California abandons nuclear power, New York does the opposite
These two huge states are both going green. But only one is sticking with nuclear, WP
On Monday, though, New York — also a leader when it comes to greening power supplies — announced a very different route. The state’s Public Service Commission approved a Clean Energy Standard backed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s backed Clean Energy Standard. It seeks to get New York to 50 percent renewable electricity by the year 2030 — while also retaining the six nuclear reactors that currently provide more 30 percent of the state’s electricity. (These reactors would not count as part of the renewable 50 percent.)……….
many critics of nuclear energy persist, in the environmental community and elsewhere, and not all observers think New York necessarily made the right move.
“By not making them compete for a place in the low carbon portfolio, the state is almost assuring that the customers are going to pay more than they have to, and that some desirable alternative sources won’t get developed, because nuclear’s place in the picture is locked in,” said Peter Bradford, a former chair of the New York Public Service Commission and an adjunct professor at the Vermont Law School………
All sides will now watch how these two experiments — in New York, and California — play out. Nuclear provides a major stream of what is often termed “baseload” electricity, which is continuous and thus very different from wind and solar, which are much stronger at key times (solar, for instance, in the afternoon) and less available at others. Thus, integrating more wind and solar with less baseload, as California aims to do, presumably puts a greater emphasis on the use of energy efficiency measures (less electricity use over all), or energy storage (using electricity at a different time from when it is generated), to deal with these sources’ intermittency………https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/08/01/why-new-york-state-just-delivered-extremely-good-news-to-the-nuclear-industry/?utm_term=.20097475af56
Huge wildfire getting close to Hanford nuclear reservation
Large fire burning toward Hanford nuclear reservation A fire burning on the Yakima Training Center near Moxee, shown here, has spread into Benton County near the Hanford nuclear reservation. Ronnie Butler Yakima Herald Republic Tri-City Herald,Yakima Herald-Republic and Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, 1 August 16 A large wildfire was burning toward the Hanford nuclear reservation Sunday after spreading from Grant and Yakima counties into Benton County overnight Saturday.
It was one of at least five wildfires burning Sunday in eastern Washington and Oregon, including a 1,000-acre fire that had residents evacuating a rural area near Prosser Sunday evening.
The larger Benton County fire burning toward Hanford, called the Range 12 Fire, was estimated to have burned 60,000 acres or about 94 square miles by early Sunday evening.
Sunday afternoon it was spreading across an unpopulated area between Highways 240 and 241, according to Benton County Emergency Services.
Firefighters were working to stop the fire before it reached the large wildland security zone maintained around the contaminated portion of the nuclear reservation. The security zone, which includes the peak of Rattlesnake Mountain, is part of the Hanford Reach National Monument………http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article92931342.html
Midwest USA’ s sizzling heat carries health dangers
Sizzling Midwest Previews a Hotter Future Climate, Skeptical Science, 29 July 16 Extreme heat waves like the current string of scorching days in the Midwest have become more frequent worldwide in the last 60 years, and climate scientists expect that human-caused global warming will exacerbate the dangerous trend in coming decades. It comes with potentially life-threatening consequences for millions of people.
Research has shown that overall mortality increases by 4 percent during heat waves compared to normal days in the U.S. A study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in 2011 suggested that rising summer temperatures could kill up to 2,200 more people per year in Chicago alone during the last two decades of the 21st century.
“The climate is changing faster than we’ve ever seen during the history of human civilization on this planet, and climate change is putting heat waves on steroids,” Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, said during a news conference on Thursday. “Heat waves are getting more frequent and stronger.”
Temperatures this week soared into the 90s from Minnesota to Iowa, combining with high humidity to send heat indices well above the 100-degree Fahrenheit mark, considered a threshold for conditions dangerous to human health.
Current temperatures in large parts of the Midwest have been rising steadily for more than 100 years, with accelerated warming in the past few decades. According to the 2014 National Climate Assessment, the average temperature in the region increased by more than 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit between 1900 and 2010. Between 1950 and 2010, the rate of increase doubled, and since 1980, the pace of warming is three times faster than between 1900 and 2010…….
“And when nighttime temperatures don’t cool off enough to give us a respite, that’s when we start to see an impact on health. Especially the elderly and people with respiratory problems start flooding emergency rooms.”
“The bottom line is we face a new normal and we’re adapting to it on the city and regional level,” said Christopher B. Coleman, mayor of St. Paul, Minn., and co-chair of the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative. Also speaking during the press conference, he called the Mississippi River Valley an “acute climate impact zone,” and said some of the less obvious impacts of extreme heat includes urban stormwater runoff that creates thermal pollution when it hits hot pavement……
“The health consequences of climate change run an entire gamut, from worsening chronic disease, to an increase in vector and waterborne illnesses and disruption to food safety,” said Rev. Miriam Burnett, president of Resource and Promotion of Health Alliance, Inc, a faith-based nonprofit focusing on public health in African-American communities. Extremeheat events even have social consequences, including putting strain on human interactions and generating anger and hostility, she said.
Scientists say there’s little doubt that the buildup of heat trapping greenhouse gases is already causing more deadly heat waves worldwide. The increase has been widely documented and summarized in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changeassessment…http://www.skepticalscience.com/sizzling-midwest-previews-hotter-climate.html
Philadelphia march of 10,000 protestors demanding climate action
Over 10,000 Climate Protesters March in Philadelphia on Day Before Democratic National Convention DeSmog Blog By Sharon Kelly • Monday, July 25, 2016 Thousands of climate activists, public health advocates and others arrived in the streets before the first day of the Democratic National Convention, despite blazing heat that was just one degree shy of the hottest July 24 on record in Philadelphia. With temperatures in the mid-90s, a crowd that organizers estimated included over 10,000 marchers converged on Independence Mall near the home of the Liberty Bell.
“We’ve just wrapped up a Republican National Convention filled with climate denial and extreme energy talking points. Tomorrow we start the Democratic Convention, and the question to all these leaders and politicians is: Are you willing to take the action that science demands, or are you just another kind of climate denier?” said Drew Hudson, Director of Environmental Action. “Science tells us we need to keep 80% or more of fossil fuels in the ground: that means a ban on fracking, a halt to dirty trade deals like the TPP, and no more use of eminent domain for polluter gain. I’m marching today to tell all elected officials, if you’re not down to #KeepItInTheGround, you’re just another climate denier.”
Many of the protesters were local — noteworthy in a city long regarded as a Democratic stronghold. ……..
The protests in Philadelphia were already larger than those that confronted Trump and the Republican party in Ohio, according to those who attended both events. No arrests were reported on Sunday in Philadelphia, though one person was transported by ambulance to receive medical care for heat exhaustion.
At one point, the crowd of marchers nearly stretched the full length of the route between City Hall and Independence Mall.
“Our elected leaders must listen to the people,” said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch, one of the main organizers of the protest, “which is why over a thousand groups from all 50 states endorsed the March for a Clean Energy Revolution and called for the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and focus on renewable energy options that will create jobs, not destroy lives.” http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/07/25/over-10-000-climate-protesters-march-philadelphia-day-democratic-national-convention
Climate change may be accelerating – Antarctic study reveals Earth’s lessened ability to absorb CO2
Earth’s ability to absorb CO2 reduced by global warming, Antarctic study finds http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-29/global-warming-reduces-earth-co2-absorption-arctic-study/7673032 By Stephanie Smail Global warming reduces the amount of carbon dioxide the earth can absorb, which could amplify climate change, landmark research in Antarctica has revealed.
CSIRO researchers extracted ice bubbles in pre-industrial polar ice to measure the planet’s sensitivity to changes in temperature.
They found that for every degree Celsius of global temperature rise, the equivalent of 20 parts per million less CO2 is stored by the land biosphere.
CSIRO principle research scientist Dr David Etheridge said the research confirmed the relationship for the first time and revealed how it impacted the cycles of carbon between land, ocean, and the atmosphere.
“That’s useful to know. It’s a bit concerning because it’s going to amplify the climate change, but it’s good news in a way because it can be used in modelling.”
The research team used ice core samples from the Australian Antarctic Program’s unique Law Dome site, together with ice cores from the British Antarctic Survey.
The study focused on CO2 changes preserved in ice before, during, and after a naturally-cool period known as the Little Ice Age (1500 to 1750 AD).
“It gives global planners something to work with, to help estimate what CO2 emissions are allowable to limit global warming to one and a half or two degrees Celsius,” Dr Etheridge said.
The finding is a result of a collaboration between CSIRO, the Seconda Universita di Napoli, University of Melbourne, British Antarctic Survey, University of East Anglia, Australian Antarctic Division, University of Tasmania, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.
Accuracy of climate modelling in predicting ocean and atmospheric warming
since 1992, the models have been within 3 % of the measurements. In my mind, this agreement is the strongest vindication of the models ever found, and in fact, in our study we suggest that matches between climate models and ocean warming should be a major test of the models
Climate models are accurately predicting ocean and global warming, Skeptical Science 27 July 2016 by John Abraham
For those of us who are concerned about global warming, two of the most critical questions we ask are, “how fast is the Earth warming?” and “how much will it warm in the future?
The first question can be answered in a number of ways. For instance, we can actually measure the rate of energy increase in the Earth’s system (primarily through measuring changing ocean temperatures). Alternatively, we can measure changes in the net inflow ofheat at the top of the atmosphere using satellites. We can also measure the rate of sea-level rise to get an estimate of the warming rate.
Since much of sea-level rise is caused by thermal expansion of water, knowledge of the water-level rise allows us to deduce the warming rate. We can also use climate models (which are sophisticated computer calculations of the Earth’s climate) or our knowledge from Earth’s past (paleoclimatology).
Many studies use combinations of these study methods to attain estimates and typically the estimates are that the planet is warming at a rate of perhaps 0.5 to 1 Watt per square meter of Earth’s surface area. However, there is some discrepancy among the actual numbers.
So assuming we know how much heat is being accumulated by the Earth, how can we predict what the future climate will be? The main tool for this is climate models (although there are other independent ways we can study the future). With climate models, we can play “what-if scenarios” and input either current conditions or hypothetical conditions and watch the Earth’s climate evolve within the simulation.
Two incorrect but nevertheless consistent denial arguments are that the Earth isn’t warming and that climate models are inaccurate. A new study, published by Kevin Trenberth, Lijing Cheng, and others (I was also an author) answers these questions.
The study was just published in the journal Ocean Sciences; a draft of it is available here. In this study, we did a few new things. First, we presented a new estimate of oceanheating throughout its full depth (most studies only consider the top portion of the ocean). Second, we used a new technique to learn about ocean temperature changes in areas where there are very few measurements. Finally, we used a large group of computer models to predict warming rates, and we found excellent agreement between the predictions and the measurements.
According to the measurements, the Earth has gained 0.46 Watts per square meter between 1970 and 2005. Since, 1992 the rate is higher (0.75 Watts per square meter) and therefore shows an acceleration of the warming. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent of 5,400,000,000,000 (or 5,400 billion) 60-watt light bulbs running continuously day and night. In my view, these numbers are the most accurate measurements of the rate at which the Earth is warming.
What about the next question – how did the models do? Amazingly well. From 1970 through 2005, the models on average showed a warming of 0.41 Watts per square meter and from 1992-2005 the models gave 0.77 Watts per meter squared. This means that since 1992, the models have been within 3 % of the measurements. In my mind, this agreement is the strongest vindication of the models ever found, and in fact, in our study we suggest that matches between climate models and ocean warming should be a major test of the models……..http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-accurately-predicting-ocean-global-warming.html
Hottest year on record – 2016 shaping up to be that
2016 set to be world’s hottest year on record, says UN, Guardian, 26 July 16
June marked 14th month of record heat for land and oceans with average global temperature reaching 1.3C above the pre-industrial era The world is on track for its hottest year on record and levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have reached new highs, further fuelling global warming, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said.
June marked the 14th consecutive month of record heat for land and oceans, the United Nations agency said on Thursday. It called for the speedy implementation of a pact reached last December to limit climate change by shifting from fossil fuels to green energy by 2100.
The average temperature in the first six months of 2016 was 1.3C warmer than the pre-industrial era in the late 19th century, according to Nasa.
“This underlines more starkly than ever the need to approve and implement the Paris climate change agreement, and to speed up the shift to low carbon economies and renewable energy,” said the WMO secretary general, Petteri Taalas…….https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/21/2016-worlds-hottest-year-on-record-un-wmo
USA’s African Methodist Episcopal church speaks out on climate change
World can’t afford to silence us’: black church leaders address climate
change
One of the largest and oldest black churches in the US warns that black people are disproportionally harmed by global warming and fossil fuel pollution, Guardian, Oliver Milman, 24 July 16, African American religious leaders have added their weight to calls for action on climate change, with one of the largest and oldest black churches in the US warning that black people are disproportionally harmed by global warming and fossil fuel pollution.
The African Methodist Episcopal church has passed its first resolution in its 200-year history devoted to climate change, calling for a swift transition to renewable energy.
“We can move away from the dirty fuels that make us sick and shift toward safe, clean energy like wind and solar that help make every breath our neighbors and families take a healthy one,” states the resolution, which also points to research showing that black children are four times as likely as white children to die from asthma.
“Damage to our climate puts the health of children, elderly, and those with chronic illnesses at greater risk and disproportionately impacts African Americans. We believe it is our duty to commit to taking action and promoting solutions that will help make our families and communities healthier and stronger,” stated Bishop John White, president of the council of bishops of the AME church.
The resolution follows an open letter sent by African American clergy last year that called for political leaders to take “bold action to address climate change”……..
Dupont-Walker said that the church’s voter mobilization campaign will work throughout the 2016 election cycle to question candidates on climate change. Local officials and landlords will also be put under pressure over inadequate housing and infrastructure that helps spread pollution to black communities.
According to the NAACP, African Americans emit far less carbon dioxide per person compared with white people and yet will bear the brunt of heat-related deaths, due to the concentration of black people in cities…….https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/24/african-methodist-episcopal-church-climate-change-letter
Heatwave deaths linked to climate change
Study links heatwave deaths in London and Paris to climate change, Skeptical Science 23 July 16 [good charts etc] This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Robert McSweeney In 2003, more than 70,000 people across Europe died in a sweltering heatwave that spanned much of the summer. France was among the worst-affected countries, with 15,000 deaths in August alone. In the UK, the summer saw more than 2,000 heat-related fatalities.
A new first-of-a-kind study works out how many of the deaths in Paris and London are down to the heatwave being intensified by human-caused climate change. The findings suggest that 506 of the 735 summer fatalities in Paris in 2003, and 64 of the 315 in London, were a result of human influence on the climate.
Human influence The European summer heatwave of 2003 has been something of a focal point for scientists looking at if and how human-caused climate change influences extreme weather events.
In 2004, the heatwave was the subject of the first ever attribution study, which found thatclimate warming from human activity had at least doubled the likelihood of such an event. In 2014, another study found that a similar “extremely hot” summer in Europe has become 10 times more likely over the last 10-15 years because of climate change.
Taking this a step further, the new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, attributes the number of deaths during the 2003 heatwave to our warming climate.
The study makes use of the weather@home project, where members of the public offer spare capacity on their home computers for scientists to run model simulations.
The researchers ran thousands of simulations of European weather in 2003. One set of model runs simulated the weather according to the climate as it was – i.e. in a world warmed by past greenhouse gas emissions. The second set simulated the weather in a hypothetical world with no human influences on climate.
The researchers then compared the heat and humidity between the hypothetical world and the one better matched to reality to see how they affect the number of premature deaths in the summer of the same year. Lead author Dr Daniel Mitchell, a researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, explains to Carbon Brief:
“We have a statistical relationship between the number of additional deaths per degree of warming. This is specific to a certain city, and changes a lot between cities. We use climate simulations to calculate the heat in 2003, and in 2003 without human influences. Then we compare the simulations, along with the observations.”
The authors’ comparison shows that human-induced climate change was responsible for 70% of heat-related deaths in central Paris, and 20% in Greater London.
This means, of the 735 heat-related deaths in Paris during the summer of 2003, 506 were due to human-caused climate change. For London, it was 64 out of 315.
Heat-related deaths …….Between June and August 2003, the total rate of heat-related deaths was 4.5 per 100,000 people for London and 34 per 100,000 for Paris, the paper says. Note, these figures differ from those in the charts below [on original] because they’re totals for the whole summer, rather than the heat-deaths per day, which the charts show.
As the study looked at just two affected cities, the total number of deaths due to the influence of climate change on the heatwave will be much higher, the paper notes:
“London and Paris are just two of a large number of cities that were impacted by the 2003 heatwave, therefore the total European-wide mortality count attributable to anthropogenic climate change is likely to be orders of magnitude larger than this.”
Future heatwaves The study is the first to apply a standard attribution methodology to look at mortality during a specific extreme weather event, says Dr Nikos Christidis from the Met Office, who wasn’t involved in this study, but authored another about European heatwaves. He tells Carbon Brief about the benefits of using this approach:
“An obvious one is that the study analyses mortality – i.e. a direct impact measure – rather than temperature – an indirect impact measure, which might be more useful to some decision makers.”……..http://www.skepticalscience.com/study-links-heatwave-deaths-london-paris-climate-change.html
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Links between global warming and massive heat waves
What science can tell us about the links between global warming and massive heat waves, WP, By Chris Mooney July 21 The United States is witnessing a massive, dangerous heat wave, as a huge system of high pressure covers the central part of the country. It’s a big enough deal that yesterday President Obama even tweeted about it, including a map showing the maximum heat index in some parts of the Midwest and Southeast reaching 110 or 115 degrees on Saturday.
Here in Washington, temperatures could break 100 degrees Friday or over the weekend.
[D.C.’s summer heat is rapidly becoming more oppressive, analysis finds]
This will, inevitably, lead to much talk of climate change in the coming days. So it’s important to separate the scientific wheat from the chaff and figure out what science can, and can’t, reliably say about the link between an event like this and a warming planet — especially in a year that, on a global scale, has shattered past temperature records for six out of the last six months.
[June sets another global temperature record, extending a blazingly hot year]
And the gist is that when it comes to extreme heat waves in general — heat waves that appear out of the norm in some way, for instance in their intensity, frequency, or duration — while scientists never say individual events are “caused” by climate change, they are getting less and less circumspect about making some connection….
[It’s official: We can now say global warming made some weather events worse]……we’ve definitely already had changes in not only “long-term mean conditions,” but in heat waves themselves. The U.S. National Climate Assessment found that U.S. heat waves have already “become more frequent and intense,” that the U.S. is shattering high temperature records far more frequently than it is shattering low temperature records (just as you’d expect), and that it is seeing correspondingly fewer cold spells.
As for future projections, meanwhile, the assessment added that “Climate models project that the same summertime temperatures that ranked among the hottest 5% in 1950-1979 will occur at least 70% of the time by 2035-2064 in the U.S. if global emissions of heat-trapping gases continue to grow.”…..
“With every heat wave, probably the number one question is, is it climate change, or is it not? Well the answer is, it’s both,” said Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe on a press call Thursday. “We get heat waves naturally, but climate change is amping them up, it’s giving them that extra energy, to make them even more serious, and have even greater impacts.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/07/21/what-science-can-tell-us-about-the-links-between-global-warming-and-massive-heat-waves/?wpisrc=nl_green&wpmm=1
World’s climate endangered by Russia’s wildfires
Russian wildfires put key climate change resource at risk, Japan Times, 22 July 16 AFP-JIJI, REUTERS JUL 22, 2016 MOSCOW – Russia’s practice of leaving massive wildfires to burn out of control in sprawling stretches of Siberia puts at risk a key global resource for absorbing climate-warming emissions: its trees.
The blazes are consuming millions of hectares of pristine Boreal forests in Russia, which are second only to the world’s tropical jungles in capturing planet-warming carbon emissions.
At the same time, the drier and harsher conditions associated with a warmer climate — June was the hottest ever recorded — are contributing to the fires becoming ever bigger and more common.
The World Meteorological Organization said Thursday that not only is the Earth on track for its hottest year on record, it is warming at a faster rate than expected.
Temperatures for the first six months of the year, coupled with an early and fast Arctic sea ice melt and “new highs” in heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels, point to quickening climate change, it said.
Russia’s forests annually absorb a net 500 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, said Anatoly Shvidenko, who spent decades in the Soviet forestry system and served as an expert for the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).
That figure is the equivalent to the emissions put off over a year by 534 coal-burning power plants.
With expected climate change and current levels of forest protection in Russia, “forest fire danger and carbon emissions will double or triple by the end of the century,” added Shvidenko, saying authorities pay less attention to the problem now than in the 1990s or the Soviet era.
The thinning forests are most evident in northern Siberia, where fires can ravage plant life and shallow roots, making it impossible for trees to regrow for centuries.
Russian forest scientists call the process “green desertification,” said Shvidenko……
Scientists have been sounding the alarm over the fate of the planet’s boreal forests, also called taiga, which wrap around the northern hemisphere covering vast areas mainly in Canada and Russia, where they constitute 90 percent of all forest cover.
Wildfires in Canada this year have already amounted to the costliest disaster in the country’s history by causing $2.75 billion in damage, displacing about 100,000 people and sweeping through more than a million acres (405,000 hectares) of forest.
In Russia, 43 million hectares of forest managed by the national forest agency was lost between 2000 and 2011, mostly in the Far North, Shvidenko said, an area almost the size of Iraq.
This, combined with growing wildfires, could alter the role of Russia’s forests as a carbon sink, currently second only to the world’s tropical forests…….http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/07/22/world/science-health-world/russian-wildfires-put-key-climate-change-resource-risk/#.V5LjXdJ97Gi
Climate change threatens economies, as workers hampered by increasing heat
Hotter Temperatures Threaten Southeast Asian Economies: Chart http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-19/too-hot-to-work, Jessica Shankleman July 19, 2016 Rising global temperatures may cost global economies more than $2 trillion by 2030, restricting working hours in some of the poorest parts of the world, according to United Nations research published Tuesday. As many as 43 countries, especially those in Southeast Asia, will experience declines in their economies because of heat stress, says Tord Kjellstrom, a director at the Health and Environment International Trust, based in Nelson, New Zealand.“With heat stress, you cannot keep up the same intensity of work, and we’ll see reduced speed of work and more rest in labor-intensive industries,” he said.
As with tobacco, the climate wars are going to court
Déjà vu: as with tobacco, the climate wars are going to court Skeptical Science
18 July 2016 by dana1981, JohnMashey Investigative journalism has uncovered a “web of denial” in which polluting industries pay “independent” groups to disseminate misinformation to the public and policymakers. The same groups and tactics were employed first by the tobacco industry, then fossil fuel companies. Big Tobacco has been to court and lost; now it’s Big Oil’s turn. Political leaders are choosing sides in this war.
Elizabeth Warren Rips Think Tanks & Policy Groups For Fake Climate Change Research
Research by Inside Climate News revealed that Exxon did top notch climate science research in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which revealed the dangers its products posed via climate change. Soon thereafter, Exxon launched misinformation campaigns by funding “think tanks” and front groups to manufacture doubt about climate science and the expert consensus on human-caused global warming.Exxon wasn’t alone. Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and other fossil companies have similarly funneled vast sums of money to these groups. Last week, Senate Democrats, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and vice presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Al Franken signed a Resolution expressing congressional disapproval of the fossil fuel industry’s misinformation campaign.19 Senate Democrats also took to the floor of the Senate to speak out against the web of denial, with repeated references to the tobacco/fossil connections.
Senator Elizabeth Warren speaking about the web of denial on the Senate floor.
The climate battle goes to court
The fossil fuel industry has already put forth its best scientific argument in court,and lost. Now 17 state attorneys general, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, have formed a coalition to investigate ExxonMobil’s activities. As Schneiderman put it:
The First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, does not give you the right to commit fraud
However, Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Science Committee, along with his Republican colleagues last week issued subpoenas to Schneiderman and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, accusing them of violating Exxon’s First Amendment rights. As Smith claimed:
The Committee has a responsibility to protect First Amendment rights of companies, academic institutions, scientists, and nonprofit organizations. That is why the Committee is obligated to ask for information from the attorneys general and others.
In this battle of First Amendment claims, Big Oil & Coal use the same argument as Big Tobacco, who lost.
The fossil fuel industry copied the tobacco playbook
Last century, we saw a similar battle with tobacco. By the 1950s, the tobacco industry knew that its products caused cancer and other diseases. They still marketed their harmful products to children, and soon created pseudo-academic institutes like the Council for Tobacco Research to cast doubt on smoking’s damage. However, the institutes’ connections to the tobacco industry were too obvious; they wanted “independent” voices.In the 1980s the Koch brothers started creating a vast web of “think tanks” that could simulate credible independence, funded via dark money, often tax-exempt. Big Tobacco eagerly joined, to “quarterback behind the scenes.” They contributed great marketing talent, some later hired by Kochs.As extensively documented at DeSmogBlog, Big Tobacco has long funded science-denying think tanks, such as the Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, George Marshall Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and Manhattan Institute, to name a few. ExxonMobil later funded these same groups.The fossil fuel industry has adopted the tobacco industry’s playbook, and shared the same web of denial. The Senate Resolution made this point, calling out both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries for having:
(A) developed a sophisticated and deceitful campaign that funded think tanks and front groups, and paid public relations firms to deny, counter, andobfuscate peer-reviewed science; and(B) used that misinformation campaign to mislead the public and cast doubt in order to protect their financial interest
Their tactics have grown more sophisticated, for example using money anonymizers like Donors Trust to ensure their “dark money” becomes even harder to trace.
The tobacco industry lost in court
In 1999, the US Justice Department filed a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit against the major tobacco companies and their associated industry groups. In 2006, US District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ruledthat the tobacco industry’s campaign to “maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the public” about the health hazards of smoking amounted to a racketeering enterprise. She wrote a clear statement, appealed fruitlessly by tobacco companies:
The First Amendment Does Not Protect Defendants’ False and Misleading Public Statements
The attorneys general investigating Exxon have a strong case that the fossil fuel industry is similarly guilty of racketeering by deceiving the public in order to maximize profits. Exxon and other fossil fuel companies knew of the dangers of carbon pollution more than three decades ago, and yet funneled tens of millions of dollars to think tanks that disseminate misinformation to try to convince the public and policymakers otherwise.Sharon Eubanks led the Justice Department trial team, as documented in the book Bad Acts: The Racketeering Case Against the Tobacco Industry and was a key contributor to the report Establishing Accountability for Climate Change Damages. Of the Exxon case, she said:
I think a RICO action is plausible and should be consideredThe First Amendment defense of the fossil fuel industry by House Republicans simply doesn’t hold water. Defending the fossil fuel industry today is no different than defending the tobacco industry in the 1990s, as did Lamar Smith’s colleague“Smokey Joe” Barton (R-TX).Unsurprisingly, oil & gas is the top industry donor to Lamar Smith. History books will reflect poorly on those who sold out millions of peoples’ health for personal gain or industry profits, and on those who worked to destabilize the climate on which future generations will rely for the sake of their own political power orExxonMobil’s record profits. http://www.skepticalscience.com/deja-vu-climate-wars-going-to-court-like-tobacco.html
The $US2 trillions cost of climate change, as places too hot to work in
Many places ‘too hot to work’ by 2030
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/many-places-too-hot-to-work-by-2030/news-story/67761e405a9405d45d94279104016f7c Beh Lih Yi, AAP
It showed that in Southeast Asia alone, up to 20 per cent of annual work hours may already be lost in jobs with exposure to extreme heat with the figures set to double by 2050 as the effects of climate change deepen.
Across the globe, 43 countries will see a fall in their gross domestic product (GDP) due to reduced productivity, the majority of them in Asia including Indonesia, Malaysia, China, India and Bangladesh, Tord Kjellstrom, a director at the New Zealand-based Health and Environment International Trust, said. Indonesia and Thailand could see their GDP reduced by six per cent in 2030, while in China GDP could be reduced by 0.8 per cent and in India by 3.2 per cent.
Kjellstrom authored one of six papers on the impact of climate change on health that were put together by the United Nations University’s International Institute for Global Health in Kuala Lumpur and published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health.
Kjellstrom warned that the lowest-paid workers – those in heavy labour, agricultural and manufacturing – were most at risk of exposure to extreme heat.
The other papers in the series showed around 2.1 million people worldwide died between 1980 and 2012 due to nearly 21,000 natural catastrophes such as floods, mudslides, extreme heat, drought, high winds or fires.
In Asia Pacific, 1.2 billon people have been affected by 1215 disasters – mostly floods, cyclones and landslides – since 2000.
The first three months of 2016 have broken temperature records and 2015 was the planet’s warmest year since records began in the 19th century.
UK and Germany of backtracking on the spirit of the Paris climate deal, funding fossil fuels
UN criticises UK and Germany for betraying Paris climate deal
Climate change envoy singles out both countries for subsidising the fossil fuel industry and says the UK has lost its position as a climate leader, Guardian, Adam Vaughan, 18 July 16, Ban Ki-moon’s climate change envoy has accused the UK and Germany of backtracking on the spirit of the Paris climate deal by financing the fossil fuel industry through subsidies.
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and UN special envoy on climate change and El Niño, said she had to speak out after Germany promised compensation for coal power and the UK provided tax breaks for oil and gas.
Governments in Paris last year not only pledged to phase out fossil fuels in the long term but to make flows of finance consistent with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
“They’ve [the British government] introduced new tax breaks for oil and gas in 2015 that will cost the UK taxpayer billions between 2015 and 2020, and at the same time they’ve cut support for renewables and for energy efficiency,” she told the Guardian…..
The criticism comes as Theresa May’s government has come under fire at home and abroad for its leadership on climate change after it abolished the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Senior figures such as the outgoing UN climate change chief have urged the UK not to abandon its climate commitments as it leaves the EU. “Let us remember that the Brexit vote was not about climate change,” said Christiana Figueres.
Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green party, said: “This damning indictment of the UK’s energy policy comes just days after our new prime minister scrapped the Department of Energy and Climate Change and appointed an environment secretary who has consistently voted against measures to tackle climate change.
“I urge Theresa May to listen carefully to Robinson’s remarks and start reversing the damaging policies put in place by her predecessor – like giving tax breaks to fossil fuel companies while cutting subsidies for renewables.”
Robinson said that while Germany had made some positive steps such as aiding developing countries on climate change, it was sending mixed messages.
Germany says its on track to end coal subsidies by 2018 but the German government is also introducing new mechanisms that provide payment to power companies for their ability to provide a constant supply of electricity, even if they are polluting forms, such as diesel and coal,” she said. She called on Germany to make a real commitment to get out of coal.
But she said her criticism was far from limited to the two countries. “We want all countries to end [fossil fuel] subsidies,” she said…..
The likely US Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, has said he would try to unpick the deal, but Robinson said if it was ratified by the US this year “unwinding it would be very prolonged and difficult. I sincerely hope we won’t be facing that problem.”
However Hillary Clinton would be good on climate because she had been pushed by Bernie Sanders to adopt an ambitious climate change platform, she said.
Robinson said she been to Ethiopia recently and seen firsthand the way manmade climate change was exacerbating natural climate phenomenons such as El Niño, which brings drought to some parts of the world, and flooding to others. “I saw so many malnourished children, and it’s not tolerable.”…….https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/18/un-criticises-uk-and-german-for-betraying-the-spirit-of-the-paris-climate-deal
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