THURSDAY: Gusty winds, showers linger. Winds: NW 15-30. Wake-up: 48. High: 57
(whitehouse.gov/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Biden Highlights Climate Action And JOBS! In First Joint Session Speech: Climate Nexus provides headlines and links: "President Biden touted his administration's efforts to grow the American economy and create jobs by addressing the climate crisis in his first address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night. "For too long, we have failed to use the most important word when it comes to meeting the climate crisis," Biden said. "Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. For me, when I think about climate change, I think jobs." Biden touted opportunities for engineers and construction workers to increase home and building efficiency, for union electricians to install EV charging stations, and for farmers to pull carbon from the atmosphere. Biden also emphasized opportunities for the manufacturing sector. "There is simply no reason why the blades for wind turbines can't be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing," he said. "No reason. None." Biden touted his convening of a climate summit last week to spur global efforts to fight climate change. He also said hurricanes were one of "the root[s] of the problem" pushing Central Americans to flee their home countries, but did not link the worsening hurricanes to climate change." (Speech Transcript: New York Times $, Washington Post $; Coverage: AP, New York Times $, Washington Post $, Wall Street Journal $, E&E $, E&E $, E&E $)
(Jon Han, special to ProPublica/MIT Technology Review/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The Climate Solution Actually Adding Millions of Tons of CO2 Into the Atmosphere. ProPublica has the story - they team with MIT Technology Review to take a deep dive into programs that attempt to reduce CO2 emissions, do they work or is the system being gamed? Here's an excerpt: "...This design also incentivizes the developers who initiate and lead these projects to specifically look for forest tracts where carbon levels stand out above these averages — either due to the site's location within a region, its combination of tree species, or both. CarbonPlan estimates the state's program has generated between 20 million and 39 million credits that don't achieve real climate benefits. They are, in effect, ghost credits that didn't preserve additional carbon in forests but did allow polluters to emit far more CO2, equal to the annual emissions of 8.5 million cars at the high end. Those ghost credits represent nearly one in three credits issued through California's primary forest offset program, highlighting systemic flaws in the rules and suggesting widespread gaming of the market..."
Projected future warming under constant concentrations (red line) and zero-emissions scenarios (blue). Historical warming based on an average of NASA, NOAA, Berkeley, Cowtan and Way and Hadley/UEA records (black). Future warming adapted from model runs in Matthews and Weaver 2010. Model runs are combined with historical temperatures based on a 30-year local regression. (Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts./The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Explainer: Will Global Warming "Stop" As Soon as Net-Zero Emissions are Reached? Carbon Brief helps to set expectations - and what a lovely problem to have, by the way: "Media reports frequently claim that the world is facing "committed warming" in the future as a result of past emissions, meaning higher temperatures are "locked in", "in the pipeline" or "inevitable", regardless of the choices society takes today. The best available evidence shows that, on the contrary, warming is likely to more or less stop once carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reach zero, meaning humans have the power to choose their climate future. When scientists have pointed this out recently, it has been reported as a new scientific finding. However, the scientific community has recognised that zero CO2 emissions likely implied flat future temperatures since at least 2008. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 special report on 1.5C also included a specific focus on zero-emissions scenarios with similar findings..."
(The Minnesota Star Tribune)
John Kerry Calls on Scientists to Lead Fight Against Climate Change Denial. Note to self: climate scientists have been doing this for over a generation now. Thomson Reuters Foundation reports: "Widespread mistrust of science and disputes over basic facts, tied to growing political polarization and disinformation campaigns, are undermining efforts to tackle climate change globally, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry warned. During a virtual summit organized by the Nobel Foundation and major science academies this week, Kerry said building greater public understanding and agreement on the world's "existential" challenges was crucial to addressing them. "We have to establish a baseline of truth or we can't build consensus in a democracy," he said. "Paid-for denial" about climate change by big polluters and political disregard by some governments of scientific warnings about COVID-19 risks are "costing us enormously", he added..."