"Only 16% of Americans realize that the consensus is above 90%." (excerpt): Skeptical Science

 "Expert consensus is a powerful thing. People know we don’t have the time or capacity to learn about everything, and so we frequently defer to the conclusions of experts. It’s why we visit doctors when we’re ill. The same is true of climate change: most people defer to the expert consensus of climate scientists. Crucially, as we note in our paper:

Public perception of the scientific consensus has been found to be a gateway belief, affecting other climate beliefs and attitudes including policy support.

That’s why those who oppose taking action to curb climate change have engaged in a misinformation campaign to deny the existence of the expert consensus. They’ve been largely successful, as the public badly underestimate the expert consensus, in what we call the “consensus gap.” Only 16% of Americans realize that the consensus is above 90%."

 

 

 Lead author John Cook explaining the team’s 2016 consensus paper.

 

 

Go to skepticalscience.com

More natural gas isn’t a “middle ground” — it’s a climate disaster (excerpt): Vox

To tackle climate change, natural gas has got to go.

 

Methane gas energy has to go. Leave gas in the ground.

"Methane leakage may make natural gas as bad as coal, but it’s not the reason gas has no future

The paper leads with a quick note on methane leakage in natural gas production. Methane is a fast-acting greenhouse gas with enormous short-term impacts on climate. It leaks at every stage of the natural gas production and transportation process.

While gas itself is less carbon-intensive than coal, if enough methane leaks during its production, its greenhouse gas advantages are wiped out.

Gas wells destroy farmland.

Does that much methane leak? Some studies have suggested that, yes, methane leakage is bad enough to make natural gas the greenhouse equivalent of coal. Other studies have suggested that gas still has an advantage (and proponents note that leakage could be reduced).

For our purposes here, it doesn’t matter. None of the five arguments against natural gas rely on any particular estimate of leakage. All of them would apply even if natural gas achieved zero leakage (which is impossible). The same is true regarding the local environmental impacts of natural gas production (air pollution, habitat loss, earthquakes) — they are dreadful, but even if they were eliminated, the following arguments would still apply.

1) Gas breaks the carbon budget

Honestly, this one is enough to rule out gas on its own. .......... "

Read the complete Vox article by David Roberts

Images not from Vox 

Related:  Revealed: how the gas industry is waging war against climate action (excerpt) : The Guardian

 

Fact check on PM Morrison's gas plan.

 

 #methanegas,methane gas,greenhouse gas pollution,carbon dioxide,#economy,#stranded assets,#renewables,#jailclimatecriminals,

 

Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement (excerpt): Smithsonian Mag

Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists, international governmental bodies, relevant research institutes and scientific societies are in unison in saying that climate change is real, that it's a problem, and that we should probably do something about it now, not later. And yet, for some reason, the idea persists in some peoples' minds that climate change is up for debate, or that climate change is no big deal.

Click to enlarge

Actually, it's not “for some reason” that people are confused. There's a very obvious reason. There is a very well-funded, well-orchestrated climate change-denial movement, one funded by powerful people with very deep pockets. In a new and incredibly thorough study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle took a deep dive into the financial structure of the climate deniers, to see who is holding the purse strings.

According to Brulle's research, the 91 think tanks and advocacy organizations and trade associations that make up the American climate denial industry pull down just shy of a billion dollars each year, money used to lobby or sway public opinion on climate change and other issues. (The grand total also includes funds used to support initiatives unrelated to climate change denial, as explained in a quote Brulle gave to The Guardian: “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”)

“The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative

billionaires,” says the Guardian, “often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change.”

“This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power,” he said. “They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hire people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy.

Go to complete Smithsonian Magazine article

 

Related: European Thinktanks Repeating ‘Well-worn’ US Climate Denial Tropes (excerpt): DeSmog

 #climateaction,#climate crisis,climate deniers,#jailclimatecriminals,global heating,political party donations from corporations,role of media,

European Thinktanks Repeating ‘Well-worn’ US Climate Denial Tropes (excerpt): DeSmog

Organisations promoting climate science denial and anti-environmentalism in Europe share the same rhetoric, narratives and right-wing links as their US counterparts, new research has found.

 

The paper published in the journal Climatic Change examines publications from eight of the most prominent contrarian thinktanks in six EU countries over 24 years from 1994 to 2018, and argues the organisations enjoy a “remarkable” level of political influence for their size.

These include the UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), as well as the German Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie (EIKE), the Austrian Economics Centre (AEC), Institut Économique Molinari (IEM) in France, Instituto Juan de Mariana (IJM) in Spain and the Liberales Institut (LI) in Switzerland.

The researchers found an increase in environmentally-focused activity

From DeSmog

by these organisations in Europe after 2007 and again between 2015 and 2018.

The publications echoed the arguments put forward by US thinktanks, with a fifth denying climate science outright. Of those which accepted that the planet is warming, many downplayed the role of people in causing it, were sceptical about policies to tackle the problem, or argued that climate change was actually a good thing.

As well as openly contesting climate science, many of the critiques were aimed at environmental campaigners, politicians or journalists.

“Well-worn climate change counter-frames” spread by US thinktanks are being “consistently circulated” by European organisations, too, the research concludes.

Go to complete DeSmog article By Isabella Kaminski • Thursday, September 17, 2020

 

Related: How Climate Migration Will Reshape America Millions will be displaced. Where will they go? (excerpt) : NYT Magazine

A season of climate-fueled disasters (excerpt): NYT

Wildfires are still scorching the West as a hurricane hits the South

"It’s pretty scary out there these days. There are wildfires in the West and a hurricane causing  More severe climate fires  “catastrophic” flooding in the South. And the destructiveness of those disasters is being aggravated by climate change.

All of that is keeping those of us on The Times climate team very busy.

For decades, climate journalists focused on the science of climate change, which proves the planet is warming and forecasts the consequences. That goes back at least to 1988, when The Times published a front-page article about the NASA scientist James Hansen, who testified in the Senate and warned in an interview that “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”

The government, as we all know, continued to waffle. And here we are. Now, to an ever increasing degree, being a climate reporter is all about catastrophes, reported in real time.

And so, we do what we do. We cover the news. More severe hurricanes In the West, more than 5 million acres have now burned, and fire season still has months to go. Our coverage has focused heavily on the links between wildfires and climate change.

.........................."

By John Schwartz    (Images from this blog)   Read complete NYT article

 Related: How Climate Migration Will Reshape America Millions will be displaced. Where will they go? (excerpt) : NYT Magazine

 Related: The exhausted Raccoons of the Resistance are running an Antifarsonist self care workshop

#climatefires,#climatechange,#climateaction,#climate crisis,hurricanes,floods,science,

Scottish green hydrogen scheme gears up to fuel ferries, buses and trains (excerpt): The Guardian

"Scottish Power’s wind and solar farms will soon help produce green hydrogen to run buses, ferries and even trains as part of a pioneering strategic partnership to develop the UK’s nascent hydrogen economy.

Wind and solar farms will produce the gas alongside Scottish Power,

The renewable energy company, owned by Spain’s Iberdrola, will work alongside companies that specialise in producing and distributing the zero-carbon gas. Hydrogen is expected to play a major role in helping the UK to meet its climate targets.

Scottish Power will use the clean electricity generated by a major new solar farm planned for a site near Glasgow to run an electrolyser, owned by its project partner ITM Power, which will split water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules."..............

Go to complete The Guardian article

Related: HYDROGEN The once and future fuel? Opinion

  hydrogen,clean energy,energy,#renewables,

Australia's government channels government green funds away from renewables towards subsidies for fossil fuels.

(Pics by this blog)

ARENA to get $1.4 billion as Coalition channels funds to CCS, hydrogen and pubs (excerpt): RenewEconomy

The federal Coalition government has finally decided to extending the funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, but will – as predicted – push both ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation away from wind and solar into other “low emission” technologies, including carbon capture and storage.

 

ARENA and CEFC have played critical roles in advancing Australian renewable, storage and other critical enabling technologies since their creation in 2012, and despite repeated attempts by the Coalition government to dismantle them, and severe cuts to ARENA’s original budget.

ARENA – which is now nearly exhausted of funds, and had its board recently stacked with Coalition favourites – is to be given “guaranteed baseline funding” of $1.427 billion over the next 10 years, and will be given extra allocations in the annual budget. For 2020/21, that will amount to $191 million.

This is part of a $1.9 billion package to the two green funds that will include money for CCS, a regional hydrogen hub, along with many of the project identified by a group led by former Origin Energy CEO Grant King, and even some money for pubs to upgrade their refrigeration systems.

 

The government will change the mandates of both ARENA and the CEFC so they can more or less follow the government’s Technology Roadmap which is to be finalised in the next couple of weeks, and which looks at technologies beyond wind and solar, including gas, hydrogen and CCS.

 

The push to broaden the mandate into “low emissions” technologies will require parliamentary approval – rejected by the Senate when the Coalition first tried to scrap the bodies – and comes just days after the unveiling of a major gas package, and the government’s extraordinary ultimatum to build a 1GW gas plant in the Hunter Valley.

 

Go to Renew Economy's complete article by Giles Parkinson

 

Related: Compromised: Genie Energy and the Murdoch media’s climate denial (excerpt): Michael West Media

PM Morrison,#Australia,#methanegas,coal mining,gas,ARENA,#fossilfuelcompanies,role of media,