Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion

[mspohr]

World Bank urged to rethink investment in one of Brazil's big beef companies

World Bank urged to rethink investment in one of Brazil's big beef companies

The World Bank should reconsider its investment in one of Brazil’s biggest beef producers because of the industry’s links to deforestation and the climate crisis, according to two UN-appointed experts.

Minerva is Brazil’s second largest beef exporter, and some of its product is supplied, both directly and indirectly, by cattle farmers based in the Amazon rainforest.

predecessor in the post, the international law professor John Knox, said the IFC and other finance houses should ensure they were not contributing to industries fuelling the climate crisis, “including by ending their support for massive industrial beef operations that depend on deforestation”.

He added: “International funding that contributes to the ongoing climate breakdown, either by supporting fossil fuel projects or by supporting deforestation, is completely inexcusable.”

 

[ohmman]

https://theecologist.org/2019/dec/10/us-banned-climate-uk-trade-talks

The US has banned mention of climate change from trade talks that Trump’s administration has been holding with the UK.

Leaked documents show that the UK raised the issue of climate change only to be bluntly told it is off limits because it is too politically sensitive and a ‘lightening [sic] rod issue’.

 

[Merrill]

https://theecologist.org/2019/dec/10/us-banned-climate-uk-trade-talks

The US has banned mention of climate change from trade talks that Trump’s administration has been holding with the UK.

Leaked documents show that the UK raised the issue of climate change only to be bluntly told it is off limits because it is too politically sensitive and a ‘lightening [sic] rod issue’.

What a bunch of bs!

 

[mspohr]

The old made our climate mess. And the young will get us out of it

The old made our climate mess. And the young will get us out of it | Rebecca Solnit
World leaders are meeting in Spain to decide whether or not to bother with preventing the destruction of the earth, like people in a vehicle speeding toward a cliff deciding whether to brake or swerve or just chat about other things

Powerful senior citizens in the United States – Trump, Giuliani, Biden – are trading playground insults, and the middle-aged people who make a lot of decisions about how to handle this emergency seem incapable of thinking beyond the singularly imagination-killing criterion of short-term profit.

Sometimes I think that our species was for most of its history a child: it had limited capacity to harm and thus limited responsibility to do no harm. We could kill each other, but we did it without napalm and nuclear weapons that kill a lot of other things. We could think small because we acted small, mostly; we were altering the earth with hunting, grazing, farming, foraging, building, but most of our traces would vanish and most of our impact left no lasting damage.

With the industrial revolution and its reliance on fossil fuels and with technologies capable of changing the earth on a more profound scale, childhood harmlessness faded into the past for those who wielded those powers and used those tools and benefitted from it all. Humans ceased to be human-scale, but our imaginations and ethics lagged behind our impact. We have for two centuries been in a sort of wild adolescence, too reckless and impatient to pay attention to consequences or to listen to the Rachel Carsons and Vandana Shivas when they point out that there are consequences

 

[JRP3]

Greta Thunberg Is TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year

 

[ohmman]

https://www.ucsusa.org/about/news/top-fossil-fuel-companies-responsible-majority-ocean-acidification

A peer-reviewed study published today in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters found that emissions traced to the world’s largest fossil fuel companies are responsible for more than half of the ocean’s acidification since pre-industrial times.
...

The study found that:

• Emissions traced to 88 major carbon producers from 1880 to 2015 have contributed to more than half (~55 percent) of the observed increase in ocean acidification over this time period.
• Emissions traced to 88 major carbon producers from 1965-2015 have contributed to more than half (~51 percent) of the ocean acidification that has been observed between 1880-2015.
• More than one-fifth (~23 percent) of that increased acidity from 1880 could be traced to the emissions from the 20 largest investor-owned and majority state-owned companies since 1965, including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell.
  
  
  
  
  

 

[iPlug]

Figure 3 from:

Attributing ocean acidification to major carbon producers - IOPscience

 

[mspohr]

Green Deal: cities and regions ready to deliver

EU Beats U.S., Adopts Its Own Green New Deal

The EU Green Deal strategy contains a total of 50 policy measures, including a legally binding target of reducing EU emissions to net zero by 2050, a carbon border tax to prevent companies from relocating outside the EU to avoid climate legislation, a €100 billion just transition fund to help spread the burden and help coal-reliant regions, and a policy to not conclude any free trade agreement with a country that is not a signatory to the Paris climate agreement.

 

[ReddyLeaf]

Green Deal: cities and regions ready to deliver

EU Beats U.S., Adopts Its Own Green New Deal

The EU Green Deal strategy contains a total of 50 policy measures, including a legally binding target of reducing EU emissions to net zero by 2050, a carbon border tax to prevent companies from relocating outside the EU to avoid climate legislation, a €100 billion just transition fund to help spread the burden and help coal-reliant regions, and a policy to not conclude any free trade agreement with a country that is not a signatory to the Paris climate agreement.

More proof that the US is the world’s leading country. Leading to environmental destruction, that is.

 

[DragonWatch]

Greta Thunberg Is TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year

I view Greta as the second coming, with gust-O.

 

[mspohr]

I view Greta as the second coming, with gust-O.

Joan of Arc reincarnated

 

[cpa]

https://theecologist.org/2019/dec/10/us-banned-climate-uk-trade-talks

The US has banned mention of climate change from trade talks that Trump’s administration has been holding with the UK.

Leaked documents show that the UK raised the issue of climate change only to be bluntly told it is off limits because it is too politically sensitive and a ‘lightening [sic] rod issue’.

Maybe the Administration should take heed and do some lightening up themselves!

 

[ladysbff]

Soil carbon science for policy and practice

Soil-based initiatives to mitigate climate change and restore soil fertility both rely on rebuilding soil organic carbon. Controversy about the role soils might play in climate change mitigation is, consequently, undermining actions to restore soils for improved agricultural and environmental outcomes.

We argue there is scientific consensus on the need to rebuild soil organic carbon (hereafter, ‘soil carbon’) for sustainable land stewardship. Soil carbon concentrations and stocks have been reduced in agricultural soils following long-term use of practices such as intensive tillage and overgrazing. Adoption of practices such as cover crops and silvopasture can protect and rebuild soil carbon. Given the positive effects of soil carbon on erosion resistance, aeration, water availability and nutrient provision of soils, benefits of soil restoration can include improved fertility, reduced fertilizer and irrigation use, and greater resilience to stressors such as drought. Rebuilding soil carbon is thus the foundation for many soil health initiatives.

At the same time, there is disagreement about the advisability and plausibility of rebuilding soil carbon as part of climate mitigation initiatives. The urgency to address climate change elevates these disagreements to the public sphere, where they are portrayed as strongly adversarial, and indeed opinions on soils as a mitigation strategy appear diametrically opposed within the academic literature. We suggest that the debate about the role of agricultural soils in climate mitigation is eroding scientific credibility in the related but distinct effort to protect and restore these soils by rebuilding carbon.

 

[rays427]

Philippine Study Shows Evidence Of "Criminal Intent" By Oil Majors, Says CIEL | CleanTechnica

Based on the evidence, the Commission found that those companies could be found legally and morally liable for human rights violations arising from climate change. It concluded that people who had their human rights impaired by climate change deserve access to legal remedies

The Commission went so far as to find that the companies had engaged in obstruction, deception, or fraud with regard to their activities and the impact of those activities on the Filipino nation and its citizens. It found those actions could establish criminal intent by the companies, which would subject them to criminal sanctions.

So the oil companies should shut down all production? How many days do you think that would last?

 

[JRP3]

So the oil companies should shut down all production?

How about they just stop lying and funding misinformation?

 

[rays427]

How about they just stop lying and funding misinformation?

Where are the major oil companies funding misinformation? For years the oil companies thought we were near peak oil. That should have pushed folks to conserve fossil fuels even more than the possibility that CO2 is causing global warming.

 

[mspohr]

How a closed-door meeting shows farmers are waking up on climate change

Farmers are waking up on climate change
Perdue, Vilsack and leading agricultural groups gathered in a Maryland barn to talk about the farm-country issue that dare not speak its name.

 

[mspohr]

How about they just stop lying and funding misinformation?

It’s Time to Act Against the Oil Companies Causing Death and Destruction - Resilience

 

[mspohr]

How about they just stop lying and funding misinformation?

Hello. I travel pretty regularly on Eurostar, and have become appalled at the ads you show on your screens in your St Pancras terminal for fossil fuel companies. On Friday you were showing both an ad by BP claiming that “we see possibilities everywhere” and one by Exxon claiming to be part of the solution to climate change. A recent study showed that between them, oil companies spend £200m a year on watering down action on climate change. Rather than “seeing possibilities everywhere”, BP are still resolutely a fossil fuel company still actively exploring for new reserves in spite of the science telling us that 80% of known reserves need to stay in the ground.

Complaining to Eurostar about BP’s Hijacking of their Passengers’ Imagination - Resilience

 

[mspohr]

It’s a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible.

Methane is loosely regulated, difficult to detect and rising sharply. The Times’s aerial and on-the-ground research, along with an examination of lobbying activities by the companies that own the sites, shows how the energy industry is seeking and winning looser federal regulations on methane, a major contributor to global warming.