Pegasus Research Consortium

   Thousands of puffins and other seabirds in the Bering Sea have died over the last 3-4 years.   It looks as tho they have starved to death. 
  "The deaths are probably linked to elevated sea-surface temperatures in the eastern Bering Sea, a result of human-caused climate change, the team suggests. In the past, summertime sea ice melt has helped fuel blooms of plankton that form the base of the food web in the sea (SN: 3/16/19, p. 20). But sea ice has become scarce in the Bering Sea in the last few years, and there are fewer plankton blooms. That has had cascading effects through the sea's food web, including decreases in some species of small fish, such as capelin and herring, that puffins eat.   Starvation may also have been responsible for recent mass die-offs of other seabirds in the region, such as of murres, auklets and kittiwakes."

       







 

well it's not just the chinese who say  it's a hoax
those wonderous humans in the white house are working hard
to convince thinking folk  it's all what they call fake news



oh btw it isn't from huff post

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-blocked-intelligence-agencys-written-testimony-saying-human-caused-climate-change-could-be-possibly-catastrophic/ar-AACysAa?li=BBnb7Kz

White House blocked intelligence agency's written testimony saying human-caused climate change could be 'possibly catastrophic'
Juliet Eilperin, Josh Dawsey, Brady Dennis  5 hrs ago

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© Beth J. Harpaz/AP Grinnell Glacier is pictured at the turnaround point of an 11-mile round-trip hike in Glacier National Park in Montana on Sept. 5, 2017. According to the National Park Service, the park's glacial ice sheets are a fraction of the size they were 100 years ago, and they are melting so fast that they will all be gone by 2030. (Beth J. Harpaz/AP)


White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change could be "possibly catastrophic" after State officials refused to excise the document's references to the scientific consensus on climate change.

The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research prepared testimony comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the idea that the burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued to warn climate change could undermine America's national security, a position President Trump rejects.

Officials from the White House's Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council all raised objections to parts of the testimony that Rod Schoonover, who works in the office of the geographer and global affairs, prepared to present on the bureau's behalf for a hearing Wednesday.

According to several senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal deliberations, Trump officials sought to cut several pages of the document on the grounds that its description of climate science did not mesh with the administration's official stance. Critics of the testimony included William Happer, a National Security Council senior director who has touted the benefits of carbon dioxide and sought to establish a federal task force to challenge the scientific consensus that human activity is driving recent climate change.

Administration officials said the White House Office of Legislative Affairs ultimately decided that Schoonover could appear before the House panel, but could not submit his office's statement for the record because it did not, in the words of one official, "jibe" with what the administration is seeking to do on climate change. This aide added that legislative affairs and OMB staffers routinely review agency officials' prepared congressional testimony before they submit it.

A House Intelligence Committee aide confirmed that the panel received the written testimony of the two other intelligence officials who testified at Wednesday's public hearing, but not Schoonover's.

Francesco Femia, CEO of the Council on Strategic Risks and co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security, questioned why the White House would not have allowed an intelligence official to offer a written statement that would be entered into the permanent record.

"This is an intentional failure of the White House to perform a core duty: inform the American public of the threats we face. It's dangerous and unacceptable," Femia said in an email Friday. "Any attempt to suppress information on the security risks of climate change threatens to leave the American public vulnerable and unsafe."

Schoonover, who served as a full professor of chemistry and biochemistry at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, could not be reached for comment Friday, and the State Department referred questions to the White House. A White House spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said in an email, "The administration does not comment on its internal policy review."

The Bureau of Intelligence and Research's 12-page prepared testimony, reviewed by The Washington Post, includes a detailed description of how rising greenhouse gas emissions are raising global temperatures and acidifying the world's oceans. It warns that these changes are contributing to the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

"Climate-linked events are disruptive to humans and societies when they harm people directly or substantially weaken the social, political, economic, environmental, or infrastructure systems that support people," the statement reads, noting that while some populations may benefit from climate change. "The balance of documented evidence to date suggests that net negative effects will overwhelm the positive benefits from climate change for most of the world, however."

White House officials took aim at the document's scientific citations, which refer to work conducted by federal agencies including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and raised a question about the projected effects of climate change.

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© Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Physicist William Happer arrives in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York on Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. Happer, a National Security Council senior director who has touted the benefits of carbon dioxide, was among the officials who objected to the State Department testimony on climate change. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The following statement, for example, attracted White House scrutiny: "Absent extensive mitigating factors or events, we see few plausible future scenarios where significant — possibly catastrophic — harm does not arise from the compounded effects of climate change."

President Trump has been steadfast in shrugging off the warnings from scientists about the potential impacts of climate change, reiterating in an interview with Piers Morgan on "Good Morning Britain" this week that he does not regret pulling the United States out of a 2015 global climate accord aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

"I believe that there's a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways," he said. "Don't forget, it used to be called global warming. That wasn't working. Then it was called climate change. Now it's actually called extreme weather, because with extreme weather, you can't miss."

During the interview he blamed China, India and Russia for polluting the environment and insisted the United States has "among the cleanest climates," and noted that the United States had suffered extreme weather in the past. "Forty years ago, we had the worst tornado binge we've ever had. In the 1890s, we had our worst hurricanes."

The United States remains the world's second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, behind China.

Camilo Mora, a geographer and environmental professor at the University of Hawaii, said in an email that the president is rejecting the conclusions made by scientists in his own government and across the global when it comes to climate change.

"The evidence on this issue is overwhelming," Mora said. "The president questions our change in jargon from warming to climate change to extremes as uncertainty on our side, but in reality we have come to learn that the impacts of greenhouse gases are much broader than we originally thought. By increasing atmospheric temperature, greenhouse gases can also cause drought and heat waves, ripening conditions for wildfires. In humid places, heat causes constant soil water evaporation leading to extreme precipitation, which falls on saturated soils and thus you commonly also get floods."

Despite the internal controversy over the testimony prepared for Wednesday's hearing, all three witnesses detailed ways in which climate-related impacts could exacerbate existing national security risks. Peter Kiemel, counselor at the National Intelligence Council, and Jeffrey Ringhausen, a senior analyst at the Office of Naval Intelligence, talked about issues ranging from how terrorist cells could capitalize on water shortages to disputes with other nations over shifting fishing grounds.

Schoonover, for his part, said in his opening statement that the planet was warming and that it could pose a major risk to the United States and other nations.

"The Earth's climate is unequivocally undergoing a long-term warming trend, as established by decades of scientific measurements and multiple, independent lines of evidence," he said, adding later: "Climate change effects could undermine important international systems on which the U.S. is critically dependent, such as trade routes, food and energy supplies, the global economy and domestic stability abroad."

Quote from: WhatTheHey on May 31, 2019, 10:01:07 PM
   Thousands of puffins and other seabirds in the Bering Sea have died over the last 3-4 years.   It looks as tho they have starved to death. 
  "The deaths are probably linked to elevated sea-surface temperatures in the eastern Bering Sea, a result of human-caused climate change, the team suggests. In the past, summertime sea ice melt has helped fuel blooms of plankton that form the base of the food web in the sea (SN: 3/16/19, p. 20). But sea ice has become scarce in the Bering Sea in the last few years, and there are fewer plankton blooms. That has had cascading effects through the sea's food web, including decreases in some species of small fish, such as capelin and herring, that puffins eat.   Starvation may also have been responsible for recent mass die-offs of other seabirds in the region, such as of murres, auklets and kittiwakes."

       

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/puffins-birds-died-bering-sea-arctic-warming?tgt=nr

No such thing as 'human induced climate change'. The climate has been changing all by itself for billions of years. And consensus is not science.

IMO
😎

Quote from: Sgt.Rocknroll on June 08, 2019, 09:39:58 PM
No such thing as 'human induced climate change'. The climate has been changing all by itself for billions of years. And consensus is not science.

    Well as the population on the planet has never been this large before (at least not in this age) and as a direct result, the pollution problem has grown with it.
    There have been efforts made to stop/lessen the amounts of pollution causing mechanisms with varying degrees of success.  Yet over all the pollution/population problem in the environment is still becoming worse in devastating ways.  The air/atmosphere is still under attack from pollutants we produce.
    It's only takes commonsense to to see that our numbers are indeed influencing the climate.  Oh my, even the oceans have "now" oceans of deteriorating plastics, seething in great huge areas like a plastic soup.  Just the concentration of plastic in these "plastic soup waters" has the ability to alter the water conditions and bring about changes we can even imagine now.   Not to mention all of this has an affect on the environment and as a result the climate also.
    Just the FACT that we occupy more area of the earths surface with our homes/cities has changed the climate of the whole planet.  With a system that is as interconnected as ours is, you can not affect even a small part with out causing effect throughout the whole.
    If you throw a pebble in a pond, the ripples spread out and disperse.  But if you keep throwing pebbles in, the water becomes agitated over the entire surface of the pond.  Its the same with pollution/population, if we don't stop throwing pebbles it will continue to worsen.  Even smog has an affect/effect on the climate as it alters atmospheric densities and temperatures.

  Well, at least I can say I tried!   :) 







   We can not have these amounts and types of pollution without affecting the environment and there in the climate.  Just the amount of pavement in our cities affects the climate locally and that's just one pebble thrown, we have many cities allover the world.  That's a lot of pebbles.   It really is commonsense.


   Have a great day!   ;D

Pollution is one thing, actually changing the climate is another. There are too many variables that could actually change a climate, the most important one is a hyper active sun. It is called the 'Solar System' for a reason. As Zorgon has posted here and on FB, the Icelandic ice cores tell the 'verifiable' changing of the climate in history. Before there were machines and human pollution. It's like calling crude oil a 'fossil fuel'. It's been said soooo many times that it's become the standard. (It's not BTW).
I'd be more worried about the nuclear waste that's been put into the ocean than plastic bottles. Not saying plastic bottles in the ocean is a good thing, but that can be taken care far easier that say Fukushima waste in the water. But then again that's pollution, a whole other problem.

Quote from: Sgt.Rocknroll on June 09, 2019, 09:13:09 PM
As Zorgon has posted here and on FB, the Icelandic ice cores tell the 'verifiable' changing of the climate in history. Before there were machines and human pollution.

That fact doesn't mean that human action isn't one of those many variables. We do know that cities, for example, change the local weather by creating more heat than that area originally had.

QuoteBut then again that's pollution, a whole other problem.

One of the possible sources of climate change is the ocean's temperatures, so I think plastic floating on the ocean can have some influence on the ocean's temperature.

The real fact is climate change doesn't need human interaction to exist. It happened before machines and human pollution and will happen again even without our help.

Quote from: ArMaP on June 09, 2019, 09:50:04 PM
That fact doesn't mean that human action isn't one of those many variables. We do know that cities, for example, change the local weather by creating more heat than that area originally had.

Large cities CAN alter LOCAL climate change in the same way a new mountain range can affect LOCAL climate,,, but not GLOBAL as that is temperature driven

A good example is Toronto. The buildings are tall enough they created a micro variation.... The winter storms instead of dumping snow on Toronto, bent around the artificial mountain to dump on Buffalo  (Buffalo was NOT amused :P but less snow to shovel in Toronto

QuoteOne of the possible sources of climate change is the ocean's temperatures, so I think plastic floating on the ocean can have some influence on the ocean's temperature.

You are free to "think' what you wish  However it is a KNOW fact that the Gulf Stream a DEEP current, is the driving mechanism of climate change  Just watch "The Day After Tomorrow"... the MODEL they use is 100% correct. The mini ice age in Europe was driven by the Gulf Stream... and that was LONG before plastic

Too many people have opinions and "think" they know, but have never researched data that is readily available  :P

Quote from: Sgt.Rocknroll on June 09, 2019, 11:56:51 PM
It happened before machines and human pollution and will happen again even without our help.

I agree, but that doesn't mean we should help it happen, right?

Quote from: zorgon on June 10, 2019, 12:21:48 AM
You are free to "think' what you wish  However it is a KNOW fact that the Gulf Stream a DEEP current, is the driving mechanism of climate change

For the whole Earth?

QuoteToo many people have opinions and "think" they know, but have never researched data that is readily available  :P

That's why I like to say "I think" instead of acting like "I know". :)

Quote from: ArMaP on June 10, 2019, 01:31:43 AM
For the whole Earth?

No but if you look at the last ice age you will see the whole earth was NOT effected.  The rest happened when the ice formed and colder temps lowered the Global Annual Average temp ( A mere 5 degrees plus or minus is able to do that.

QuoteThat's why I like to say "I think" instead of acting like "I know". :)

The entire purpose of true RESEARCH is to be able to KNOW so you can stop acting like you think you know :P

In the case of Climate Change we KNOW (well except politicians :P They are too stupid to know anything :P ) The record is in the ice cores and other places

(http://www.thelivingmoon.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10004/26804504_939798956196648_7073875224504280773_n.jpg)

Once again, here is the chart showing the last 415,000 years from the Lake Vostok ice cores before, during, and after each warming/cooling cycle...

8)

Quote from: zorgon on June 10, 2019, 02:58:12 AM
No but if you look at the last ice age you will see the whole earth was NOT effected.

Could you point me to a source? Thanks in advance. :)

Quote from: The Seeker on June 10, 2019, 03:25:47 AM
Once again, here is the chart showing the last 415,000 years from the Lake Vostok ice cores before, during, and after each warming/cooling cycle...

That's irrelevant to what I was talking about: if we are helping change the climate shouldn't we try to reduce that effect, so the change is slower and gives us more time to react?

   ArMap is correct, a tens of thousands year graph is showing to large a section.  If you want to see what effect the human race has brought about, you need a graph relevant to the human pollution output and we have not been a coal and fossil fuel burning people for tens or even thousands of years.  ;) lol.  Nor were as highly industrialized as we are now even a couple of hundred years ago.  lol   ;)
   So in order to see what effect humans have had you must look at the time line relevant to industrialization and fuel burning.  And if you do, it shows that we are causing change different from a natural cycle. 

    Have a wonderful day/night!   :)

Quote from: ArMaP on June 10, 2019, 04:47:08 PM
That's irrelevant to what I was talking about: if we are helping change the climate shouldn't we try to reduce that effect, so the change is slower and gives us more time to react?

if,....if.....if.....if....

Quote from: WhatTheHey on June 10, 2019, 06:08:34 PM
And if you do, it shows that we are causing change different from a natural cycle. 

    Have a wonderful day/night!   :)

it?....it???....there is nothing but consensus and consensus is NOT science.....(those numbers have been skewed before to make what they wish for happen)

It's all a money grab....
::) 8)

Quote from: Sgt.Rocknroll on June 10, 2019, 06:40:45 PM
if,....if.....if.....if....

Yes, if, as I think that first we should be sure of what is happening, and knowing what we are doing would also help correct any of our actions.

I just don't think ignoring the question is the right way of looking at it.

Personally, I really don't care, as I don't have any children to worry about and I don't think I will live more than some 20 years or so, but I don't like unsolved problems.

Quote from: Sgt.Rocknroll on June 10, 2019, 06:43:23 PM
It's all a money grab....

It wasn't at the start, some 20 or 30 years ago, when I first saw articles by scientists talking about it.

It was only when politicians and their friends saw it as a source of power and money did they start turning it into the circus it is now.

Quote from: ArMaP on June 10, 2019, 06:48:34 PM
It wasn't at the start, some 20 or 30 years ago, when I first saw articles by scientists talking about it.

It was only when politicians and their friends saw it as a source of power and money did they start turning it into the circus it is now.

Yeah 20 or 30 years ago, the catch phrase was global cooling.Then when that didn't work, it was global warming. When that didn't work, it became global climate change. Which is where we are right now. Global climate change! Now that's a starter! The climate changes every day, 'Hey that should work'! Yes there is such a thing as global climate change. I really believe that the climate can change on a global scale. It's been happening for 4.5 billion years!  ::)

Quote from: Sgt.Rocknroll on June 10, 2019, 09:17:34 PM
Yeah 20 or 30 years ago, the catch phrase was global cooling.

No, I'm talking about global warming.

Quote from: ArMaP on June 10, 2019, 09:18:50 PM
No, I'm talking about global warming.

"global warming" and "global cooling" are real NATURAL cycles This is not in question''

What is the bullshit is that mankind is to blame (or able to control it :P

Quote from: zorgon on June 10, 2019, 09:33:48 PM
What is the bullshit is that mankind is to blame (or able to control it :P

I'm not talking about global warming being man-made, I'm talking about human influence in it.

Do you think that our activities do not have [strike]a result[/strike] any influence in the global Earth climate?

Quote from: ArMaP on June 10, 2019, 04:47:08 PM
That's irrelevant to what I was talking about: if we are helping change the climate shouldn't we try to reduce that effect, so the change is slower and gives us more time to react?

Basically what we as humans have contributed to climate change is a very small drop in the bucket; a few years back when Mt Pinatubo erupted it pumped more pollution and noxious gases into the atmosphere in 3 days than we had in the last 200 years...

the part that really chaps my ass is that here in the states many changes have been made to reduce emissions, yet China and India in particular aren't doing anything to reduce emissions and are actually increasing the amount of pollutants on a daily basis; that is the main reason the US pulled out of the Paris Accords, because no one, repeat, no one, would have done anything to reduce anything besides us, and they wanted the US to foot the bill for all of it...

This period of climate change we are in the middle of is a natural, recurring cycle that happens every so many years; according to the ice cores, we are overdue for the next ice age

8)

Quote from: The Seeker on June 11, 2019, 01:28:17 AM
Basically what we as humans have contributed to climate change is a very small drop in the bucket; a few years back when Mt Pinatubo erupted it pumped more pollution and noxious gases into the atmosphere in 3 days than we had in the last 200 years...

Even if it's a very small drop in the bucket (do you have some values to back that up?), it's a drop we can try to reduce, so why not do it?

Quotethe part that really chaps my ass is that here in the states many changes have been made to reduce emissions, yet China and India in particular aren't doing anything to reduce emissions and are actually increasing the amount of pollutants on a daily basis; that is the main reason the US pulled out of the Paris Accords, because no one, repeat, no one, would have done anything to reduce anything besides us, and they wanted the US to foot the bill for all of it...

This is not a contest, shouldn't we do what is right instead of what others are doing?

QuoteThis period of climate change we are in the middle of is a natural, recurring cycle that happens every so many years; according to the ice cores, we are overdue for the next ice age

Again, irrelevant to what I was saying

ArMaP, what you seem to be missing is that the US has been actively doing things to reduce green house gases since 1974, the rest of the world hasn't and I daresay they will; just here in my state, in the last 5 years, most of the coal-fired power plants have all been changed over to natural gas...

China has been putting a new plant online on average of once a week and I guarantee you that those aren't low emission configurations...

you figure out how to get the rest of the world to do anything to reduce their emissions and i will support you and applaud you but I believe it will be a very cold day in hell before that ever happens...

Quotehttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings

Climate Consensus - the 97% Climate change
Benjamin Franta

Wed 19 Sep 2018 06.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 19 Sep 2018 19.55 EDT


Shell and Exxon's secret 1980s climate change warnings
Newly found documents from the 1980s show that fossil fuel companies privately predicted the global damage that would be caused by their products.

One day in 1961, an American economist named Daniel Ellsberg stumbled across a piece of paper with apocalyptic implications. Ellsberg, who was advising the US government on its secret nuclear war plans, had discovered a document that contained an official estimate of the death toll in a preemptive "first strike" on China and the Soviet Union: 300 million in those countries, and double that globally.

Ellsberg was troubled that such a plan existed; years later, he tried to leak the details of nuclear annihilation to the public. Although his attempt failed, Ellsberg would become famous instead for leaking what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers – the US government's secret history of its military intervention in Vietnam.

America's amoral military planning during the Cold War echoes the hubris exhibited by another cast of characters gambling with the fate of humanity. Recently, secret documents have been unearthed detailing what the energy industry knew about the links between their products and global warming. But, unlike the government's nuclear plans, what the industry detailed was put into action.

In the 1980s, oil companies like Exxon and Shell carried out internal assessments of the carbon dioxide released by fossil fuels, and forecast the planetary consequences of these emissions. In 1982, for example, Exxon predicted that by about 2060, CO2 levels would reach around 560 parts per million – double the preindustrial level – and that this would push the planet's average temperatures up by about 2°C over then-current levels (and even more compared to pre-industrial levels).

(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ad8f11375841adc34eacf4d5006e392af25fc481/0_0_4642_5476/master/4642.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=510840d6025b155fc8d54feeebccf1ac)
Exxon's private prediction of the future growth of carbon dioxide levels (left axis) and global temperature relative to 1982 (right axis). Elsewhere in its report, Exxon noted that the most widely accepted science at the time indicated that doubling carbon dioxide levels would cause a global warming of 3°C. Illustration: 1982 Exxon internal briefing document
Later that decade, in 1988, an internal report by Shell projected similar effects but also found that CO2 could double even earlier, by 2030. Privately, these companies did not dispute the links between their products, global warming, and ecological calamity. On the contrary, their research confirmed the connections.

Shell's assessment foresaw a one-meter sea-level rise, and noted that warming could also fuel disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, resulting in a worldwide rise in sea level of "five to six meters." That would be enough to inundate entire low-lying countries.

Shell's analysts also warned of the "disappearance of specific ecosystems or habitat destruction," predicted an increase in "runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of low-lying farmland," and said that "new sources of freshwater would be required" to compensate for changes in precipitation. Global changes in air temperature would also "drastically change the way people live and work." All told, Shell concluded, "the changes may be the greatest in recorded history."

For its part, Exxon warned of "potentially catastrophic events that must be considered." Like Shell's experts, Exxon's scientists predicted devastating sea-level rise, and warned that the American Midwest and other parts of the world could become desert-like. Looking on the bright side, the company expressed its confidence that "this problem is not as significant to mankind as a nuclear holocaust or world famine."

The documents make for frightening reading. And the effect is all the more chilling in view of the oil giants' refusal to warn the public about the damage that their own researchers predicted. Shell's report, marked "confidential," was first disclosed by a Dutch news organization earlier this year. Exxon's study was not intended for external distribution, either; it was leaked in 2015.

Nor did the companies ever take responsibility for their products. In Shell's study, the firm argued that the "main burden" of addressing climate change rests not with the energy industry, but with governments and consumers. That argument might have made sense if oil executives, including those from Exxon and Shell, had not later lied about climate change and actively prevented governments from enacting clean-energy policies.

Although the details of global warming were foreign to most people in the 1980s, among the few who had a better idea than most were the companies contributing the most to it. Despite scientific uncertainties, the bottom line was this: oil firms recognized that their products added CO2 to the atmosphere, understood that this would lead to warming, and calculated the likely consequences. And then they chose to accept those risks on our behalf, at our expense, and without our knowledge.
The catastrophic nuclear war plans that Ellsberg saw in the 1960s were a Sword of Damocles that fortunately never fell. But the oil industry's secret climate change predictions are becoming reality, and not by accident. Fossil-fuel producers willfully drove us toward the grim future they feared by promoting their products, lying about the effects, and aggressively defending their share of the energy market.

As the world warms, the building blocks of our planet – its ice sheets, forests, and atmospheric and ocean currents – are being altered beyond repair. Who has the right to foresee such damage and then choose to fulfill the prophecy? Although war planners and fossil-fuel companies had the arrogance to decide what level of devastation was appropriate for humanity, only Big Oil had the temerity to follow through. That, of course, is one time too many.

Benjamin Franta, a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, where his research focuses on the history of climate science and politics.

An earlier version of this piece, entitled "Global Warming's Paper Trail", was published on Sept. 12, 2018 by Project Syndicate.

............................................

Quotehttps://sg.news.yahoo.com/climate-plan-exxon-liability-175022079.html

HuffPost   
Amy Westervelt
HuffPost11 June 2019


A Climate Plan Even Exxon Could Love

A few years ago, putting a price on carbon was a non-starter for Republicans, but things have changed. Now there are multiple bipartisan proposals to do just that ― but only one has the backing of both automotive and fossil fuel companies, and it could put in place a permanent loophole eliminating any responsibility for their role in delaying action on climate.

In mid-May, the House held its first Ways & Means Committee hearing on climate change in a dozen years. The hearing discussed a carbon fee and dividend plan from the Climate Leadership Council, one developed by two former Republican Secretaries of State, James Baker and George Shultz, and endorsed by a broad coalition that includes former Obama Department of Energy head Steven Chu, the late physicist Stephen Hawking, former Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke, ExxonMobil, Conoco Philips, Shell, Ford and GM.

CLC founder Ted Halstead was the only witness at the hearing associated with any particular carbon pricing plan (although the Baker-Shultz plan has not yet been formally introduced as a bill) and touted its four "unseverable" pillars: an initial $40 per ton fee on carbon emissions that will rise over time, a carbon dividend that pays citizens back to offset the rising costs of goods, border carbon adjustments and other trade remedies, and a phase-out of most federal greenhouse gas regulations already in place, particularly the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.

The plan also stipulates that "no party should be liable for damages from past emissions that were legal at the time." Herein lies the rub for a lot of people who care about climate change.

While the first three pillars are fairly standard as carbon tax proposals go, the liability waiver is unique to the CLC proposal, and it comes just as efforts to litigate on climate change appear to be bearing fruit. The Trump administration has yet to win a single case in federal court defending a delay or rollback of climate regulations, according to a new analysis from Columbia University's Sabin Center on Climate Change Law. And in January, the Supreme Court declined Exxon Mobil's bid to block the Massachusetts attorney general's request of internal company documents.

Creating the sort of liability exemption laid out in the CLC proposal is rare, said longtime consumer advocate and attorney Pamela Gilbert, though industries are constantly lobbying for them. The only industries that currently have this sort of legal protection at the federal level are gun manufacturers and nuclear energy.

"It's always the very most dangerous products or industries, which makes you think maybe this isn't so wise," said Gilbert, a former executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and current partner at the law firm Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca. "Is the idea that we wouldn't be able to have these products without this legal immunity, because of the harm they cause? Then maybe we need to rethink that."

There are currently 17 different climate liability cases underway, brought by cities, counties, states and other industries in an attempt to hold fossil fuel companies financially responsible for their portion of the bill on climate change adaptation. So it makes sense that oil companies would trade a carbon fee, which they have traditionally fought, for a pass on litigation. Just last year, the U.S. oil industry spent some $30 million in Washington state to defeat a carbon tax. Shifting that opposition to support seems to have required permanent legal immunity on climate change.

And then there are the fraud allegations against ExxonMobil. The state of New York brought a suit against ExxonMobil earlier this year which alleges that the company hid the financial risks of climate change from its shareholders. The Massachusetts attorney general's office is also continuing a fraud probe of the oil giant. Yet another case, also in Massachusetts, alleges that Exxon has not appropriately managed the risk of climate change to a seaside terminal in Everett, Massachusetts. That case just made it past the motion to dismiss, putting Exxon in the position of either having to prove that it has managed for climate risk or acknowledge that it has not; neither is a particularly good argument for them to have to make, and likely means the company will have to turn over internal climate documents to make its case.

CLC Senior Vice President Greg Bertelsen said the proposal isn't final yet and details are still being fleshed out. They expect to release a final proposal this fall and then an as-yet-unnamed lawmaker will introduce it as a bill later this year. But Bertelsen said he expects that bill will include the liability waiver.

"We envision a provision which, in the context of a robust and rising national carbon price that considerably exceeds the U.S. Paris target, Congress would reaffirm that companies are not liable for historic emissions that were legal at the time," he said.

That would be a key difference between the Baker-Shultz plan and other carbon fee and dividend plans, which offer regulatory relief but not legal immunity.

"We don't expect this to be part of the Energy Innovation Act," Flannery Winchester, with the Citizens Climate Lobby, said. The CCL is a nonprofit whose carbon fee-and-dividend plan has been introduced by a bipartisan group headed up by Reps. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) and Francis Rooney (R-Fla.). "That's something our volunteers would be incredibly upset about. It would feel like a blow if something like that were to make its way in."

Gilbert said the key issue with liability waivers is that government regulations generally fall far short of protecting the public. In fact, "it's generally legal cases that push the regulation farther," she said. "You need both the courts and regulation." Take away the courts and you're left with weak regulations, standards that never improve, underfunded enforcement and impacts that companies are free to pass on to taxpayers. 

In the case of climate liability, taxpayers and local governments are currently shouldering the cost of climate change adaptation ― everything from seawalls to major infrastructure projects like building new roads, in an effort to adapt to sea level rise and prepare for an increase in both the volume and intensity of natural disasters exacerbated by climate change. These costs are only increasing, and cash-strapped local governments are hoping to share the responsibility for them with some of the industries that contributed to the problem, fought to stall regulation that would have mitigated impacts, and profited while doing so.

One of the cities filing suit last year was Richmond, California, which is still awaiting a decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Richmond Mayor Tom Butt said in a statement that access to the courts is "fundamental to our system of democratic governance," and "ensures that even the most powerful corporations are subject to checks and balances." Butt joined five other California plaintiffs last year in a letter to Democratic California Sens. Kamala Harris and Diane Feinstein warning against carbon legislation that includes immunity against litigation.

CLC argues that such immunity is necessary to get a reasonably high price on carbon. Their $40 a ton figure is certainly higher than the proposal from Reps. Deutch and Rooney that starts at $15 a ton, but that bill has the price increasing $10 per year until it hits a point where emissions are not increasing past 2016 levels; the CLC price is lower than a plan from Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), and Kirstin Gillibrand (N.Y.) that starts at $52/ton. 

But Gilbert said this is a false bind, pointing to the tobacco industry's attempts to curb suits in exchange for Food and Drug Administration regulations in a 1997 bill as an example of why these sorts of trade-offs are not necessary.

"That bill never passed, and years later legislation did pass without that liability limitation," she said. "Sometimes people will say you'll never get federal regulation so you have to give up the lawsuits, but that's just not true

Quote from: The Seeker on June 11, 2019, 03:02:31 AM
ArMaP, what you seem to be missing is that the US has been actively doing things to reduce green house gases since 1974, the rest of the world hasn't and I daresay they will; just here in my state, in the last 5 years, most of the coal-fired power plants have all been changed over to natural gas...

Are you sure of that bold part?
In Portugal, during March 2018 we produced more electricity from renewable sources than the country's needs.

Quotehttps://www.livescience.com/65469-highest-carbon-dioxide-levels.html

Carbon Dioxide Soars to Record-Breaking Levels Not Seen in at Least 800,000 Years
By Yasemin Saplakoglu, Staff Writer | May 14, 2019 06:48am ET

There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there has been for 800,000 years — since before our species evolved.

On Saturday (May 11), the levels of the greenhouse gas reached 415 parts per million (ppm), as measured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Scientists at the observatory have been measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since 1958. But because of other kinds of analysis, such as those done on ancient air bubbles trapped in ice cores, they have data on levels reaching back 800,000 years. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

During the ice ages, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were around 200 ppm. And during the interglacial periods — the planet is currently in an interglacial period — levels were around 280 ppm, according to NASA.

But every story has its villains: Humans are burning fossil fuels, causing the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which are adding an extra blanket on an already feverish planet. So far, global temperatures have risen by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) since the 19th century or pre-industrial times, according to a special report released last year by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Every year, the Earth sees about 3 ppm more carbon dioxide in the air, said Michael Mann, a distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University. "If you do the math, well, it's pretty sobering," he said. "We'll cross 450 ppm in just over a decade."

The subsequent warming is already causing changes to the planet — shrinking glaciers, bleaching coral reefs and intensifying heat waves and storms, among other impacts. And carbon dioxide levels higher than 450 ppm "are likely to lock in dangerous and irreversible changes in our climate," Mann told Live Science.

"CO2 levels will continue to increase for at least the next decade and likely much longer, because not enough is being done worldwide," said Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The long-term increase is due to human-related emissions, especially the emissions of our burning of fossil fuels."

However, he noted that the annual peak in carbon dioxide, which fluctuates throughout the year as plants change their breathing rhythms, occurs right now. The annual average value will be more like 410 to 412 ppm, he said. Which ... is still very high.

"We keep breaking records, but what makes the current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere most troubling is that we are now well into the 'danger zone' where large tipping points in the Earth's climate could be crossed," said Jonathan Overpeck, the dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. "This is particularly true when you factor in the additional warming potential of the other greenhouse gases, including methane, that are now in the atmosphere."

The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high, way before Homo sapiens walked the planet, the Antarctic Ice Sheet was much smaller and sea levels were up to 65 feet (20 meters) higher than they are today, Overpeck told Live Science.

"Thus, we could soon be at the point where comparable reductions in ice sheet size, and corresponding increases in sea level, are both inevitable and irreversible over the next few centuries," he said. Smaller ice sheets, in turn, might reduce the reflectivity of the planet and potentially accelerate the warming even more, he added.

"It's like we're playing with a loaded gun and don't know how it  works."

links
Images of Melt: Earth's Vanishing Ice
The Reality of Climate Change: 10 Myths Busted
5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health
Originally published on Live Science.

........................................

https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2

Quote from: ArMaP on June 11, 2019, 09:58:27 PM
Are you sure of that bold part?
In Portugal, during March 2018 we produced more electricity from renewable sources than the country's needs.

That is great, ArMaP, but that is just Portugal, not China or India...

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2 (https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2)


From the above link:

QuoteOn pure emissions alone, the key points are:

    • China emits more CO2 than the US and Canada put together - up by 171% since the year 2000
    • The US has had declining CO2 for two years running, the last time the US had declining CO2 for 3 years running was in the 1980s
    • The UK is down one place to tenth on the list, 8% on the year. The country is now behind Iran, South Korea, Japan and Germany
    • India is now the world's third biggest emitter of CO2 - pushing Russia into fourth place
    • The biggest decrease from 2008-2009 is Ukraine - down 28%. The biggest increase is the Cook Islands - up 66.7%

This data set was from 2009, 10 years ago, and I wager the numbers are even higher today...

Man made global warming is baloney.....

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/weather-channel-founder-man-made-global-warming-baloney



And once again CONSENSUS IS NOT SCIENCE.... 8)

well call it whatever the hell you want
global warming/cooling .. climate change /weather change ..changing gulf stream
melting glaciers..raising water..
blame whoever you want..
it's happening and we're screwed

humans are the only species to regularly foul their own nest
extinction five is ahead of schedule and we're short


hey sarge
the consensus is in what is happening
not the labeling of it
enjoy your retirement..
sadly our kids and grandkids won't see theirs

Hey SO, you have a wonderful future. Me and mine will enjoy ours just fine! 😎

(And yes 'words' mean things)
(So I'll call it what it is, a fraud for the purpose of making money and control)
😎