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President Obama Bans Oil Drilling in Large Areas of Atlantic and Arctic Oceans

           

Hundreds of kayaktivists protest drilling in the Arctic and the Port of Seattle being used as a port for the Shell Oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer (Daniella Beccaria/seattlepi.com via Associated Press)

washingtonpost.com - by Darryl Fears and Juliet Eilperin - December 20, 2016

President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.

Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia. In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.

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Prepare for 'Surprise' as Global Warming Stokes Arctic Shifts - Scientists

           

The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, in the midst of their ICESCAPE mission, retrieves supplies in the Arctic Ocean in this July 12, 2011 NASA handout photo. Kathryn Hansen/NASA via REUTERS/File Photo

"Ultimately, realising resilience in the Arctic will depend on empowering the people of the North to self-organise"

CLICK HERE - Stockholm Resilience Centre - Dealing with Arctic tipping points

CLICK HERE - Arctic Resilience Report

Thomson Reuters Foundation - by Megan Rowling - November 25, 2016

Unless the world stops burning fossil fuels that are fuelling global warming, irreversible changes in the Arctic could have disastrous effects for the people that live there and for the rest of the planet, researchers warned on Friday.

The Arctic's ecosystems are fundamentally threatened by climate change and other human activities, such as oil and gas extraction, they said in a report for the Arctic Council, an inter-governmental forum working to protect the region's environment.

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Oil demand won't peak before 2040, despite Paris deal: IEA

An employee holds a gas pump at a petrol station in Sao Paulo, Brazil, November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo

Image: An employee holds a gas pump at a petrol station in Sao Paulo, Brazil, November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo

reuters.com - November 16th 2016 - Amanda Cooper

The International Energy Agency expects global oil consumption to peak no sooner than 2040, leaving its long-term forecasts for supply and demand unchanged despite the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement entering into force.

The Paris accord to cut harmful emissions seeks to wean the world economy off fossil fuels in the second half of the century in an effort to limit the rise in average world temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

But while demand for oil to power passenger cars, for example, may drop, other sectors may offset this fall.

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Before the Flood

nationalgeographic.com - October 30, 2016

From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Fisher Stevens and Academy Award®-winning actor, environmental activist and U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio, Before the Flood presents a riveting account of the dramatic changes now occurring around the world due to climate change, as well as the actions we as individuals and as a society can take to prevent the disruption of life on our planet.

CLICK HERE - National Geographic - Before the Flood

CLICK HERE - YouTube - Before the Flood

CLICK HERE - About the Film - Before the Flood

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The U.S. is On Course to Miss Its Emissions Goals, and One Reason is Methane

           

Chinese President Xi Jinping (center), President Obama (right) and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon shake hands during a joint ratification of the Paris climate change agreement ceremony ahead of the G20 Summit at the West Lake State Guest House in Hangzhou, China on Sept. 3. (EPA/How Hwee Young)

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Nature Climate Change - Assessment of the climate commitments and additional mitigation policies of the United States

washingtonpost.com - by Chris Mooney - September 26, 2016

In recent months, the key story of international climate policy has been about how quickly countries will join the Paris agreement and cross the legal threshold to bring it into force. And as of now, that seems very close to happening.

As soon as it does, though, the question will shift. People will start asking not about which countries will join the deal and how quickly, but about whether any of these countries are on track to do what they’ve already said they would under the agreement — namely, hit their voluntarily pledged targets to cut their emissions.

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Energy weighs on Wall St. but Costco shines

reuters.com - July 7th 2016 - Marcus E. Howard

The S&P 500 and Dow industrials slipped on Thursday, weighed by energy shares, but gains in Costco and tech shares lifted the Nasdaq Composite.

The energy sector of the S&P was dragged lower by Exxon and Chevron as oil futures prices fell nearly 5 percent after crude stockpiles fell slightly less than forecast.

High-yielding sectors also pulled the S&P lower even as yields on long-term U.S. government debt remained near record lows.

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Climate Change Will Wipe $2.5tn Off Global Financial Assets: Study

           

The economic impact of climate change could play havoc with the world economy, according to an LSE study. Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

CLICK HERE - STUDY - ‘Climate value at risk’ of global financial assets

Losses could soar to $24tn and wreck the global economy in worst case scenario, first economic modelling estimate suggests

theguardian.com - by Damian Carrington - April 4, 2016

Climate change could cut the value of the world’s financial assets by $2.5tn (£1.7tn), according to the first estimate from economic modelling.

In the worst case scenarios, often used by regulators to check the financial health of companies and economies, the losses could soar to $24tn, or 17% of the world’s assets, and wreck the global economy.

The research also showed the financial sense in taking action to keep climate change under the 2C danger limit agreed by the world’s nations. In this scenario, the value of financial assets would fall by $315bn less, even when the costs of cutting emissions are included.

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27,000 Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells in Gulf of Mexico Ignored by Government, Industry

An older nearshore wellhead is shown off the coast of California in this undated photo. In state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s, but in federal waters, the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Neither industry nor government checks for leaks at the more than 27,000 oil and gas wells abandoned in the Gulf of Mexico since the late 1940s. Abandoned wells are known sometimes to fail both on land and offshore. It happens so often that a technical term has been coined for the repair job: "re-abandonment."  Photo: California State Lands Commission / The Associated Press

nola.com - Associated Press - July 7, 2010

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one -- not industry, not government -- is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

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A Chemical Reaction Revolutionized Farming 100 Years Ago. Now It Needs to Go

Anhydrous ammonia plant, ca. 1954. ROBERT W. KELLEY/TIME & LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES

Image: Anhydrous ammonia plant, ca. 1954. ROBERT W. KELLEY/TIME & LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES

wired.com - Sarah Zhang - May 16th 2016

Of all the elements that make up Earth’s atmosphere, nitrogen is by far the most abundant. It is also one of the most inert. Nothing happens when you breathe it in, swallow it, or let it suffuse your skin.

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The Most Polluted City in the World Isn’t Beijing or Delhi

           

Commuters travel through a traffic jam on their way to New Delhi from Gurgaon on May 3. (Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE - WHO Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database (update 2016)

washingtonpost.com - by Adam Taylor - May 13, 2016

What's the most polluted city in the world? Some might point to Beijing, the Chinese capital, and its now legendary smog problem. Others may point towards India, where Delhi's own air pollution problems are become similarly infamous. However, a new report from the World Health Organization suggests that these megacities are actually only the tip of the iceberg – and the actual city with the world's worst pollution is probably in Iran.

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