May 2020 – Page 6 – This is Not Cool

Spotted: Moore Film Subs Turkey for Germany

Tireless crap debunker @Vision23 finds a funny detail in Michael Moore's already infamous hit-and-miss anti-renewables movie 'Planet of Humans'.
Germany doesn't have an LNG terminal (just plans), and no mountainous ports btw, so Jasper asks: where is this? https://t.co/lbcjj0RH0h
— Kees van der Leun  (@Sustainable2050) April 29, 2020

Followed this Link from George Monbiot’s great take-down of the recent Michael Moore dumpster fire, and Kees van Der Leun on Twitter.

Monbiot writes:
“.. the film shows footage of a “large terminal to import natural gas from the United States” that “Germany just built”. Germany has no such terminal. The footage was shot in Turkey.”

Link is to a Twitter thread by Jasper Vis, translated here via Google:

————-

I’m watching Jeff Gibbs’ “Planet of the Humans” YouTube. I will be posting a Twitter thread later this week for your learning and entertainment. Now a preview.
In the film, the voice-over (Jeff Gibbs?) Says that a terminal has just been built in Germany to import natural gas, with images from a terminal. The chance that this is in Germany seems small, because Germany does not have an LNG terminal at all.

This is Germany on the map of the European trade association for gas infrastructure
: there are no LNG terminals in Germany (yet). Do plan. There is an LNG terminal on the Maasvlakte, but it is not in Germany. https://gie.eu/index.php/gie-publications/maps-data/lng-map

It is a trifle in the film, but why do you claim that an LNG terminal has just been built in Germany (with the image of a docked LNG tanker) if that is not the case?

Paging Dr. Darwin: Climate Deniers More Likely to Ignore Corona Virus

Morning Consult:

Adults who say they are not concerned about climate change are less likely than the general public to be taking personal actions to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus, new Morning Consult data shows. And in contrast, climate-concerned U.S. adults are more likely to be taking these actions, which include wearing masks in public, social distancing and disinfecting the home and personal electronics.
In a poll conducted April 14-16, 54 percent of climate-concerned respondents said that they have “always” worn a mask in public spaces such as grocery stores or parks over the last month, whereas just 30 percent of the climate-unconcerned said the same — a 24-point gap. Across all adults, 44 percent said they always followed those measures.
This trend was replicated across questions on social distancing and disinfecting, though with somewhat smaller margins. Social distancing at all times had the most adherents — 78 percent of adults, 86 percent of the climate-concerned and 72 percent of the climate-unconcerned — which could be due to clearer messaging and earlier guidance on distancing precautions, compared with using masks or disinfecting.
The “climate-concerned” group was defined as those who said that they are concerned about climate change and agree with the scientific consensus that climate change is caused by human activity. The climate-unconcerned group was defined as those who said they were either “not too concerned” or “not concerned at all” about climate change.
The poll surveyed 2,200 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 2 percentage points. The climate-concerned and climate-unconcerned cohorts have 3- and 4-point margins of error, respectively.

When May Looks Like December

Washington Post:

A contorted jet stream, with a massive bulge of high pressure in the West and a downstream dip, or trough, in the East that resembles tall ocean waves, is cleaving the United States into two seasons. This weather pattern is leading to record heat in the West and Southwest, including California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, while record cold descends upon the Midwest, Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast thanks to a lobe of the polar vortex.
Both temperature extremes are unusually severe for this time of year. In the East, after a winter lacking in polar vortex-induced cold air outbreaks, a lobe of the tropospheric polar vortex is breaking off from the main circulation over the Arctic and is swinging down from Canada toward New England.

The cold temperatures that will result are almost certain to break records.
Meanwhile, in the West, numerous weather observation sites are expected to eclipse the century mark Thursday and Friday, for example. High temperatures are running at least 15 degrees above average in a zone from Southern California to Texas, and these same areas have seen extreme heat since late last month, compounding the impacts.
Highly amplified jet stream patterns are typically associated with weather extremes, and this one is no exception. It’s leading to a peculiar setup, one in which, on Saturday, Anchorage will be 15 degrees milder than Washington, and a cross-country flight from Los Angeles to New York would be a journey from midsummer to midwinter. (That is, if people were flying amid the coronavirus pandemic.)

Has the Anti-Science Movement Jumped the Shark?

Maybe, if enough people understand the immediate peril this time.

Suggest a zoom conference between COVID docs and climate scientists.

NBC News:

At the end of another long shift treating coronavirus patients, Dr. Hadi Halazun opened his Facebook page to find a man insisting to him that “no one’s dying” and that the coronavirus is “fake news” drummed up by the news media.
Hadi tried to engage and explain his firsthand experience with the virus. In reply, another user insinuated that he wasn’t a real doctor, saying pictures from his profile showing him at concerts and music festivals proved it.
“I told them: ‘I am a real doctor. There are 200 people in my hospital’s ICU,'” said Halazun, a cardiologist in New York. “And they said, ‘Give me your credentials.’ I engaged with them, and they kicked me off their wall.”
“I left work and I felt so deflated. I let it get to me.”
Halazun, like many other health care professionals, is dealing with a bombardment of misinformation and harassment from conspiracy theorists, some of whom have moved beyond posting online to pressing doctors for proof of the severity of the pandemic.
And it’s taking a toll. Halazun said dealing with conspiracy theorists is the “second most painful thing I’ve had to deal with, other than separation of families from their loved one.”
Several other doctors shared similar experiences, saying that they regularly had to treat patients who had sought care too late because of conspiracy theories spread on social media and that social media companies have to do more to counteract the forces that spread lies for profit.

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Further Financial Flight from Fossil Fuels

EENews:

Warren Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., this weekend lamented the $10 billion investment he pumped into Occidental Petroleum Corp. last April and said he plans to invest more money into wind and solar power.
“If you’re an [Occidental] shareholder or any shareholder in any oil-producing company, you join me in having made a mistake,” he said, referring to negative oil prices late last month that happened as a result of the oversupplied U.S. oil market and collapsing demand (Energywire, April 21).
“It was attractive at oil prices that then prevailed,” Buffett said of Berkshire’s Occidental bet. “It doesn’t work, obviously, at $20 a barrel. It certainly doesn’t work [at] minus $37 a barrel.”
The famous investor predicted that “oil production is going to go down a lot in the next few years because it does not pay to drill.”
Buffett’s comments were made in Omaha, Neb., at the conglomerate’s annual shareholder meeting. The closely watched event — a largely online affair this year due to the coronavirus pandemic — stretched nearly 4 ½ hours. Climate change never came up.
Berkshire has a market capitalization of more than $433 billion and owns several electric and gas utilities and electric transmission and pipeline companies. Berkshire executives said Saturday they’re looking at boosting the company’s renewable energy portfolio.
“Infrastructure is continuing to change,” said Greg Abel, the executive chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Energy. “We’re ready for $100 billion of investment opportunities there.”
Abel told shareholders that Berkshire’s energy subsidiary has committed about $40 billion over the next decade to capital expenses. Half of that is for maintaining assets. The other half, he said, is dedicated to “incremental wind, incremental transmission that services the wind or other types of renewable, solar.”
“We’ve got a huge appetite,” Buffett added. “And the country needs it, the world needs it.”

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis:

While U.S. power generators continue to assess what the total implications could be of a decline in electricity demand caused by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, those forecasting a shift to less carbon-intensive assets have not yet changed near-term plans to retire coal plants.
In 2019, U.S. power generators retired 13,863 MW of coal-fired generation, the highest amount of coal capacity retired since 2015 when new mercury regulations drove the retirement of 15,124 MW of coal-fired capacity, an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis shows. As of April 17, generators had 9,038 MW worth of capacity slated for retirement in 2020 and another 23,010 MW of coal capacity set to retire between 2021 and the end of 2025.

Gulf of Mexico Ripe for Wind Energy

Potential for 508 GW of wind capacity in Gulf of Mexico – as offshore wind prices continue to drop into highly competitive ranges.
As the Oil/gas industry remains in a Coronavirus coma, goes without saying that the skillsets of offshore oil workers translate very nicely to the offshore wind sector.

508 GW, btw, is about half of current total US generation capacity.

Renews.biz:

Offshore wind has been hailed as the most favourable renewable technology for development in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) with potential for up to 508GW of capacity, according to new data.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and Gulf of Mexico OCS office have published two new reports on renewable energy in the region.
The “Offshore Renewable Energy Technologies in the Gulf of Mexico” study analysed different offshore renewable energy technologies to determine which are best suited for development in GOM.
The renewable energy resources evaluated included wind, wave, tidal, current, solar, deepwater source cooling, and hydrogen.
Offshore wind showed the greatest resource potential and is the most mature technology of those analysed for the region, the report said.
Offshore wind had the largest quantity of “technical resource potential” covering all GOM states, with Texas and Louisiana being the highest.
The study determined offshore wind as the technology with the “highest readiness levels” based on cost projections.
BOEM also analysed of the economic feasibility of offshore wind for selected sites in GOM.

Needed: A High School Class in “Evidence”

Len Niehof in the Detroit Free Press:

Numerous public officials and individuals have made dreadful decisions about how to assess and respond to the threat posed by COVID-19. Those errors reveal a fundamental flaw in our K-12 and collegiate education systems.
We have failed to teach a subject of critical importance, and as a result have imperiled our health, our economy, and our republic.
We teach it in law school. We call it Evidence.
When I secured my first job as a law school professor many years ago, my sister asked what I would be teaching. I enthusiastically responded “Evidence!” She laughed and exclaimed “Evidence? There is a class called ‘Evidence?’”
I understand why the answer struck her as funny. Discovering that law school has a class called “Evidence” is like finding out business school has a class called “Money” or dental school has a class called “Teeth.” It seems elemental to the point of silliness.
But Evidence is one of the most important courses law students take. It focuses on the principles that govern the admissibility of testimony, documents, and other things at trial. Trials seek to arrive at the truth so justice gets done, and evidence helps us ascertain that truth.
Evidence law consists of a complicated body of rules and cases. Many students find it one of their hardest courses. Little wonder: Setting protocols to figure out the truth makes for a heavy lift.
Still, two simple ideas animate the vast majority of evidence principles. The first is that evidence must be relevant. This means that the evidence must make a fact that matters to the case either more or less likely true.

More Aaron Mair on the Green New Deal

When I recorded Aaron Mair speaking in Detroit and Flint in November, the Green New Deal was starting to seem like an increasingly heavy lift politically. That was before COVID-19.

Mair was the first African American President of the Sierra Club, and listening here, you can see why. He is a powerful speaker and has a clear vision of what the transition must. look like – the transition that is now not just desirable, but inevitable, if we want it.

If you have not seen the more elaborate condensation of Mair’s message, I’ll repost that at the bottom. Meanwhile, there were some worthwhile messages that ended up on the proverbial cutting room floor, or hard drive – so I’m putting those here.

Judgement Call: Senate Called Back in Pandemic to Confirm Climate Denier

Heated:

The U.S. Senate is officially returning to work today. And dealing with the coronavirus isn’t the only thing on its agenda.
According to Politico, one of Mitch McConnell’s reasons for ordering hundreds of people to return to D.C. during a pandemic was to quickly confirm one of Trump’s controversial judicial nominees for a seat on one of the nation’s most powerful courts—a seat that isn’t going to be vacant until September.
This nominee just so happens to be one of McConnell’s protégés. Justin Walker, a 38-year-old former clerk for Brett Kavanaugh, had never been a judge; never tried a case; never served as co-counsel; and received a rare “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association before McConnell confirmed him to his first federal judgeship last year.
Now, Walker is up for a lifetime appointment on the country’s second-highest court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—which also just so happens to be the most important court for climate change policy and regulation.
Walker has never even stated on the record if he actually accepts the science of climate change.
In fact, the only thing he’s ever said about climate change is, well, pretty stupid.
In advance of his first confirmation to a federal judgeship last year, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein asked Walker if he believes “human activity is contributing to or causing climate change.”
Walker declined to give an answer. “These issues are implicated by pending or impending litigation,” he replied. “The Canons of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges therefore prohibit me from expressing a view.”
I’ve heard a lot of weird responses to this question before, but never this one. Kyle Tisdel, climate and energy director at the non-profit Western Environmental Law Center, confirmed my suspicions. “This is also not a common response for judicial nominees,” he said. “And not a great indication.”
I asked Tisdel and four other experts in climate law if Walker might be prohibited from speaking about climate science because of an ethical rule, or because of pending or impending cases before the D.C. Circuit. They all said no.
The first reason Walker is allowed to talk about climate science is because there are no pending cases over whether human activity causes climate change, and likely never will be. The D.C. Circuit has already affirmed that human activity contributes to climate change. “A panel including a conservative judge unanimously upheld that finding,” noted David Doniger, a senior attorney at the National Resources Defense Council. “The Supreme Court denied certiorari when asked for review. The Trump EPA has taken no steps to reverse the finding.” In other words, it’s done. Not pending. Not impending. It’s settled.