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Fossil Fuels

Hot Again: 2020 Sets Yet Another Global Temperature Record

Earth’s rising fever hit or neared record hot temperature levels in 2020, global weather groups reported Thursday. While NASA and a couple of other measurement groups said 2020 passed or essentially tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, more agencies, including the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, said last year came in a close second or third. The differences in rankings mostly turned on how scientists accounted for data gaps in the Arctic, which is warming faster than the rest of the globe. “It’s like the film ‘Groundhog Day.’ Another year, same story — record global warmth,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t part of the measurement teams.

Extinction Rebellion Brought Love, Police Brought Rage

Extinction Rebellion WA (XR) hit the streets with a Festival of Love and Rage on November 28 with a message to the Western Australia Premier: act on the climate emergency like you dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor Premier Mark McGowan has ignored pressure to open WA’s borders, applying a strict quarantine policy. There have been no cases of community spread in several months. By contrast, the government’s response to the climate crisis has been lacking in science. Since lifting the state’s moratorium on fracking in 2018, McGowan has given the go-ahead to several huge shale and tight gas projects throughout the wheat belt in the iconic Kimberly region and offshore in the Browse Basin.

Lockdown To Stop The Keystone XL Pipeline

Live from Sovereign Oceti Sakowin Territory in so-called Haakon county, South Dakota at one of many active and illegal KXL Crude Oil Pipeline Pump Stations. Illegal Construction on Treaty Lands. Protectors have notified officials and filed a complaint about the unlawful construction and peace treaty violations.. but nothing has been done. The desecration & disrespect continues. So what do we do when our leaders don't act, don't protect us and sell us out? We stand up and speak up. Peaceful resistance is the only thing we have left.

World’s Public Banks Gathered At First-Ever Summit

"There is no excuse for the continued funding of billions of dollars in coal, gas, or oil projects. This must stop now," Sophie Richmond, a coordinator with Big Shift Global, said in a statement. The event in question was the four-day Finance in Common Summit, which ended Thursday. Hosted by France, the virtual summit was billed as a way "to stress the crucial role of Public Development Banks (PDBs) in reconciling short-term countercyclical responses with sustainable recovery measures that will have a long-term impact on the planet and societies."

Energy Transitions And Colonialism

The year 2020 has seen an unprecedented oil price crash, causing a shock to the fossil fuel industry. The impact has been brutal among oil companies, especially in the high-cost US shale oil sector. As for oil-producing African countries, such as Angola, Algeria, Libya, and Nigeria, more economic strain has been added to their economies with mounting budget deficits and a hemorrhaging of their foreign exchange reserves. Against this backdrop, some analysts have rushed to speculate that the pandemic could kill the oil industry and help save the environment.

How Can We Comprehend The Climate Crisis?

The science is clear. If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the same rate we have been doing for the past decades, 80 years from now, our planet will be at least four degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels. "And the warming won't stop there," climate researcher and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf told DW. "It will continue to rise to seven or eight degrees over the next 100 years. Human civilization won't survive that." Normally, we respond to danger quickly; we put out fires, run away when we feel at risk, and protect our children in every way we can.

Climate Litigation Spreads Across The United States

With hurricanes in the Gulf South and wildfires in the West, the intensifying impacts of climate change have been inescapable as summer turns to fall. Summer 2020 also brought a wave of new climate lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, including several firsts: the first suit in the South (Charleston, South Carolina); the first suits to name the American Petroleum Institute–the main US oil and gas industry lobby group–as a defendant (Minnesota, Delaware, and Hoboken, New Jersey); the first cases seeking disgorgement of corporate profits gained through illegal acts (Minnesota and Connecticut).

Big Oil Reality Check

As oil and gas companies claim to be part of the solution of the climate crisis, the reality couldn’t be more different. Our new discussion paper analyzes the current climate commitments of eight of the largest integrated oil and fossil gas companies, and reveals that none come close to aligning their actions with the urgent 1.5°C global warming limit as outlined by the Paris Agreement. This discussion paper measures oil and gas company climate plans against ten minimum criteria, focusing on the ambition, integrity, and ability necessary to implement a just transition and achieve a 1.5°C aligned managed decline of oil and fossil gas.

Democrat’s Climate Change Lies

In recent weeks a combination of drought and record breaking heat have accelerated wildfire season to historic levels of devastation. More than 4.6 million acres have burned in the states of California, Oregon and Washington. Skies are colored orange and red, the air is unbreathable, lives have been lost and entire towns have been destroyed. The connection between heat waves, droughts, and human made climate change are clear and the solution is known to every school child. There must be a drastic reduction in the production of fossil fuels.

New Fossil Fuel Projects Meet Indigenous Resistance

New Mexico - The spicy pungency of sagebrush filled the air in Greater Chaco, New Mexico, in late July this summer as I watched towering, rain-laden clouds gather across the endless horizon — a reminder that the midsummer monsoon season would soon turn the dirt roads that snake across the Navajo Nation reservation into quagmires. Locals are accustomed to these storms, but this region is now also being pummeled by two other tempests — the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit the Navajo Nation hard, especially due to many residents’ difficulty in accessing clean water, and also the tumult of fracking, which has now been lashing the region for 10 years.

Senate Democrats’ New Climate Report Disappoints

Senate Democrats released a climate action report earlier this week leaving green groups, environmental activists, and progressive campaigners disappointed. Critics of the report are saying there is not nearly enough action involved to fight the threat of global heating that is caused by human activity. “The report fails to address the vital need to end the extraction, processing, and burning of fossil fuels, and instead sees a future for fossil fuels tied to the false promise of carbon capture.”

How Much Will Earth Really Warm By? Here’s The Latest Research

A major new study has been published - one that gives much more certainty on the extent of future warming we might expect. Along with many other international climate scientists, it was led by my colleague, climate scientist Steven Sherwood from the University of New South Wales in Australia. So, I asked him a few questions about it, to drill down what this means for us and the future. We know Earth's climate warms as greenhouse gas concentrations like carbon dioxide rise in the atmosphere. From the 1950s, NASA temperature data show Earth has warmed ~0.8 °C up until the latest decade.The scale of future warming remains uncertain for a variety of reasons, the biggest unknown being how much carbon pollution humanity will emit over the coming decades. That is based on political and economic systems - hardly something we can predict over the coming months - let alone the coming decades! So, scientists have developed complex earth-system models to predict the future using a variety of future carbon pollution scenarios - ranging from the 'burn all the coal reserves' option to the 'shut down all coal-fired power plants tomorrow' option. But another important element of uncertainty is how sensitive Earth's climate is to carbon dioxide.

Climate Activists Are Closer Than Ever To Ending All Fossil Fuel Investments

When New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced last month that the state would divest its over $200 billion Common Retirement Fund from more than 20 coal companies, it marked an important milestone for a grassroots campaign that has seen a recent burst of new momentum. In an op-ed published on July 12, DiNapoli stated, “After a thorough assessment, the fund has divested from 22 thermal coal mining companies that are not prepared to thrive, or even survive, in the low-carbon economy.” This victory is thanks to a near decade-long effort by activists who have been pressuring New York to divest from the companies most responsible for causing the climate crisis. A surge in youth-led activism has brought new energy to this campaign, putting pressure on both the comptroller’s office and state legislators. While New York still has not ended its investments in oil and gas companies, DiNapoli’s decision to divest from coal shows climate activists are having a real impact on one of the largest state pension funds in the United States.

COVID19 Lockdown Has Little Impact On Climate, Green Recovery Needed

Here in the UK, with traffic noise back to drowning out birdsong, and foreign holidays back on the cards, it is easy to forget the weeks of cleaner air. If we do not seize the opportunity to pause, reflect and plan transformative change, the COVID-19 years could end up being just a small and temporary blip in our overall climate trajectory. Earlier this year, during the lockdown, my daughter and I found ourselves with time on our hands. Her A-level (senior high school) exams had been cancelled and my colleagues had not yet discovered Zoom.

COVID-19, Climate Change, And Chaos

COVID-19 and the protests for racial justice have drawn attention away from the mostly bad news about the environment. Yes, the skies in most parts of the world are a lot clearer these days as people stay home and auto emissions decline. But as one study points out, even if lockdown measures continue for the next several months, global carbon emissions will only drop by between 4 to 8 percent from last year. That drop would not be enough to make a dent in overall warming trends—and as the US and other economies recover, it will be back to “normal.”
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