15 November 2016, DESMOG, Meet the Fossil Fuel Lobbyists and Climate Science Deniers at the Marrakech COP22 Talks. It’s no secret fossil fuel companies will have to fundamentally change their business models if countries are serious about tackling climate change. With so much skin in the game, it’s no surprise they find ways to try and influence climate policy at the highest level. The international climate talks in Marrakech this week has provided the perfect opportunity for corporate lobbyists and climate science deniers to push their high carbon agendas. Who’s who Prior to the COP22 negotiations currently underway in Marrakech, Corporate Accountability International released a mapshowing how fossil fuel representatives can get access at the highest level. Many of the groups they identify do indeed have a presence in the inner ‘blue zone’ of the talks, where negotiators meet to hammer out the details of global climate policy. (Most non-state actors and companies are officially consigned to the ‘green zone’ in a separate section of the venue). Read More here
Category Archives: The Mitigation Battle
9 November 2016, Energy Post, Oil companies’ climate initiative lacks initiative. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) formed by ten of the world’s largest oil companies including Shell, BP, Total, Statoil and Saudi Aramco, has announced it will spend $1 billion over the next ten years “to accelerate the development of innovative low-emission technologies”. According to Stuart Haszeldine, Professor of Carbon Capture and Storage, at the University of Edinburgh, this is “small change compared to the size of the problem. This looks like trying to tell us that the climate problem is still best handled by denial, over-analysis, and under-activity.” Article courtesy of the Energy and Carbon blog. When is $1 billion not a lot of money? Answer one, when you are trying to save the human species from global self-destruction. Answer two, when it is split 10 ways, and then again 10 ways. In an announcement timed to coincide with the entry into force last Friday of the COP21 Paris Climate Agreement, 10 of the world’s largest international oil and gas producers announced a $1billion fund to help protect the earth’s climate. The OGCI (Oil and Gas Climate Initiative) was formed in January 2014, led by the CEO’s of six multinational oil and gas companies (1). Its self-stated ambition was to “catalyse meaningful action and coordination on climate change …. provide a full spectrum on what the sector what the sector is prepared to do, collaboratively, going forward”. The defining moment of the UN Climate Change conference in Paris last December has now passed, the agreed text has been scrutinized, pored over, analysed – and then ratified by the political leaders of more than 190 nations. It is clear that the intended national emissions reductions (INDCs) offered in Paris are voluntary and non-enforceable. It is also clear that even if the INDCs were delivered in full, then the world is on track for 3.7C or greater warming, not 2C or an aspirational 1.5C. And if nothing new happens, the world is already operating the hydrocarbon combustion equipment which can take warming beyond 6C by 2100. This group proudly proclaims that they are responsible for 20% of global oil and gas production, so we should expect something big, commensurate with the size of the problem, right? Wrong. Read More here
28 October 2016, Renew Economy, Coal wars: A fact check for the Turnbull government. Since Malcom Turnbull replaced Tony “coal is good for humanity” Abbott, the Adani Carmichael Mine, the Galilee Basin and environmental “Lawfare” had been out of the news. But an increase in the coal price and Turnbull’s apparent change of view means the Coal Wars are BACK. It’s time to re-arm yourselves the facts.
CLAIM: The Adani mine will create 10,000 jobs.
FACTS: Adani’s own economist contradicted this under oath in the Queensland Land Court, saying: “Over the life of the Project it is projected that on average around 1,464 employee years of full time equivalent direct and indirect jobs will be created”.
Adani’s economist, Jerome Fahrer from ACIL Allen, found that Adani’s mine and rail operations would employ around 1,800 people directly and create around 1,000 downstream jobs in “other services”. But, in building and operating such a big mine, ACIL found that the project would reduce employment in agriculture, manufacturing and other mining projects by around 1,400 jobs. All this is shown in ACIL’s graph below, with increased jobs at the Carmichael mine in yellow, increases in services in dark purple and reductions in manufacturing, agriculture and other mining below the axis: Read More here
1 November 2016, Independent, Climate sceptics widen their net to claim all science – from medicine to physics to computing – is ‘in deep trouble’. Climate change deniers have long tried to cast doubt on the science behind warnings about global warming, but now Lord Lawson’s sceptic think tank has taken things a step further. For, if the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is to be believed, not only are climatologists exaggerating the risks of burning fossil fuels, but all science is “in deep trouble” with “fraudulent research” finding its way into the most eminent, peer-reviewed journals. Medicine, physics, economics, chemistry, computer science and psychology are just a few of the subjects were this is a problem, according to a new GWPF report. Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, a leading research centre based in London, suggested the report showed the sceptics’ frustration that their flawed theories were not being taken seriously. “This attack on the practice of peer review is another example of propaganda from the Global Warming Policy Foundation aimed at illegitimately undermining confidence in climate research,” he told The Independent. “The ideology-driven claims made by the Foundation simply would not stand up to the rigours of peer review by independent experts, which is why their inaccurate and misleading claims about the causes and potential consequences of global warming appear in pamphlets and newspapers columns instead of academic journals.” Read More here