the public about their views on climate change and serve as liaisons to other business and public interest groups with similar views. This plan was implemented, the documents show, with the help of Koch Industries, the U.S.’s largest private energy company, which is an infamous funder of climate science denial across the globe.
The Collapse of the GCC
By the mid-1990s, however, the GCC’s aggressive tactics and continuing effort to cast doubt on accepted climate science had started to become a problem for some of its members. Nine corporations left the GCC from 1996 to 2000: two automakers, one chemical manufacturer, one utility, and five oil companies.
BP was the first major oil company to leave in 1997, stating that “the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point.”
The GCC also publicly questioned the validity of the IPCC’s peer-review process and launched public attacks on its scientists, while simultaneously using the IPCC’s status as a respected scientific body to promote the credentials of its own climate science denial research.
The GCC went beyond targeting climate science. In 1995, Exxon gave a presentation to the GCC on how to counter the evidence linking climate change to human health impacts.
In 1997, the GCC wanted to expand its reach with a network of state and local committees that would educate the public about their views on climate change and serve as liaisons to other business and public interest groups with similar views. This plan was implemented, the documents show, with the help of Koch Industries, the U.S.’s largest private energy company, which is an infamous funder of climate science denial across the globe.
Additional Takeaways: Infiltrating UN Climate Negotiations, Embracing Climate Deniers Publicly But Not Privately
The documents published Thursday on the Climate Investigation Center’s Climate Files archive, also show:
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The GCC stacked UN meetings with its members. Some attended meetings transparently, registering as GCC members, while others registered with other NGOs. Often GCC members outnumbered delegates from developing nations at the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings.
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The GCC coordinated to monitor IPCC meetings. After IPCC meetings, GCC notes reveal attendees met to discuss strategies for exploiting scientific uncertainties in IPCC climate models and amplifying scientific differences of opinion. On at least one occasion, a contractor for the Electric Power Research Institute planned to keep tabs on IPCCproceedings.
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The GCC internally refuted climate deniers, yet continued to publicly cite their work: Exxon scientist Lenny Bernstein, who co-chaired the GCC’s committee on science and technology assessment, called the work of climate deniers Richard Lindzen and Patrick Michaels “not convincing” in a draft document in 1995. The final copy of that document included no mention of Bernstein’s comments and the GCC continued to cite the two — as well as other known deniers — through at least 1998.
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The GCC aggressively attempted to control media coverage of climate change: Press releases were sent to reporters praising media coverage featuring climate deniers and correcting those that did not. One document encouraged reporters to contact the GCC for “balance in the global climate change debate.”
Climate change poses huge flooding risk to USA’s nuclear stations, but this is ignored by Trump administration
 Trump administration is ignoring a massive problem at U.S. nuclear plants “54 of the [60] nuclear plants operating in the U.S. weren’t designed to handle the flood risk they face.” https://thinkprogress.org/nuclear-plants-flood-risk-trump-2eb58bc654a7/  At first, the main effort was a direct bailout — Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s failed planto subsidize nuclear (and coal) power plants by raising consumer energy bills.
Now the administration has started cutting corners in nuclear safety and oversight. Trump appointees, who are a majority at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), are allowing the nuclear industry to avoid costly upgrades to plants that are not designed to withstand current flood risk. What’s especially shocking about this decision, made by the NRC in January, is that a remarkable “54 of the [60] nuclear plants operating in the U.S. weren’t designed to handle the flood risk they face,” as Bloomberg reported last week after reviewing information exchanged between the plant owners and the NRC. Yet, even after examining all of the same information, the three NRC commissioners appointed by President Donald Trump decided to ignore NRC staff recommendations to address the problem. As a result, U.S. nuclear plants weren’t required to upgrade their designs or equipment. The NRC had ordered the original review of the flood risk to U.S. nuclear plants in the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan. In that tragic incident, an earthquake and tsunami led to three nuclear reactors melting down and widespread radiation releases. The cleanup effort will take decades and is currently estimated to cost $470 billion to $660 billion. Nuclear power plants are uniquely vulnerable to flooding because they need to be located next to a river, lake, or ocean since they require a dependable source of vast quantities of water for cooling. But if a major flood event disables the plant’s power and shuts off its cooling systems — as happened at Fukushima — then the reactor will overheat and start melting down, which, in turn can breach the containment vessel, leading to dangerous radioactive releases. Given the terrible cost of such a flood-driven failure, the NRC told all U.S. nuclear plant operators to examine their current flood risk and compare it to what the plants were designed to withstand. After all, since most of the decades-old plants were built, risks have increased thanks to urbanization and climate change. At the same time, flood modeling tools have vastly improved. The results were stunning. Of the 60 U.S. nuclear plants, Bloomberg reports that 53 “weren’t built to withstand their current risk from intense precipitation,” while 25 couldn’t handle current flood projections. Worse, 19 plants — nearly one third of the total — were now at risk of three or more flooding threats that they were not designed to weather, including the maximum storm surge they might face. And this review may actually understate the flood risk because the plant owners were allowed “not only to perform their own estimates of current flood risk but also to decide what assumptions to make.” Even so, some nuclear plants face flood risks of more than 10 feet above their design level. In response to the new flood risks, the NRC staff had proposed that U.S. nuclear plants upgrade their safety equipment. The industry, however, favors simply relying on an existing system called Flex, for Flexible Mitigation Capability, whereby emergency generators and pumps are put in concrete bunkers. On January 24, the three Trump-appointed commissioners overrode objections by the two other commissioners and ruled that U.S. nuclear operators could skip the upgrades required to handle the actual flood risk they face. What’s more, they were not required to routinely update their flood risk analysis as climate science advanced. The Trump appointees also did away with a requirement that U.S. nuclear plants perform Flex drills. That move is especially dangerous considering that as recently as December 2016, one of the emergency generators at the Palo Verde plant near Phoenix “exploded during a routine test,” as AZCentral.com reported in 2017. Nuclear plants clearly need more drills and tests, not fewer. But the Trump appointees appear to support the president’s view that essentially all regulations on industry are bad. The result, as former NRC chair Gregory Jaczko explained to Bloomberg, is that “any work that was done following Fukushima is for naught because the commission rejected any binding requirement to use that work.” Jaczko added, “It’s like studying the safety of seat belts and then not making automakers put them in a car.” So nine out of 10 U.S. nuclear plants are simply unprepared for the flood risk they face today — and they don’t have to plan for the ever-worsening risks posed by climate change. The president is once again failing to protect Americans from a very real threat to their health and safety. |
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Mozambique hit again by a deadly cyclone
Deadly cyclone leaves trail of destruction across Mozambique, Aljazeera, 27 Apr 19
At least one killed as second powerful cyclone in six weeks strikes Mozambique. Cyclone Kenneth has killed at least one person and left a trail of destruction in northern Mozambique, destroying houses, ripping up trees and knocking out power, authorities said on Friday.
The cyclone brought storm surges and wind gusts of up to 280km per hour when it made landfall on Thursday evening, after killing three people in the island nation of Comoros.
It was the most powerful storm on record to hit Mozambique’s northern coast and came just six weeks after Cyclone Idai battered the impoverished nation, causing devastating floods and killing more than 1,000 people across a swath of Southern Africa.
The World Food Programme warned that Kenneth could dump as much as 600mm of rain on the region over the next 10 days – twice of that brought by Cyclone Idai …… https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/cyclone-kills-leaves-trail-destruction-mozambique-190426121837184.html
London’s Extinction Rebellion climate protestors made an impact, and they’re keeping on
The Greta Thunberg effect: her visit to London in 2 minutes
Why the climate protests that disrupted London were different, Extinction Rebellion skillfully used civil disobedience to sound the alarm on the climate emergency., VOX By Thousands of activists unleashed strategic disorder in London for 10 days to draw attention to the accelerating climate crisis. In costume and in tents, they barricaded roads and bridges at major city landmarks, with more than 1,000 peacefully submitting to arrest.
The coordinated direct actions across the city were organized by Extinction Rebellion, a movement founded last year to demand a more aggressive climate target from the British government: net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
With a core message that climate change is an “emergency” that threatens the survival of the human species, Extinction Rebellion sounded a shriller alarm than past climate protests. Members also deployed ostentatious, nonviolent tactics — such as gluing themselves to the Waterloo Bridge — at a scale that “has never been done before,” according to Alanna Byrne, a press coordinator with Extinction Rebellion.
“We know we have disrupted your lives,” the group said Wednesday in a statement. “We do not do this lightly. We only do this because this is an emergency.”
Extinction Rebellion’s urgency and energy on climate change is aligned with a wave of youth climate activism bubbling up in Europe, the United States, and beyond — including a series of student strikes, led by the riveting Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old from Sweden……..
not all Londoners were unhappy with the disruption, and many tweeted about how much they enjoyed the opportunity to participate.
Extinction Rebellion protesters in London have three key demands
The protestors want three things from the UK government:
- For climate change to be treated as an emergency
- A commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025
- The creation of a citizen assembly for climate action
“We don’t want to be doom and gloom, but we also think it’s really, really important to use emergency messaging,” said XR’s Byrne. “One of the major problems that we have is that so many people are not aware of the crisis we’re in and we want the government to be talking about it.”
While the UK government is already mired in Brexit negotiations that have continued to drag on, protestors argue that climate change poses an even bigger threat to the long-term health and security of the country and deserves the same, if not more, political attention.
Extinction Rebellion protesters in London have three key demands
The protestors want three things from the UK government:
- For climate change to be treated as an emergency
- A commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025
- The creation of a citizen assembly for climate action
“We don’t want to be doom and gloom, but we also think it’s really, really important to use emergency messaging,” said XR’s Byrne. “One of the major problems that we have is that so many people are not aware of the crisis we’re in and we want the government to be talking about it.”
While the UK government is already mired in Brexit negotiations that have continued to drag on, protestors argue that climate change poses an even bigger threat to the long-term health and security of the country and deserves the same, if not more, political attention.
………in this moment of crisis, young leaders will keep reminding us of how resourceful humans can be in the face of a challenge. “Sometimes we just simply have to find a way. The moment we decide to fulfill something, we can do anything,” Thunberg said. “And I’m sure that the moment we start behaving as if we were in an emergency, we can avoid climate and ecological catastrophe. Humans are very adaptable: We can still fix this.”
Can the UK fix it to the tune of net-zero emissions by 2025? Why not try? https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/24/18511491/climate-change-protests-london-extinction-rebellion
Lawmakers and media are being conned, as nuclear industry manipulates climate change rules
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In state after state, operators have figured out how turn green-power incentives into sweetheart deals. https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/04/23/nuclear-energy-climate-change-000893, By TRAVIS KAVULLA 04/23/2019 Yet these laws remain on the books, and recently some of the nation’s largest energy producers have started to turn them to their own benefit. For the past several years, I’ve been researching clean-energy regulations at the state level, and a troubling pattern has begun to emerge: In numerous states, companies with large investments in nuclear energy — including Exelon, First Energy, Dominion and PSEG — have lobbied states to reconfigure their clean-power incentives to subsidize existing nuclear plants, rather than the emergent technologies that the laws were intended for.
 The result is a contagion of subsidies to nuclear power plants that started in Democratic states like Illinois and New York in 2016, spread to Connecticut in 2017 and New Jersey in 2018. Bills to this effect are now being considered by Republican-led chambers in Ohio and Pennsylvania. If those measures pass, nuclear interests will have executed a clean sweep of the six northeastern states that have the largest quantities of nuclear generation.The state nuclear-handout schemes are all slightly different. But they all take advantage of green-sounding energy incentives, and they share a basic outline intended to avoid the appearance of being a naked subsidy. For example, Illinois’ program creates a commodity called a “zero emission credit,” or ZEC. A ZEC may only be created by a “zero emission facility” — which makes it sound like they are available to any form of zero-carbon energy. But the law defines “zero emission facility” as being a power plant “fueled by nuclear power.” The law then creates an artificial demand for ZECs, requiring utilities to buy a certain quantity. The law sets this number at a level tellingly similar to the total expected output of the state’s nuclear power fleet. All of this is topped off with a requirement that a government commission pass through the costs of these ZECs to customers through a mandatory rate they have no choice (other than cutting the cord entirely) but to pay.In short, the law seems to be creating a program that promotes adoption of all kinds of clean energy, but in fact creates a direct subsidy for nuclear power plants and guarantees them customers for years to come. Instead of spurring competition between emissions-reducing power sources, it locks in one energy supplier for the foreseeable future. These state policies starkly differ from other carbon-reduction policies, such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program. Those policies have the advantage of aiming directly at their target: carbon emissions. While potentially costly, either would circulate revenue back to consumers or taxpayers, or use that revenue on government spending intended to amplify the program’s core purpose. THAT’S NOT THE case here. The nuclear subsidy schemes are an elaborate greenwashing that neither returns money to the public nor further reduces carbon emissions.
It’s also important to keep sight of the big picture: Lower energy prices are a good thing for consumers, both private citizens and businesses. Lower prices are only a crisis for energy suppliers who can’t compete. In my conversations with state officials, some have struggled to understand how this has emerged as a political issue if the nuclear fleet is not, in fact, facing an existential crisis. This is naïve. Executives at corporations that own nuclear power plants, watching as neighboring states hand out subsidies, have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to try to get it for themselves—whether or not their plants are already turning a profit. Debra Raggio, senior vice president for regulatory affairs for Talen Energy, admitted as much when she testified before a Pennsylvania legislative committee at an April 8 hearing, saying that if the state’s legislation featured a needs test to determine whether nuclear plants actually needed a subsidy to remain open, her company would oppose the bill. Bowring projects that the company’s only Pennsylvania nuclear plant, located along the Susquehanna River, will be profitable in each of the coming three years. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, the whole drama is unfolding on terms dictated by the nuclear plant owners, with utility corporations making threats to shut down certain facilities to force sweeping legislative action without the time for meaningful scrutiny. BY PROPPING UP older technologies, these state bailouts actually risk doing harm to innovative technologies looking to break into the market. Pennsylvania provides a useful example. In 2004, the state Legislature set aside a relatively modest amount of consumer demand to be served by renewable and other technologies in its Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard. That program constitutes 18 percent of consumer demand. Under the current proposal, a whopping 50 percent would be carved out for existing nuclear plants. In other words, 68 percent of customer demand would be met by power plants preordained by government officials for that purpose. That leaves energy producers who don’t benefit from subsidies left to fight for the scraps. One cannot encourage innovation when the innovators have only one-third of the market share to compete for. Sadly, these handouts are unraveling a successful state policy that has benefited customers and reduced carbon emissions in the process. Pennsylvania and the other nuclear battleground states adopted policies two decades ago to replace government planning and monopolies with competition between generators. The results have been significant. Customers in these so-called restructured states have seen their electricity costs drop an average of 8 percent between 2008 and 2016, according to a 2017 study by Phil O’Connor, the late chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission. Customers in states where legislatures, government commissions, and monopolies together select the “right” resource mix have seen prices rise 15 percent. Meanwhile, these competitive markets ensured that when the Marcellus natural gas shale supply boomed, that uneconomic coal plants did not hang around. Carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector have declined 3,855 million metric tons between 2005 and 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration. The majority of those savings, 2,360 million metric tons, come from natural gas’ replacement of coal, and not zero-emission facilities. It’s deeply ironic that these competitive markets might become a victim of their own successes. The necessity of acting on climate change is palpable in our politics today. But the answer is a genuine competition between low-emission producers through a market for carbon, not handouts to the nuclear industry. The legislation proposed in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives plays footsie with this issue, suggesting that if a price of $15 per ton of carbon emissions were enacted, the nuclear handout would sunset. This is silly. After all, if you’ve got your subsidy, are you going to be willing to support a law that sets a more level playing field between clean-energy technologies—or where you might lose out to efficient gas generators? It would be next to impossible to obtain a comprehensive carbon policy if technology-specific handouts such as these continue to become law, because the political support that might have existed for a carbon policy would have been sapped. Whatever your view of nuclear energy, it should compete fairly against other electricity sources. In the run-up to this year’s legislative session in Harrisburg, Exelon tripled its lobbying expenditures in Pennsylvania, to $1.7 million, which is a lot of money in state politics. But the company stands to obtain a large portion of the annual $500 million dole of the Pennsylvania nuclear program. That’s a good return on investment—and easier to earn than having to compete for it. Travis Kavulla is director of energy and environment policy at the R Street Institute. |
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$70 trillion cost predicted, as Arctic permafrost thaws
Melting permafrost in Arctic will have $70tn climate impact – study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/melting-permafrost-in-arctic-will-have-70tn-climate-impact-study Jonathan Watts, Global environment editor @jonathanwatts, 23 Apr 2019
Study shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen man-made problem The release of methane and carbon dioxide from thawing permafrost will accelerate global warming and add up to $70tn (£54tn) to the world’s climate bill, according to the most advanced study yet of the economic consequences of a melting Arctic.
If countries fail to improve on their Paris agreement commitments, this feedback mechanism, combined with a loss of heat-deflecting white ice, will cause a near 5% amplification of global warming and its associated costs, says the paper, which was published on Tuesday in Nature Communications.
The authors say their study is the first to calculate the economic impact of permafrost melt and reduced albedo – a measure of how much light that hits a surface is reflected without being absorbed – based on the most advanced computer models of what is likely to happen in the Arctic as temperatures rise. It shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen the problem caused by man-made emissions, making it more difficult and expensive to solve.
They assessed known stocks of frozen organic matter in the ground up to 3 metres deep at multiple points across the Arctic. These were run through the world’s most advanced simulation software in the US and at the UK Met Office to predict how much gas will be released at different levels of warming. Even with supercomputers, the number crunching took weeks because the vast geography and complex climate interactions of the Arctic throw up multiple variables. The researchers then applied previous economic impact models to assess the likely costs.
The authors say their study is the first to calculate the economic impact of permafrost melt and reduced albedo – a measure of how much light that hits a surface is reflected without being absorbed – based on the most advanced computer models of what is likely to happen in the Arctic as temperatures rise. It shows how destabilised natural systems will worsen the problem caused by man-made emissions, making it more difficult and expensive to solve.
They assessed known stocks of frozen organic matter in the ground up to 3 metres deep at multiple points across the Arctic. These were run through the world’s most advanced simulation software in the US and at the UK Met Office to predict how much gas will be released at different levels of warming. Even with supercomputers, the number crunching took weeks because the vast geography and complex climate interactions of the Arctic throw up multiple variables. The researchers then applied previous economic impact models to assess the likely costs.
It would also add to global inequalitybecause most of the economic burden – equivalent to almost the entire world’s current annual GDP – is likely to be borne by countries in warmer poorer regions such as India and Africa, which are most vulnerable to a rise in temperatures.
It would also add to global inequality because most of the economic burden – equivalent to almost the entire world’s current annual GDP – is likely to be borne by countries in warmer poorer regions such as India and Africa, which are most vulnerable to a rise in temperatures.
India, Ghana, Japan, Columbia, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, Belgium, South Africa, Extinction Rebellion climate activists speak out
From India to Ireland: a week of Extinction Rebellion actions
Activists tell us why they have taken part in the protest group’s international rebellion week https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/24/from-india-to-ireland-a-week-of-extinction-rebellion-actions, Jessie McDonald and Guardian readers, 24 Apr 2019
Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addresses UK Parliament
BBC 23rd April 2019 Teenage activist Greta Thunberg has described the UK’s response to climate change as “beyond absurd”. In a speech to MPs, the Swedish 16-year-old
criticised the UK for supporting new exploitation of fossil fuels and
exaggerating cuts to carbon emissions. She was invited to Westminster after
inspiring the school climate strikes movement. Environment Secretary
Michael Gove said “we have not done nearly enough”. In her speech in
Parliament on Tuesday, Miss Thunberg said the UK was supporting shale gas
fracking, greater exploitation of North Sea oil and gas fields and
expanding airports. “This ongoing irresponsible behaviour will no doubt be
remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind,” she
said. She also described the UK’s carbon emissions reduction as the result
of “very creative” accounting. The country’s reported 37% reduction in
emissions since 1990 was only 10% when aviation, shipping, imports and
exports were counted, she said. Miss Thunberg said her generation’s future
had been “stolen” so that “a small number of people could make unimaginable
amounts of money”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48017083
admiration but also a sense of responsibility and guilt because I recognise
I am of your parents’ generation. I recognise we have not done nearly
enough to deal with the problem of climate change,” he said. “Suddenly,
thanks to the leadership of Greta and others, it has become inescapable
that we have to act . . . Greta, your voice has been heard and we are all
responsible for making sure that we listen and we respond and that we
change.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e43d91d8-660e-11e9-adc2-05e1b87efaea
Nuclear reactors at risk from flooding due to climate change
Flooding linked to climate change puts beaches, nuclear plants at risk https://www.axios.com/climate-change-flooding-waikiki-beach-nuclear-plants-f2c4da7b-0155-4749-a47d-2e606066ee52.html 22 Apr 19, An increasing risk of flooding across the U.S. from climate change has caused lawmakers — from Hawaii to the East Coast — to consider new measures to protect at-risk areas.
The big picture: The risks span from the nation’s natural jewels to some of its most important infrastructure. Rising sea levels mean that Hawaii’s Waikiki Beach could be underwater within the next 15 to 20 years — and an increasing number of U.S. nuclear plants were never designed to handle the flood risk from climate change.
- State lawmakers are considering spending millions for a coastline protection program aimed at defending the city from regular tidal inundations, AP reports.
- 54 of the 60 nuclear plants in the U.S. aren’t prepared for the flood risks expected due to climate change “Nineteen face three or more threats that they weren’t designed to handle,” Bloomberg reports.
Why the USA media covers climate change so poorly
Why is the US news media so bad at covering climate change? Guardian, Kyle Pope and Mark Hertsgaard, 23 Apr 2019The US news media devotes startlingly little time to climate change – how can newsrooms cover it in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences?
This article is excerpted from a piece published by Columbia Journalism Reviewand the Nation. The Guardian is partnering with CJR and the Nation on a 30 April conference aimed at reframing the way journalists cover climate change.More information about the conference, including a link to RSVP, is here.
Last summer, during the deadliest wildfire season in California’s history, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes got into a revealing Twitter discussion about why US television doesn’t much cover climate change. Elon Green, an editor at Longform, had tweeted, “Sure would be nice if our news networks – the only outlets that can force change in this country – would cover it with commensurate urgency.” Hayes (who is an editor at large for the Nation) replied that his program had tried. Which was true: in 2016, All In With Chris Hayes spent an entire week highlighting the impact of climate change in the US as part of a look at the issues that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were ignoring. The problem, Hayes tweeted, was that “every single time we’ve covered [climate change] it’s been a palpable ratings killer. So the incentives are not great.”
The Twittersphere pounced. “TV used to be obligated to put on programming for the public good even if it didn’t get good ratings. What happened to that?” asked @JThomasAlbert. @GalJaya said, “Your ‘ratings killer’ argument against covering #climatechange is the reverse of that used during the 2016 primary when corporate media justified gifting Trump $5 billion in free air time because ‘it was good for ratings,’ with disastrous results for the nation.”
When @mikebaird17 urged Hayes to invite Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, one of the best climate science communicators around, on to his show, she tweeted that All In had canceled on her twice – once when “I was literally in the studio w[ith] the earpiece in my ear” – and so she wouldn’t waste any more time on it.
“Wait, we did that?” Hayes tweeted back. “I’m very very sorry that happened.”
This spring Hayes redeemed himself, airing perhaps the best coverage on American television yet of the Green New Deal. All In devoted its entire 29 March broadcast to analyzing the congressional resolution, co-sponsored by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, which outlines a plan to mobilize the United States to stave off climate disaster and, in the process, create millions of green jobs. In a shrewd answer to the ratings challenge, Hayes booked Ocasio-Cortez, the most charismatic US politician of the moment, for the entire hour.
Yet at a time when civilization is accelerating toward disaster, climate silence continues to reign across the bulk of the US news media. Especially on television, where most Americans still get their news, the brutal demands of ratings and money work against adequate coverage of the biggest story of our time. Many newspapers, too, are failing the climate test. Last October, the scientists of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report, warning that humanity had a mere 12 years to radically slash greenhouse gas emissions or face a calamitous future in which hundreds of millions of people worldwide would go hungry or homeless or worse. Only 22 of the 50 biggest newspapers in the United States covered that report.
Instead of sleepwalking us toward disaster, the US news media need to remember their Paul Revere responsibilities – to awaken, inform and rouse the people to action. To that end, the Nation and CJR are launching Covering Climate Change: A New Playbook for a 1.5-Degree World, a project aimed at dramatically improving US media coverage of the climate crisis. When the IPCC scientists issued their 12-year warning, they said that limiting temperature rise to 1.5C would require radically transforming energy, agriculture, transportation, construction and other core sectors of the global economy. Our project is grounded in the conviction that the news sector must be transformed just as radically.
The project will launch on 30 April with a conference at the Columbia Journalism School – a working forum where journalists will gather to start charting a new course. We envision this event as the beginning of a conversation that America’s journalists and news organizations must have with one another, as well as with the public we are supposed to be serving, about how to cover this rapidly uncoiling emergency. Judging by the climate coverage to date, most of the US news media still don’t grasp the seriousness of this issue. There is a runaway train racing toward us, and its name is climate change. That is not alarmism; it is scientific fact. We as a civilization urgently need to slow that train down and help as many people off the tracks as possible. It’s an enormous challenge, and if we don’t get it right, nothing else will matter. The US mainstream news media, unlike major news outlets in Europe and independent media in the US, have played a big part in getting it wrong for many years. It’s past time to make amends.
If 1.5C is the new limit for a habitable planet, how can newsrooms tell that story in ways that will finally resonate with their audiences? And given journalism’s deeply troubled business model, how can such coverage be paid for? Some preliminary suggestions. (You can read this story in its entirety at Columbia Journalism Review or The Nation.)
Don’t blame the audience, and listen to the kids. The onus is on news organizations to craft the story in ways that will demand the attention of readers and viewers. The specifics of how to do this will vary depending on whether a given outlet works in text, radio, TV or some other medium and whether it is commercially or publicly funded, but the core challenge is the same.
A majority of Americans are interested in climate change and want to hear what can be done about it. This is especially true of the younger people that news organizations covet as an audience. Even most young Republicans want climate action. And no one is speaking with more clarity now than Greta Thunberg, Alexandria Villaseñor and the other teenagers who have rallied hundreds of thousands of people into the streets worldwide for the School Strike 4 Climate demonstrations.
Establish a diverse climate desk, but don’t silo climate coverage. ……
Learn the science…….
Don’t internalize the spin. ……
Lose the Beltway mindset. …..
Help the heartland…….
Cover the solutions. ,,,,
Don’t be afraid to point fingers. ….
If American journalism doesn’t get the climate story right – and soon – no other story will matter. The news media’s past climate failures can be redeemed only by an immediate shift to more high-profile, inclusive and fearless coverage. Our #CoveringClimateNow project calls on all journalists and news outlets to join the conversation about how to make that happen. As the nation’s founders envisioned long ago, the role of a free press is to inform the people and hold the powerful accountable. These days, our collective survival demands nothing less. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/22/why-is-the-us-news-media-so-bad-at-covering-climate-change
The burning question – our climate crisis is NOW!
In the past 3 months, I brought you the science of climate change direct from specialists publishing top papers. To draw it together, we need a generalist with climate expertise. We need Paul Beckwith. Paul has two Masters degrees. He often teaches climate science at the University of Ottawa. But his tireless effort to teach extends to the Internet. On You tube, Paul Beckwith is by far the biggest teacher of climate science to the world via You tube.
KEY INDICATORS OF ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE
We have a new paper, published April 8th by scientists in Alaska and Denmark. The title is “Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971–2017”. Lead author Jason Box said “The Arctic system is trending away from its 20th century state and into an unprecedented state, with implications not only within but beyond the Arctic.”
Those scientists seemed surprised that temperature was the “smoking gun” for all the changes in the Arctic. (That seems obvious to me, what about you?) On the other hand, the fastest moving ice body on Greenland, The Jakobshavn glacier, has not only slowed down but is gaining ice mass. Paul says that is a temporary phenomenon, and who knows – maybe the glacier as it moved got snagged on some land way down below.
THE LINGERING COLD BLOB IN EASTERN NORTH AMERICA
Could that slowdown in part of Greenland be connected to the long-lasting cold and snow in the North East, including in Paul’s hometown in Ottawa? Paul says he had “a glacier” of ice remaining in his front yard, and we talk about the cold blob of air hovering over eastern North America, punctuated by storms. Here’s his video on that.
Chat on Persistent Cold Blob over North America
The public is so focused on global warming, it is pretty hard to convince people that a depressing cold winter could also be influenced by climate change. Nobody wants to go protest in the cold, but when it’s hot, they want to go outside and enjoy themselves. So far, there doesn’t seem to be a good time to protest. Were there climate school strikes in Ottawa or in Quebec?
Some people think Paul is a radical climate scientist. But really the whole upper echelon of climate research institutes are now radical about climate change. They are practically screaming out warnings of disaster, and we talk about some of those in this interview. But despite Paul’s efforts and mine, the public still isn’t engaged. People fly all over the place, and dream about their next pickup truck with a big gas engine. It is an addictive dream. Do you expect a rapid awakening, or more years of deadly greenhouse gas emissions?
We just had another freak April storm where the temperature was expected to drop 60 degrees in Denver, going from 70 or 80 Fahrenheit to blizzards. Yet another very heavy snow storm hit Montana and Nebraska in April. They are calling it a “bomb cyclone“.
Then we had flooding in the mid-west of the U.S., right in key food production areas. I think that was a major event with long-lasting consequences. Mainstream the media forgot that story already. Of course, Paul Beckwith has a new video about that.
Why is weather in the Northern Hemisphere so weird?
SIMULTANEOUS HEAT WAVES – NEW INTERVIEW COMING UP!
I want to tell listeners about brand new science, still awaiting publication. It announces a new phenomenon in the world: simultaneous heat waves across the planet. Martha Vogel, a climate researcher from ETH Zurich, just presented the findings at a European Geosciences Union press conference in Vienna in the first week of April. Studying heat waves from 1958 to 2018, they discovered that only since 2010 has modern planet Earth experienced multiple extreme heat waves at the same time. For example extreme heat in the Mediterranean might also strike in the Arctic and Russia or North America at the same time. Transcontinental heat: that has terrible implications for food production and a lot more.
My interview with scientist Martha Vogel should be next week on Radio Ecoshock
THE NEW 2018 CLIMATE REPORT FROM THE WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION (WMO)
Paul discusses this report in two videos, starting with this one State of the Climate: NOT Good at All
You can read that full report “WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018” as a .pdf online here.
According to the WMO, in 2018 the heat content of the upper levels of the ocean were the highest ever recorded. That is so dangerous!
People get confused about the difference between ocean HEAT absorption (which is 93%) to greenhouse gas absorption by the sea, (which is 25%). Since 93% of our excess heat goes into the ocean, that means only 7% is causing the disruption we are feeling now! If the ocean takes less carbon dioxide, as scientists predict, then not only will there be more greenhouse gases, but those gases will remain longer, and become a larger share of our actual emissions in the atmosphere. If so, we have to cut off fossil fuels and other greenhouse sources pretty well immediately. Strange to say, but our industrial culture may depend on ocean chemistry and ocean physics.
In a BBC article about the World Meteorological Report for 2018, Australian climate scientist and Professor Samantha Hepburn said:
“We know that if the current trajectory for greenhouse gas concentrations continues, temperatures may increase by 3 – 5 degrees C compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and we have already reached 1 degree.”
Three to five degrees C of warming is utter disaster!
SEA ICE AT BOTH POLES DECLINING
Paul Beckwith says Sea ice may be in that critical slowing down of phase-state before a collapse of sea ice. And for our southern listeners, there has been a huge fall in Antarctic sea ice. Just a few years ago it was still expanding…. https://www.ecoshock.org/2019/04/the-burning-question.html
Nearly 1000 climate protestors arrested in London – and Extinction Rebellion is changing tack
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Extinction Rebellion: The People Risking Their Freedom For Climate Change | HuffPost Reports: UK Extinction Rebellion arrests close to 1,000 as protesters ‘pause rebellion’ ITV 21 Apr 19 Climate change protesters who have stopped traffic in a series of peaceful demonstrations across London will “pause” their rebellion in a bid to achieve their political aims, as the arrest total nears 1,000.Extinction Rebellion (XR) have announced they are switching disruptive tactics for political negotiations as they enter a second week of campaigning to have the Government declare a climate emergency. The number of people arrested in connection with the protests has hit 963 and 40 people have been charged. Continue reading |
We will never stop fighting’: Greta Thunberg joins London climate protest
Humanity is at a crossroads, Greta Thunberg tells Extinction Rebellion, Guardian, Vikram Dodd , Damien Gayleand Mattha Busby 22 Apr 2019
Swedish climate activist’s speech comes amid police action to clear protesters from Waterloo Bridge, Governments will no longer be able ignore the impending climate and ecological crisis, Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, has told Extinction Rebellion protesters gathered at Marble Arch in London.
In a speech on Sunday night where she took aim at politicians who have for too long been able to satisfy demands for action with “beautiful words and promises”, the Swedish 16-year-old said humanity was sitting at a crossroads, but that those gathered had chosen which path they wish to take…….
Her speech came amid police efforts to forcibly clear Extinction Rebellion protesters from Waterloo Bridge as the group debated whether to continue its campaign of mass civil disobedience. Police said on Sunday night they had cleared all the protesters from Parliament Square ……. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/21/extinction-rebellion-london-protesters-offer-pause-climate-action
Britain’s slow path to zero carbon emissions
Extinction Rebellion: what pushes people to drastic action on climate change?
Slow burn? The long road to a zero-emissions UK, Guardian, Robin McKie, Observer science editor, Sun 21 Apr 2019
Extinction Rebellion protesters want a carbon-free UK by 2025. But can the financial and political hurdles be overcome?
Many experts disagree, however. They argue that such an imminent target is completely impractical. “Yes, you could decarbonise Britain by 2025 but the cost of implementing such vast changes at that speed would be massive and hugely unpopular,” says Lord Turner, former chairman of the climate change committee.
Most expect the climate change committee will plump for 2050 as Britain’s ideal decarbonisation date. “2050 is do-able and desirable and would have an insignificant overall cost to the economy,” states Turner, who is now chairman of the Energy Transitions Commission. According to this scenario, developed nations, including Britain, would aim to achieve zero-emissions status by 2050 and then use the decarbonising technologies they have developed to achieve this goal – hydrogen plants, carbon dioxide storage vaults and advanced renewable generators – to help developing nations halt their greenhouse gas emissions by 2060.
Many experts disagree, however. They argue that such an imminent target is completely impractical. “Yes, you could decarbonise Britain by 2025 but the cost of implementing such vast changes at that speed would be massive and hugely unpopular,” says Lord Turner, former chairman of the climate change committee.
Most expect the climate change committee will plump for 2050 as Britain’s ideal decarbonisation date. “2050 is do-able and desirable and would have an insignificant overall cost to the economy,” states Turner, who is now chairman of the Energy Transitions Commission. According to this scenario, developed nations, including Britain, would aim to achieve zero-emissions status by 2050 and then use the decarbonising technologies they have developed to achieve this goal – hydrogen plants, carbon dioxide storage vaults and advanced renewable generators – to help developing nations halt their greenhouse gas emissions by 2060.
And the change has already been reflected in Britain’s power statistics. In 2013, 62.5% of UK electricity was generated by oil, coal and gas stations, while renewable provided only 14.5%. In 2018, the figure for oil, coal and gas had been reduced to 44% while renewables were generating 31.7%. It is a distinct improvement – though we have yet to be given a date when engineers expect the last UK fossil-fuelled power plant to produce its final watts of electricity and to emit its last puffs of carbon dioxide
“Decarbonising UK power production is going well,” says George Day, head of policy for the technology and innovation centre Energy Systems Catapult. “There is a clear path forward.” But as he points out, there are many other sources of carbon dioxide in the UK. “The next big challenge will be heating. Gas boilers are major carbon emitters and dealing with them is going to be very difficult.”
According to Day, about 90% of British people have gas boilers in their homes, most having been fitted relatively recently …
………In the end, it will simply not be possible to reduce Britain’s fossil-fuel emissions to zero, say scientists. To compensate, we will have to take carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. “That is the logical, inevitable consequence of trying to achieve zero net emissions in this country,” argues Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia. “If you are looking for any net zero target then you have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”
This can be done in three ways: naturally, by planting trees and shrubs that absorb carbon dioxide. Or artificially – on a larger scale – the gas can be removed as it is produced at a factory or power station that burns trees for energy.
Or it can be removed by huge numbers of man-made air filters, known as direct air capture. The carbon dioxide can be liquefied and stored underground in underground caverns, or old, depleted gas fields under the North Sea. This is known as carbon capture utilisation and underground storage (CCUS).
“In the end, your choice of replanting or of building underground storage facilities depends on how much carbon you will need to remove,” says Le Quéré. “Most calculations suggest Britain will need to take quite a lot of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to keep its net emissions at zero.”……….
UK carbon emissions have fallen for the sixth year running
This need for speed is shared by many other parts of the zero-emissions programme, as we have seen. It may seem odd given it is unlikely it will reach its conclusion for another three decades. Nevertheless, scientists are adamant that even if choose 2050 for our decarbonisation date, we need to act now.
This urgency of the task is emphasized by Joeri Rogelj at Imperial College London. “If the world limits emissions of carbon dioxide to no more than 420 billion tonnes this century, we will have a two in three chance of keeping global warming down to around 1.5C.
“However, if we go above to 580 billion tonnes then our chances will be reduced to 50-50. The problem is that in 2017 alone, a total of 42 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide was emitted in a single year. By that calculation, we clearly do not have a lot of time to waste.”https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/21/long-road-to-zero-emissions-uk
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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