Global warming strikes again...

[Berzerker]

anybody familiar with Roy Spencer?

google has apparently demonetized his website for being unreliable or something to that effect

he says they've been using satellites to get a better grasp of global warming and the results are not as dire as predictions, I think he said .13c a decade on average since 1979

that seems like a lot even if most predictions expected more, thats still over a 1/2 degree celsius in 43 years

and he guesstimated humans were responsible for half of that

 

[Birdjaguar]

Climate Misinformation by Source: Roy Spencer

Dr. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, as well as the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He is known for his work with the satellite-based temperature monitoring for which he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal [Wikipedia].

Dr. Spencer suggests that global warming is mostly due to natural internal variability, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Other professional affiliations: Dr. Spencer is on the board of directors of the George C. Marshall Institute, a right-wing conservative think tank on scientific issues and public policy. He listed as an expert for the Heartland Institute, a libertarian American public policy think tank. Dr. Spencer is also listed as an expert by the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project (ICECAP), a global warming "skeptic" organization [DeSmogBlog].

His many claims are listed here:
https://skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roy_Spencer.htm

Spencer is a one trick pony. His only data is Tropospheric Temperatures. He ignores all the other evidence around him like: rising sea levels, melting glaciers, warming oceans, other global temperature reading, declining sea ice and ocean acidification from CO2. And interestingly, at his website, most of his information is 2-8 years old.

His website:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-natural-or-manmade/

 

[Samson]

Thinning Antarctica ice shelf collapses after heatwave

An East Antarctica ice shelf disintegrated this month following a period of extreme heat in the region, scientists have said.
Satellite images show the 1,200sq km (463sq miles) Conger Ice Shelf collapsed completely on or around March 15.

Ice shelves, permanent floating sheets of ice attached to land, take thousands of years to form and act like levees holding back snow and ice that would otherwise flow into the ocean, causing seas to rise.
The March heatwave, with temperatures reaching 40C (70F) above normal in parts of East Antarctica, was tied to the atmospheric river phenomenon, said Peter Neff, a glaciologist at the University of Minnesota.
This process creates columns hundreds of kilometres long that carry water vapour from the tropics, creating an effect Neff described as “a fire hose of moisture”.
Temperatures in the region usually sit at about -51C (-60F) at this time of year, but they were about -12C (-10F) earlier this month.

Surrounded by vast oceans and buffered by winds that tend to protect it from large warm-air intrusions, the frozen continent is responding more slowly to climate change than the Arctic, which is warming at three times the rate of the rest of the world.
In the last century, East Antarctica barely warmed at all, but some regions have been affected and the continent lost an average of 149 billion tonnes of ice per year from 2002 to 2020, according to NASA. The loss of the Conger Ice Shelf is the latest example of the changes that are underway.
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[Lexicus]

I just read Roy Spencer's blog - he's a slick liar, basically.

 

[Arakhor]

His website is drroyspencer.com? Talk about trying to claim superiority by flashing his PhD around.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

At least unlike most climate change deniers he actually has some actual knowledge and expertise about the subject. However the whole thing about naturally occurring climate change is so played out. Yes the climate does naturally fluctuate, but nothing like we are seeing now. Just look at graphs that plot it out over the last few hundred years and you can see how what is happening now is completely unlike what has happened prior.

 

[Samson]

His website is drroyspencer.com? Talk about trying to claim superiority by flashing his PhD around.

It is possible that he got beaten to the other one by this guy.

 

[El_Machinae]

Spencer was a skeptic, and I do think he brought something to the table when people wanted a skeptical view. We live in a world where people link to confirmation bias blogs, though. So, AGW deniers would link him. I was pretty deep into following the science until the last few years, and I think I pulled utility out of his efforts. He was wrong, but often wrong in a useful way.

 

[Samson]

425 "Carbon bombs" that are planned to release double the CO2 that would keep tempuratures below 1.5 ΔC

• There are 425 fossil fuel projects with >1 Gt CO2 potential emissions globally.
•Carbon bombs' potential emissions exceed a 1.5 °C carbon budget by a factor of two.
•40% (169 out of 425) of carbon bombs had not started extraction in 2020.
•Defusing carbon bombs should be a priority for climate change mitigation policy.

Meeting the Paris targets requires reducing both fossil fuel demand and supply, and closing the “production gap” between climate targets and energy policy. But there is no supply-side mitigation roadmap yet. We need criteria to decide where to focus efforts.

Here, we identify the 425 biggest fossil fuel extraction projects globally (defined as >1 gigaton potential CO2 emissions). We list these “carbon bombs” by name, show in which countries they are located and calculate their potential emissions which combined exceed the global 1.5 °C carbon budget by a factor of two. Already producing carbon bombs account for a significant percentage of global fossil fuel extraction. But 40% of carbon bombs have not yet started extraction.
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Paper Grundiad special Action site

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[Arwon]

Look at us punching above our weight

 

[Cutlass]

Look at us punching above our weight

Long travel distances?

 

[Arwon]

Nah, this is extraction projects. These carbon bombs are identified by production location, not eventual consumption. Australia (in net terms accounting for oil imports) exports 70% of its energy production every year, including about 90% of coal production and 75% of gas. It now has a several large fossil fuel export projects in the works, those are the carbon bombs shown on that map.

Current energy flows:

Australia still has pretty high emissions per capita, due to fairly carbon intensive electricity in the biggest states, a lot of road transport emissions, and just general consumption and industry activity.

On the plus side, domestic electricity generation is pretty steadily and inexorably decarbonising. 29% of elec generation was renewable in 2021 (78 of 267 TWh) up from 8% in 2020 (22 of 254 TWh) with most of the reduction being coal use. Transport... doesn't look like decarbonising much yet, though.

 

[Samson]

The tories are using subsidies to try and move us up that list

Rishi Sunak's tax relief fossil fuel projects 'create 899 million tonnes of CO2'

Dozens of prospective fossil fuel projects in the UK that qualify for Rishi Sunak's tax relief on oil and gas could together pump up to 899 million tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, analysis shows.

The chancellor announced last week that energy firms would get a 91p tax saving for every £1 they invested in oil and gas extraction in the UK, to the end of 2025.​

 

[Samson]

While New Zealand show again that they are the adult in the room

New Zealand's plan to tax cow and sheep burps

New Zealand has unveiled a plan to tax sheep and cattle burps in a bid to tackle one of the country's biggest sources of greenhouse gases.
It would make it the first nation to charge farmers for the methane emissions from the animals they keep.

New Zealand is home to just over five million people, along with around 10 million cattle and 26 million sheep.
Almost half the country's total greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, mainly methane.

Under the proposal farmers will have to pay for their gas emissions from 2025.
The plan also includes incentives for farmers who reduce emissions through feed additives, while planting trees on farms could be used to offset emissions.

Andrew Hoggard - who is a dairy farmer and the national president of Federated Farmers of New Zealand - told the BBC that he broadly approved of the proposals.
"We've been working with the government and other organisations on this for years to get an approach that won't shut down farming in New Zealand, so we've signed off on a lot of stuff we're happy with."
"But you know, like all of these types of agreements with many parties involved, there's always going to be a couple of dead rats you have to swallow," he added.
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[Samson]

Methane leak at Russian mine could be largest ever discovered

Possibly the world’s biggest leak of methane has been discovered coming from a coalmine in Russia, which has been pouring out the carbon dioxide equivalent of five coal-fired power stations.

About 90 tonnes an hour of methane were being released from the mine in January, when the gas was first traced to its source, according to data from GHGSat, a commercial satellite monitoring company based in Canada. Sustained over the course of a year, this would produce enough natural gas to power 2.4m homes.

More recently, the mine appears to be leaking at a lower rate, of about a third of the highest rate recorded in January, but the leak is thought to have been active for at least six months before January’s survey.

Russia is one of the world’s biggest sources of methane from fossil fuel extraction. The country’s gas infrastructure, including production facilities and pipelines, is notoriously leaky despite calls for the government to take action.

Paul Bledsoe, a former White House adviser to Bill Clinton and now with the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington DC, said: “Deeply cutting methane is the only sure way to limit near-term temperatures and prevent runaway climate change, yet every month brings new evidence that Russia is hiding the world’s most massive and destructive methane leaks. Putin is desperately hiding these enormous emissions so he can continue to profit from sales of Russian coal, oil and gas and fund his war-making regime. But those nations like China who continue to buy Putin’s oil and gas are equally abetting his climate and war criminality.”
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Sure, "nations like China who continue to buy Putin’s oil and gas" are to blame, but this does not exonerate all those countries who are rushing to invest in more fossil fuel infrastructure all over the world in the current "boom".

The mine in question, apparently. Not sure how you can not see anything manmade at said mine, you can ask the grundiad.

 

[Samson]

10 finance firms effectively own half of all future carbon emissions

Just 10 financial institutions own nearly half of the unburned fossil fuels from the world’s largest fossil fuel companies.​

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Using shareholder data from Bloomberg Terminal, a financial data service, the researchers identified 918 shareholders who own 1 per cent or more of at least one Carbon Underground 200 company. They then calculated how much of the potential emissions from the unburned fossil fuels each shareholder owned, based on their stake in the companies as of February 2021.​

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The most influential shareholders were the asset management firms BlackRock and Vanguard. These were followed by the Government of India and the asset manager State Street. With more than 100 gigatons of potential emissions, Saudi Arabia owned the most potential emissions of any single shareholder but was listed fifth-most influential because almost all of its holdings were concentrated within a single company: Saudi Aramco.​

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Together, the top 10 institutions owned nearly half of potential emissions within the Carbon Underground 200 and had on average 20 times more connections within the network than the other shareholders.​

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Writeup (paywalled) Original (hard paywalled)

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Spoiler Full text of writeup :

Just 10 financial institutions own nearly half of the unburned fossil fuels from the world’s largest fossil fuel companies.

The Carbon Underground 200 is a list of the 200 largest fossil fuel companies, created by FFI Solutions, a sustainable investing firm. Combined, the companies own 98 per cent of known fossil fuel reserves, an amount that would emit 674 gigatons of carbon if burned – nearly triple the global carbon emissions limits needed to constrain global warming within the 1.5°C target.

“We can’t achieve our global climate commitments without addressing this group of fossil fuel producers,” says Truzaar Dordi at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Dordi and his colleagues wanted to know which financial actors have the most influence over these companies and thus could accelerate or slow a transition away from fossil fuels. The question was “who owns the owners?” says Dordi.

Using shareholder data from Bloomberg Terminal, a financial data service, the researchers identified 918 shareholders who own 1 per cent or more of at least one Carbon Underground 200 company. They then calculated how much of the potential emissions from the unburned fossil fuels each shareholder owned, based on their stake in the companies as of February 2021.

The team also counted the number of companies in which each shareholder had a stake to measure their connectedness in the network of companies and owners. The most central shareholder was like “the friend who seems to know everyone”, says Dordi. The group combined centrality and potential emissions to get a measure of shareholders’ relative influence.

The most influential shareholders were the asset management firms BlackRock and Vanguard. These were followed by the Government of India and the asset manager State Street. With more than 100 gigatons of potential emissions, Saudi Arabia owned the most potential emissions of any single shareholder but was listed fifth-most influential because almost all of its holdings were concentrated within a single company: Saudi Aramco.

Together, the top 10 institutions owned nearly half of potential emissions within the Carbon Underground 200 and had on average 20 times more connections within the network than the other shareholders.

While some of these institutions have used their influence to push for changes, a political backlash to them playing “environmental police” as well as energy security concerns seem to have reversed that pattern, says Jan Fichtner at the University of Amsterdam.

Spokespeople for Vanguard and Fidelity Investments – also part of the top 10 – commented separately that sustainability is an important part of their investment strategies and that they encourage portfolio companies to prepare for climate-related risks, including the potential to end up with fossil fuel assets no one wants to buy. A report by the UK climate think tank Carbon Tracker found more than $1 trillion of oil and gas assets could become stranded in this way.

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[Aiken_Drumn]

Fracking is back on the addenda in the UK

 

[Arakhor]

And what's more, the govt are refusing to discuss how their manifesto commitment to respect local views will be implemented, even with other Tory MPs. Strike another one off for Tory lies.

 

[El_Machinae]

Fracking is back on the addenda in the UK

It will be always on the agenda when you're looking at the short-term. Longer-term, natural gas really is a transition technology. If it's used to wean from oil and coal, it's a pretty good investment. If it's not a bridge, the agitation is to make it a bridge. Enough of the benefits of burning it need to be re-invested in the pivot.

 

[Samson]

If it's used to wean from oil and coal, it's a pretty good investment.

It depends how much leaks, and what the critical timescale is. If the tipping point is only 20 years away, then we need to leak less than 2% for it to be better than oil? This gives an estimate of 2 - 6% lost in just fracking, and then you have to add the transmission losses.