With concerted effort, world could phase out fossil fuels within a decade
Fossil fuels could be phased out worldwide in a decade, says new study http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/uos-ffc041516.php UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX The worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade, according to an article published by a major energy think tank in the UK.
Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, believes that the next great energy revolution could take place in a fraction of the time of major changes in the past.
But it would take a collaborative, interdisciplinary, multi-scalar effort to get there, he warns. And that effort must learn from the trials and tribulations from previous energy systems and technology transitions.
In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture.
Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use.
But this time the future could be different, he says – the scarcity of resources, the threat of climate change and vastly improved technological learning and innovation could greatly accelerate a global shift to a cleaner energy future.
The study highlights numerous examples of speedier transitions that are often overlooked by analysts. For example, Ontario completed a shift away from coal between 2003 and 2014; a major household energy programme in Indonesia took just three years to move two-thirds of the population from kerosene stoves to LPG stoves; and France’s nuclear power programme saw supply rocket from four per cent of the electricity supply market in 1970 to 40 per cent in 1982.
Each of these cases has in common strong government intervention coupled with shifts in consumer behaviour, often driven by incentives and pressure from stakeholders. Professor Sovacool says: “The mainstream view of energy transitions as long, protracted affairs, often taking decades or centuries to occur, is not always supported by the evidence.
“Moving to a new, cleaner energy system would require significant shifts in technology, political regulations, tariffs and pricing regimes, and the behaviour of users and adopters.
“Left to evolve by itself – as it has largely been in the past – this can indeed take many decades. A lot of stars have to align all at once.
“But we have learnt a sufficient amount from previous transitions that I believe future transformations can happen much more rapidly.”
In sum, although the study suggests that the historical record can be instructive in shaping our understanding of macro and micro energy transitions, it need not be predictive.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in grave danger from global warming
Now the scientists have found that the coping mechanism barrier reef corals use to prepare themselves to face warm summer water is also under threat from global warming, and from human activities such as agriculture, shipping, and fishing.
“As temperature warms, the evidence is that this protective mechanism will no longer function
How the Great Barrier Reef is going from bad to worse Christian Science
Monitor, 14 Apr 16 Though the corals of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef historically have managed to adjust to gradually warming seawater of the summer months, they will likely lose their defenses when the ocean warms overall in the near future, say scientists. (at left – coral bleaching )This was the latest finding from a team of American and Australian coral reef experts from James Cook University, the University of Queensland, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
These same scientists recently reported that their aerial surveys of some of the 3,000 coral reefs that make up this iconic natural wonder off Australia’s northeastern coast have showed that coral bleaching this year is the worst that has ever been observed. This is largely due to a recurring weather event known as El Niño, a storm system that is expected to become more frequent and more severe in the future.
I agree that El Niño is a natural variability; it’s a part of nature, but that variation in patterns and temperatures is superimposed upon a trend of warming,” Scott Heron, a NOAA coral reef scientist based in Australia, tells The Christian Science Monitor in an interview. “There are ups and downs, but now there are just higher ups than ever before, and the downs are not as low,” he says.
Coral bleaching happens when ocean temperatures rise to a point that zooxanthellae – tiny algae that live on corals and provide them with nutrients and their radiant colors – leave their coral homes, thereby rendering coral white or “bleached.” When corals go without zooxanthellae for too long, they die. This affects about a quarter of marine species that depend on coral reefs for shelter, and the humans who depend on those species for their livelihoods.
This year’s is the third major bleaching event in recent history for the 2,300-kilometer-long Great Barrier Reef, which is home to one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. But this one is much worse than the bleaching events that occurred in 1998 and 2002, say scientists who recently found bleaching in almost 1,100 kilometers of northern barrier reef, from the island of New Guinea to the Australian coastal city of Cairns. The researchers estimate that 30 to 50 percent of the corals there are already be dead.
Now the scientists have found that the coping mechanism barrier reef corals use to prepare themselves to face warm summer water is also under threat from global warming, and from human activities such as agriculture, shipping, and fishing.
“As temperature warms, the evidence is that this protective mechanism will no longer function,” C. Mark Eakin, a scientist with NOAA Coral Reef Watch, tells the Monitor in an interview…….
The most viable immediate remedy, say paper authors, is to reduce the carbon emissions that cause warming and restrict other human activities near the reefs that add more stress, including runoff from agriculture, unsustainable fishing practices, and physical damage to the reef from ship groundings.
“These are all human stressors on reef that have to be minimized or eliminated for reefs to be able to bounce back from these bleaching events, even in a decade or two,” Eakin says.http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0414/How-the-Great-Barrier-Reef-is-going-from-bad-to-worse
Rapid collapse of ice shelves in Antarctica
Scientists Are Watching in Horror as Ice Collapses Everything we learn about ice shows that it is disturbingly fragile, even in Antarctica. National Geographic, By Douglas Fox APRIL 12, 2016 “……..The catastrophic collapse of Larsen A and several other ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula has yielded important lessons about the vulnerability of Antarctica’s ice sheets to a warming climate. A new analysis of ice sheet instability, published March 31 in Nature, took the public by surprise when it projected that global sea level might rise six feet by 2100, and as much as 40 to 50 feet by the year 2500. (Read “Why the New Sea Level Alarm Can’t Be Ignored.”) That study seemed to double, overnight, the amount of sea level rise that can be expected. But many glacial scientists weren’t surprised. The new estimate is based on insights that have emerged slowly, over 20 years, in the aftermath of these ice shelf collapses.
The Aftermath of an Ice Shelf Collapse
Explore the fjords along the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula today, and it’s easy to find landscapes that look scarred even to the casual observer. …..
The glacier, now absent, had retreated several miles into its fjord. The fjord used to hold 2,000 feet (600 meters) of ice. Now it held 2,000 feet of seawater instead.
The aftermath of an ice shelf collapse is obvious in Sjögren’s fjord. When the ice shelf in front of Sjögren disintegrated in 1995, it removed the buttress that stabilized the glacier. The glacier started sliding into the sea at twice its original speed. Sjögren erupted in crevasses and thinned by several hundred feet as it stretched. After a few years, the glacier had retreated miles into its fjord as icebergs splintered off the glacier’s front faster than the ice could flow forward…….
Every ice shelf that disintegrated along the Antarctic Peninsula has shown the same pattern: summer melting of its top layers, winter refreezing of those top layers into icy crusts able to hold large melt ponds, and the re-exposure of long-buried crevasses.
For all of these ice shelves, the moment of death occurred suddenly. Each collapse began when water from the melt ponds drained into the crevasses. The weight of the water drove the cracks deeper—like a wedge, says Ted Scambos, a glaciologist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who discovered the process. These fluid wedges eventually broke through the bottom of the ice shelf, calving off one iceberg, then another and another—a process called hydrofracturing that can devour an ice shelf nearly the size of Rhode Island in a matter of hours or days……..
Ice loss may have begun at a narrow beachhead in Antarctica, at the north end of the Antarctic Peninsula, but it has expanded on multiple fronts, as new regions of ice come into play every several years. As warm summer temperatures push farther south, so will the problems of melt ponding, ice shelf disintegration, and ice cliff collapse, which drive the rapid retreat of ice. (Read more about how calving causes mini-tsunamis daily in Antarctica.)
Scattered melt ponds already appear on some of the ice shelves that surround the Antarctic mainland, much farther south than any that have collapsed so far. The amount of ice lost each year from all of Antarctica’s ice shelves has increased 12-fold between 1994 and 2012.
Aside from warm air, the fringes of Antarctica’s ice are under assault from another source—warming ocean currents that melt the undersides of ice shelves. (Read more about research on what climate change will mean for whales.)……..http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160412-ice-sheet-collapse-antarctica-sea-level-rise/
Widespread support for Church of England’s stand against Exxon Mobil
Church of England takes on energy giant ExxonMobil http://www.christiantoday.com/article/church.of.england.takes.on.energy.giant.exxonmobil/83931.htm Mark Woods CHRISTIAN TODAY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR 13 April 2016 The Church Commissioners have won widespread support for a move to put pressure on energy giant ExxonMobil to disclose the impact of climate change policy on its business.
The Church Commissioners manage a fund of around £6.7 billion, whose revenues are used to support the Church of England. The Commissioners co-filed a shareholder motion with the New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. It asks Exxon to disclose the effect on its business if measures to restrict global warming to two degrees are successful.
More than 30 institutional investors have so far said they will vote for the motion.
Exxon’s competitors Shell and BP have already agreed to disclose how much they will be impacted by efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions. They were targeted by similar shareholder proposals co-filed in 2015 by the Church Commissioners and other investors. Exxon had attempted to have the resolution struck down by the Securities and Exchange Commission but its request was denied last month.
Church Commissioners spokesman Edward Mason said: “We are delighted with the scale of support this resolution has received so far. The resolution is part of a much wider trend following the Paris Agreement for investors to ask companies to improve disclosure on how they are positioned for the risks and opportunities posed by climate change.”
Exxon has funded groups spreading information denying human-induced climate change and lobbying politicians against climate change legislation. While it pledged to cease doing so in 2007, a Guardian report last July claimed it was continuing the practice.
It has a long history of rejecting shareholder motions on climate change and of rejecting the scientific consensus.
When Exxon challenged the most recent shareholder motion, DiNapoli said: “ExxonMobil risks becoming an outlier among its peers who have publicly supported reining in climate change.
“As investors, we need to know how ExxonMobil’s bottom line will be impacted by the global effort to reduce emissions and what the company plans to do about it.”
Exxon is also under under pressure from a coalition of 17 US attorneys general, Attorneys General United for Clean Power (AGUCP), who have banded together to enforce climate change laws. New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman announced at a press conference on March 29 that the coalition was working to find “creative ways to enforce laws being flouted by the fossil fuel industry and their allies in their shortsighted efforts to put profits above the interests of the American people and the integrity of our financial markets”.
Schneiderman referred to a “relentless assault from well-funded, highly aggressive and morally vacant forces that are trying to block every step by the federal government to take meaningful action” to fight climate change.
The initiative by the attorneys general was criticised by some religious conservatives, however.
Jeffrey Riley, professor of ethics at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press: “Few deny that the climate is changing – it always has. The debate is on the cause. In spite of the public rhetoric that declares scientific consensus, the debate is still out. Public and political rhetoric on this issue is neither truth nor an argument for truth. Christians who hold that we are stewards of the earth ought to be interested in truth, and for that reason should not support any action that stifles legitimate scientific and economic debate.”
Climate Change Threatening Mt Everest
Climate Change Is Melting Everest Research shows that higher temperatures around the world’s tallest peak are thawing its glaciers, which could spell doom for villages in the Khumbu Valley, Outside, By: Anna Callaghan Apr 12, 2016 “As a colorful circus of tents pops up at Everest Base Camp this spring, a pair of Ph.D. students will set up camp 1,000 feet downvalley, on the Khumbu Glacier, resuming a research project they started last year. Their goal: to determine just how quickly the world’s highest glacier is melting.From the Alps to the Andes, ice at high elevations is disappearing rapidly. On Everest, the effects of a warming planet are likely to manifest in two ways that affect climbers. First, the Khumbu Glacier will shrink, and parts of it could possibly become impassable for climbers. Someday, even Base Camp may have to be moved from its current location on the glacier to another spot nearby.
Second, the Khumbu Icefall between Base Camp and Camp I may see a higher frequency of rock and ice avalanches—like the one that killed 16 Sherpas in 2014. The Icefall naturally migrates downhill between three and four feet per day, but that could accelerate as temperatures rise. Earth’s average surface temperature has gone up by more than 1.5 degrees since the late 1800s, and two-thirds of that warming has taken place since 1975
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that if you increase the temperature where ice is normally frozen to the bedrock, the hold is going to be weakened and become increasingly unstable and the ice is more likely to detach from the bedrock,” says Duncan Quincey, professor of geomorphology at the University of Leeds, in the UK. He is supervising the research of Owen King and Scott Watson, the Ph.D. students who will spend a few weeks on the glacier this spring. “In places like the Icefall we’ve seen these tragic accidents, and I think it’s fair to say it’s symptomatic of high-elevation warming.”……http://www.outsideonline.com/2067651/climate-change-melting-everest
Paris climate negotiations ahead of schedule
Paris Climate Deal Seen Taking Effect Two Years Ahead of Plan http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/paris-climate-deal-seen-taking-effect-two-years-ahead-of-plan AlexJFMorales April 12, 2016
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Agreement will take effect when ratified by 55 nations -
`We will have a Paris agreement in effect by 2018′: Figueres
“You heard it here first: I think that we will have a Paris Agreement in effect by 2018,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said during a question-and-answer session after delivering a lecture Monday at Imperial College London.
The prediction suggests that countries may initiate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions earlier than expected, and increases the chances of meeting the pact’s ultimate goal of limiting the increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since industrialization began.
“At some point the decision was made to remove that sentence,” Figueres said. That means the Paris deal will go into effect when it’s ratified by at least 55 nations representing at least 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, she said.Signing Ceremony Figueres said that at least 130 nations have pledged to sign the Paris Agreement at a ceremony at the United Nations in New York on April 22. That would eclipse the current record for the opening day of signing for a treaty of 119, held by the Law of the Sea, she said. Ten of those nations are also expected to ratify the deal at the same time.
Even so, she said the deal had come “10 years too late,” and that the world is now at “two minutes to midnight.”
New campaign ‘Two Degrees of Change’ urges female executives to demand action on climate change
New campaign enlists women in boardrooms to take up climate issue
UN-backed ‘Two Degrees of Change’ encourages female executives to demand action from their companies to stave off the threat of global warming, Guardian. Fiona Harvey 12 Apr 16, Women working in financial services are opening a new front in the battle against climate change, with the launch of a UN-backed initiative to take global warming concerns into business boardrooms.
Helena Morrissey, chief executive of Newton Investment Management and a long-time campaigner for women in boardrooms, is spearheading the new “Two Degrees of Change” initiative. Under it, women will be encouraged to raise climate issues with their company boards, and demand companies and investors take action to stave off the threat of dangerous warming.
The name comes from the pledge made by governments at the historic Paris climate conference in December to limit global warming to no more than 2C, which scientists say is the threshold of safety.
Morrissey, who set up the “30% Club” named for her target to see 30% of board seats in big companies going to women, told the Guardian: “This is about having more women in senior roles [in business] focusing on climate change and changing the narrative. We need female voices in our boardrooms on this.”
Shareholders would benefit, she said, as the risks of climate change are still poorly taken into account in many companies, and traditional financial services companies have yet to make the major changes likely to be necessary in strategy.
Morrissey added that many women were more aware of climate change as a pressing problem than men at the top of the financial services sector. “Women are often interested in these areas more than men, and interested in a long-term view,” she said. “Many women find themselves working within an established culture at old-fashioned companies.”
Forming a network dedicated to helping women would be beneficial for businesses as well as the climate, she said: “Women see how change can happen within their companies, but they need encouragement and empowerment to speak out.”
She was joined at the launch on Monday in London by Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief who led the successful negotiations at Paris, and Rachel Kyte, former vice president of the World Bank leading on climate change and now senior representative for the UN on sustainable energy, as well as a roll-call of City women specialising in green issues.
Figueres also highlighted links between the issues: “There is a clear parallel between the progress we’ve seen on gender equality and climate change in the last six years. Evidence suggests a greater presence of women the boardroom and in senior leadership can help increase the corporate focus on climate change.”
The UN’s climate change arm, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, has championed the representation of women through its “Women for Results” grouping……..http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/11/un-launches-campaign-to-enlist-women-in-boardrooms-to-take-up-climate-issue
Sea level rise has been underestimated – new ice studies suggest
Ice melt studies say we underestimate sea level rise, Independent Australia Peter Boyer 11 April 2016, Are melting polar ice sheets as stable as we think, or have we missed something? If a couple of new ice studies are only partly right, we face massive disruption from sea level rise within decades.
SCIENTIFIC DEBATE about this has picked up in the wake of the March publication of two major research papers by scientists from the U.S., France, Germany and China.
A paper by James Hansen and 18 other climatologists in the open-access science journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, examined ancient climate change to assess how that compares with today’s melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
It argues that during this century, ice sheet meltwater spreading over parts of the Southern Ocean and the North Atlantic will increase the temperature variation between these cooler parts and warming regions, resulting in more violent storms.
The meltwater layer also acts as a transparent lid on warming ocean waters undermining polar ice sheets sitting on bedrock below sea level. The paper’s startling prediction is that consequent disintegration could bring several metres of sea level rise within 150 years and possibly by 2070.
A paper published last week in the science journal Nature, also examining past rapid changes, looked at how the Antarctic ice sheet might react to warming of atmosphere as well as ocean, and reached similarly disturbing conclusions.
U.S. scientists Robert DeConto and David Pollard studied the puzzle of how the massive Antarctic ice sheet shed large amounts of ice over relatively short time-frames in prehistoric warming events.
Their modelling showed that if today’s high carbon emissions continue, warmer air would add to the impact of warming seas. Fracturing ice shelves and coastal cliffs would bring rapid ice loss and contribute ‘more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100’………https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/ice-melt-studies-say-we-underestimate-sea-level-rise,8866
World powers worried at effects of climate change, drought, causing conflicts
We’re running out of water, and the world’s powers are very worried, Reveal, By Nathan Halverson / April 11, 2016 Secret conversations between American diplomats show how a growing water crisis in the Middle East destabilized the region, helping spark civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and how those water shortages are spreading to the United States.
Classified U.S. cables reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting show a mounting concern by global political and business leaders that water shortages could spark unrest across the world, with dire consequences.
Many of the cables read like diary entries from an apocalyptic sci-fi novel.
“Water shortages have led desperate people to take desperate measures with equally desperate consequences,” according to a 2009 cable sent by U.S. Ambassador Stephen Seche in Yemen as water riots erupted across the country.
On Sept. 22 of that year, Seche sent a stark message to the U.S. State Department in Washington relaying the details of a conversation with Yemen’s minister of water, who “described Yemen’s water shortage as the ‘biggest threat to social stability in the near future.’ He noted that 70 percent of unofficial roadblocks stood up by angry citizens are due to water shortages, which are increasingly a cause of violent conflict.”
Seche soon cabled again, stating that 14 of the country’s 16 aquifers had run dry. At the time, Yemen wasn’t getting much news coverage, and there was little public mention that the country’s groundwater was running out.
These communications, along with similar cables sent from Syria, now seem eerily prescient, given the violent meltdowns in both countries that resulted in a flood of refugees to Europe.
Groundwater, which comes from deeply buried aquifers, supplies the bulk of freshwater in many regions, including Syria, Yemen and drought-plagued California. It is essential for agricultural production, especially in arid regions with little rainwater. When wells run dry, farmers are forced to fallow fields, and some people get hungry, thirsty and often very angry.
The classified diplomatic cables, made public years ago by Wikileaks, now are providing fresh perspective on how water shortages have helped push Syria and Yemen into civil war, and prompted the king of neighboring Saudi Arabia to direct his country’s food companies to scour the globe for farmland. Since then, concerns about the world’s freshwater supplies have only accelerated……..
The water-fueled conflicts in the Middle East paint a dark picture of a future that many governments now worry could spread around the world as freshwater supplies become increasingly scarce. The CIA, the State Department and similar agencies in other countries are monitoring the situation.
In the past, global grain shortages have led to rapidly increasing food prices, which analysts have attributed to sparking the Arab Spring revolution in several countries, and in 2008 pushed about 150 million people into poverty, according to the World Bank.
Water scarcity increasingly is driven by three major factors: Global warming is forecast to create more severe droughts around the world. Meat consumption, which requires significantly more water than a vegetarian or low-meat diet, is spiking as a growing middle class in countries such as China and India can afford to eat more pork, chicken and beef. And the world’s population continues to grow, with an expected 2 billion more stomachs to feed by 2050……..
These problems are not just happening overseas, but already are leading to heated political issues in the United States. In the western part of the country, which Nestle forecast will suffer severe long-term shortages, tensions are heating up as Middle Eastern companies arrive to tap dwindling water supplies in California and Arizona………
Back in Yemen in 2009, U.S. Ambassador Seche described how as aquifers were drained, and groundwater levels dropped lower, rich landowners drilled deeper and deeper wells. But everyday citizens did not have the money to dig deeper, and as their wells ran dry, they were forced to leave their land and livelihoods behind.
“The effects of water scarcity will leave the rich and powerful largely unaffected,” Seche wrote in the classified 2009 cable. “These examples illustrate how the rich always have a creative way of getting water, which not only is unavailable to the poor, but also cuts into the unreplenishable resources.” https://www.revealnews.org/article/were-running-out-of-water-and-the-worlds-powers-are-very-worried/
Religious groups urge US lawmakers to approve funding for Green Climate Fund (GCF)
Faith groups call for more international climate funding The Hill, By Devin Henry – 04/11/16 More than 120 religious groups are encouraging lawmakers to approve President Obama’s proposed $750 million contribution to an international climate change fund.
In a letter to members of Congress, the groups say the 
is an important way to “build resilience and stability in the face of the unavoidable impacts of climate change,” an issue they say their faith backgrounds call them to focus on.
The GCF is an international pool of money designed to help poor and developing countries cope with climate change. Obama has requested Congress provide $750 million for the fund in 2017. …….http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/275864-faith-groups-call-for-more-international-climate-funding
UN study of 1.5 degrees Celsius – it may not be feasible
U.N. panel to study a cap on global warming that may be out of reach http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-temperatures-idUSKCN0X81PH OSLO/LONDON | BY ALISTER DOYLE AND NINA CHESTNEY Top climate scientists will launch a study this week of how hard it would be to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), although many of them fear it might be too late to reach that level.
The world’s average surface temperatures reached 1C (1.8F) above pre-industrial times in a record-hot 2015. They will rise by 3C (3.6F) or more by 2100 if current trends
continue, many projections show.
A 195-nation climate summit in Paris in December asked the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for a report in 2018 on limiting warming to just 1.5C. The IPCC began a three-day meeting in Nairobi on Monday to consider how to do that.
“Do we know how? No. It is definitely a moon shot,” Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s climate chief, said at a conference in London on Monday.
Paris set a goal of limiting average surface temperatures to “well below” 2C while “pursuing efforts” for 1.5C. Documents prepared for the Nairobi meeting say scientific literature about 1.5C is thin.
Many scientists have barely focused on the 1.5C goal, reckoning it would require unrealistically deep cuts in emissions. Experts say the IPCC will comply with the Paris request, with misgivings.
“I don’t seek how they can say ‘No’,” David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, told Reuters. “But I don’t see how they say ‘Yes’ with a straight face.”
Some IPCC studies suggest 1.5C will be feasible if the world develops low-costtechnologies later this century to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Many poor nations, fearing melting ice that will raise sea levels and swamp their coasts, campaign for “1.5 to stay alive”.
“My concern is that the 2018 report may have lots of information about how hard it will be to achieve 1.5C, and relatively little about the benefits,” Myles Allen, a professor at Oxford University, told Reuters.
He noted that countries pushing hardest for the 1.5C limit, including small, low-lying island states such as the Marshall Islands or the Maldives, wanted to stress the advantages.
Limiting warming to 1.5C rather than 2C would limit, for instance, sea level rise, the melt of Arctic sea ice, damage to coral reefs and the acidification of the oceans, according to IPCC studies.
(Reporting By Alister Doyle, editing by Larry King)
Big Oil spends up Big to thwart climate change action
The new report excludes so-called dark money, or money spent on think tanks and institutes,
Trying to Put a Price on Big Oil’s ‘Climate Obstruction’ Efforts, Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-07/trying-to-put-a-price-on-big-oil-s-climate-obstruction-effort Eric Roston eroston
The sheer fuzziness of corporate influence prompted the project. Nations hold companies to different standards—or none at all—for disclosures of how they are trying to influence public policy and what it costs.
To come up with its numbers, Influence Map first had to define what “influence” actually means. The researchers adopted a framework spelled out in a 2013 UN report written to help companies align their climate change policies with their lobbying and communications strategies. It’s a broad approach to understanding influence that includes not only direct lobbying, but also advertising, marketing, public relations, political contributions, regulatory contacts, and trade associations.
The five subjects of Influence Map’s research use those organs to the opposite ends. ExxonMobil’s “direct spending on climate obstruction,” according to the report, may be $27 million a year. Shell’s estimated spending is $22 million. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s U.S. trade group, may spend up to $65 million a year, and two smaller groups—the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association—are estimated to spend about $9 million together.
Investor groups that push for strong climate policies spend less than $5 million a year on advocacy, according to the researchers.
The report, “How Much Big Oil Spends on Obstructive Climate Lobbying,” is directed at investors who are starting to make more noise about the topic. Nineteen climate-minded investment groups have filed 45 resolutions with oil-and-gas companies related to climate change and greenhouse gases in 2016 alone, although nine of these resolutions were withdrawn after companies promised action or further discussion. The investors include the New York State Comptroller, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., and sustainability pioneer Trillium Asset Management.
Influence Map published alongside the report a three-stage methodology it used to calculate its estimates. First, the researchers isolated the specific outreach activities that can influence policymakers, using lobbying registers, Internal Revenue Service documents, and annual reports to estimate total spending. The next step was to estimate how much of that total is directed to climate issues. Finally, they analyzed the climate-related activity, scored it as either “supportive or obstructive” to climate policy, and to what degree.
The new report excludes so-called dark money, or money spent on think tanks and institutes, as identified by Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle in 2013. Given current disclosure standards, the researchers were unable to determine how these groups are funded.
The conclusions come amid heightened scrutiny of oil companies’ public positions on climate issues. Bill McKibben, the writer and climate activist who founded 350.org, has endorsed the report, as have Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont and Sonia Kowal, president of Zevin Asset Management.
Influence Map is funded by the Tellus Mater Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
The five organizations scrutinized in the report had not seen it, but two responded to questions before deadline. ExxonMobil’s climate policy can be read here. A spokesman for the company said it has spent almost $9 billion on research that may boost energy supply, cut emissions, and improve efficiency.
A WSPA spokesman said the group educates the public “on the facts and science often left out of today’s climate storyline” and that its lobbying is in compliance with the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
The report was not published in a peer-reviewed journal. “But on first glance, it looks rigorous and well documented,” said Justin Farrell, a Yale sociologist who has conducted extensive research on conservative climate influence networks. “Given we know much less than we ought to about corporate influence on climate change misinformation,” he said, “any sort of honest effort by NGOs, academic research, or legal officials is a step in the right direction.”
Cloud study shows that global warming danger even more extreme
Global warming may be far worse than thought, cloud analysis suggests, Guardian, Oliver Milman, 8 Apr 16
Researchers find clouds contain more liquid – as opposed to ice – than was previously believed, threatening greater increase in temperatures. Climate change projections have vastly underestimated the role that clouds play, meaning future warming could be far worse than is currently projected, according to new research.
Researchers said that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere compared with pre-industrial times could result in a global temperature increase of up to 5.3C – far warmer than the 4.6C older models predict.
The analysis of satellite data, led by Yale University, found that clouds have much more liquid in them, rather than ice, than has been assumed until now. Clouds with ice crystals reflect more solar light than those with liquid in them, stopping it reaching and heating the Earth’s surface.
The underestimation of the current level of liquid droplets in clouds means that models showing future warming are misguided, says the paper, published in Science. It also found that fewer clouds will change to a heat-reflecting state in the future – due to CO2 increases – than previously thought, meaning that warming estimates will have to be raised.
Such higher levels of warming would make it much more difficult for countries to keep the global temperature rise to below 2C, as they agreed to do at the landmark Paris climate summit last year, to avoid dangerous extreme weather and negative effects on food security. The world has already warmed by 1C since the advent of heavy industry, driven by CO2 concentrations soaring by more than 40%……. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/07/clouds-climate-change-analysis-liquid-ice-global-warming?CMP=share_btn_tw
America’s mayors speak out in support of Obama’s Clean Power Plan
Cities Speak Up to Save Obama’s Clean Power Plan, City Lab, A large coalition of U.S. mayors and local governments is coming to the EPA’s defense in the legal battle to cut carbon emissions from power plants. JULIAN SPECTOR @JulianSpector Mar 31, 2016
President Barack Obama’s flagship plan to fight climate change is getting a boost from city leaders across the country.
The National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and a coalition of 54 local governments are filing arguments in federal court Friday morning in support of the Clean Power Plan, imploring the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases emitted from existing power plants.
The amicus brief, provided in advance to CityLab, argues that the EPA has a duty to protect the public from harmful pollution in ways laid out by the Clean Power Plan. Cities, meanwhile, are uniquely vulnerable to climate change and are already paying for its effects, they say.
These comments come days after the EPAoutlined its own arguments in defense of the plan, which is being challenged by 27 states and an assortment of coal and power industry groups. The rule would force changes in the power sector with a goal of cutting its emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. At stake is the scope of the EPA’s regulatory powers, but also the ability of the U.S. government to meet its commitments to fighting climate change, as agreed to in the Paris negotiations last December………
“President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is essential to reduce our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti writes to CityLab. “The Supreme Court must choose between helping cities fight climate change or standing squarely in their way.” http://www.citylab.com/politics/2016/03/epa-clean-power-plan-cities-supreme-court/476127/
Transition to renewable energy sector: the goal of these North American Oil and Gas Workers
Amid Price Plunge, North American Oil and Gas Workers Seek Transition to Renewable Sector TruthOut, 03 April 2016 00:00By Candice Bernd, “…….after years of working in an industry that one top climate scientist has called “the biggest carbon bomb on the planet,” Hildebrand came to realize that he was not the only oil worker in Alberta who felt “guilty about developing the infrastructure that is creating climate change.”
Opportunity in the Oil Plunge
Last spring, when oil prices began to fall, Hildebrand banded together with like-minded coworkers and began building an oil and gas worker-led nonprofit called “Iron & Earth,” which officially launched this month during a press conference in Edmonton. Through the nonprofit, the oil sands workers hope to help others who have been laid off diversify their skill sets and facilitate the necessary training to transition them to the renewable energy sector. They also want to help incorporate renewable energy projects into oil sands workers’ current scope of work…….
“We are a group of workers who not only want to diversify our work scope based on job need, but also based on a values-based mission, to ensure that we’re creating and building a future that’s going to be sustainable,” Hildebrand told Truthout. “The drop in oil prices was certainly a catalyst to help amplify these conversations, and created the pressure to … create a catch-all organization that’s going to make projects happen and get workers’ hands on some renewable energy projects.”
Moreover, not every oil worker with experience in Alberta’s oil sands needs to retrain in order to transition to the renewable sector, according to Hildebrand, who says a lot of trades are “directly transferable.” Hildebrand has worked on several renewable energy projects himself, including a biomass plant and the wind farm weather station that inspired him during his apprenticeship. “I didn’t require any retraining for that. All I required was the blueprints and the steel, and the facility to build it,” he said.
From Oil Sands to “Solar Skills”
Iron & Earth’s first project is its “Solar Skills” campaign to facilitate the retraining of 1,000 laid-off electricians from Alberta’s oil industry, to help build 100 solar installations on public buildings throughout the province beginning this fall. In the future, as the group takes on different campaigns focused on geothermal, biomass, biofuel and wind energy, they hope to attract other kinds of oil and gas workers, such as pipefitters and iron workers, as well as workers from other building trades, to retrain in those sectors………http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35477-amid-price-plunge-north-american-oil-and-gas-workers-seek-transition-to-renewable-sector
1 This Month
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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