Them Chinese hoaxsters are at it again:
How long until the North Pole is an Alternative Fact?
Sweet. Now we can bribe our way into mineral-rich war zones and exploit the land and people.
Drill baby drill? What a fucking pathetic statement on the human race.
These tree-infested towers look cool:
A drop in the bucket as far as global carbon emissions go, I suppose, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
[quote]Representatives from a coalition of veteran Republican officials â including five who have either served as treasury secretary or as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers â met Wednesday with White House officials to discuss the idea of imposing a national carbon tax, rather than using federal regulations, to address climate change.
The newly formed Climate Leadership Council â which includes James A. Baker, Henry Paulson, George P. Shultz, Marty Feldstein and Greg Mankiw â is proposing elimination of nearly all of the Obama administrationâs climate policies in exchange for a rising carbon tax that starts at $40 per ton, and is returned in the form of a quarterly check from the Social Security Administration to every American.[/quote]
If we take deregulation as a given under the Trump administration, then this sort of thing seems like about the best option available to combat carbon emissions. I canât imagine itâll have any broad-based support, though.
[quote]Hereâs the blunt reality: the pressure to cut emissions and respond to a changing climate are going to alter what we do and donât see as valuable. Climate action will trigger an enormous shift in the way we value things.
If we canât burn oil, itâs not worth very much. If we canât defend coastal real estate from rising seas (or even insure it, for that matter), itâs not worth very much. If the industrial process a company owns exposes them to future climate litigation, itâs not worth very much. The value of those assets is going to plummet, inevitably⌠and likely, soon.[/quote]
The article then goes on to detail the various ways in which Trumpâs cabinet appointments and policies match up to keeping the value of those assets. I donât think this is news to much of anyone, but I found it to be a well-written summary.
Wait, theyâre gonna give US the money? Ha! Now we know for sure thatâs not gonna happen.
In other unsurprising newsâŚ
Hope Elon Musk invents FTL in the next 4 years!
Remarkable essay on climate change:
Of all the despicable things the runaway ghost train of the Trump administration has done in its first ferocious weeks, the attempt to utterly destroy every instrument of environmental protection is perhaps the most permanent. The appointment of fossil fuel tycoons and fanatical climate change deniers to key positions in energy and foreign policy, the immediate reinstitution of the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines, the promise to pull out of the Paris Climate Pactâall moves crafted to please the oil magnates who helped put him in powerâthese are changes that will hasten the tick of the time bomb under civilization as we know it. Racist laws can eventually be overthrown, and even a cultural backslide toward bigotry and nationalism can be slowly, painfully reversed. We donât get a do-over on climate change. The vested interests agitating to strip the planet for parts know that, tooâand they plan to profit from this particular apocalypse as hard as they can.
For anyone who grew up in the Cold War, the apocalypse was a simple yes-no question: either it was coming, or it wasnât. Many people I know who grew up before the end of the nuclear arms race describe this as oddly freeing: there was the sense that since the future might explode at any point, it was not worth the effort of planning. Climate change is species collapse by a thousand cuts. There will be no definite moment we can say that yes, today we are fucked, and yesterday we were unfucked. Instead the fuckery increases incrementally year on year, until this is the way the world ends: not with a bang, not with a bonfire, but with the slow and savage confiscation of every little thing that made you human, starting with hope.
It is hard to outline the contours of a future you have never been allowed to imagineâone that is both different from today but accessible from it, too. The best we have been permitted to hope for is that the status quo be scraped to the edges of the present for as long as it lastsâa vote to run the knife around the empty jar of neoliberal aspiration and hope thereâs enough to cover our asses. If people cannot imagine a future for themselves, all they can measure is what theyâve lost. Those who believe in the future are left, as they always were, with the responsibility of creating it, and that begins with an act of faithânot just that the future will be survivable, but that it might, somehow, maybe, be an exciting place to live.
See, in a few years when they say âNothing to see hereâ they wonât technically be lyingâŚ
So the light grey areas appear as good in say December 2013/2014 as they did in December 1984, but the thicker white areas are now almost non-existent. I imagine this is a bad thing for sea levels and polar bears?
It is ocean ice and not land ice, so no impact to sea levels. But that does nothing for the polar bears :(
So the thicker ice is the permanent ice, the lighter is the seasonal ice. What to watch is the extent of permanent ice in summer, thatâs where you see the biggest changes.
THat is also the opening of the northwest passage, which has environmental and shipping impacts.
The message of the firm was âendorsed by a uniquely broad consensus of scientists in their report to the United Nations at the end of 1990,â the filmâs narrator said. âIf the weather machine were to be wound up to such new levels of energy, no country would remain unaffected. Global warming is not yet certain, but many think that to wait for final proof would be irresponsible. Action now is seen as the only safe insurance.â
Despite its awareness of the effects of climate change 26 years ago, Shell spent $22 million in 2015 lobbying against policies that protected the environment from carbon emissions.
And a bit of good news:
In short, Canadian oil sands is struggling to remain competitive in a marketplace that has changed dramatically from three years ago.
A glaring example of this problem came from ExxonMobil this week, which announced that it had removed 3.3 billion barrels of Canadian oil sands from its books. The de-booking was notable for several reasons. First, it was remarkable given the fact that Exxon has refused to write down assets or remove reserves from its books even during the worst depths of the oil price downturn. That stubbornness led to an SEC investigation into the oil majorâs accounting practices, as well as an inquiry from the New York Attorney General. The regulatory scrutiny certainly influenced the latest disclosure.
But the de-booking is even more interesting because of what it says about Canadaâs oil sands. Exxon removed 3.3 billion barrels from its books, admitting that the oil is simply not profitable to produce with todayâs prices. Itâs a pretty damming admission: the oil will ultimately be left in the ground unless oil prices substantially rebound. The project was equivalent to 15 percent of the companyâs entire proved reserve base.
Exxonâs announcement came shortly after ConocoPhillips also removed oil sands reserves from its books. Conoco de-booked 1.15 billion barrels of oil sands a day before Exxon, taking the oil companyâs reserves to a 15-year low.
I donât have the context to know how to feel about the Canadian oil sands thing. Should I start freaking out about peak oil again?
Well, the oil sands are almost as bad as coal as far as carbon emissions, so not utilizing them is good. If we had to worry about peak oil, they wouldnât have debooked the oil sands.
It does mean that the Keystone XL pipeline-- which Trump just approved, will be pretty useless.
Kind of the opposite. Oil is abundant, so the outlook for future oil prices is low, so we donât need to tap the expensive oil sands (expensive both in terms of cost and emissions).