Pro Publica offers up a trio of climate change stories that speak truth

First, carbon capture doesn't work, which I have long known, but needs to be told again and again and again, versus the lies of Big Oil and the companion lies of Big Neoliberal Government. 

Pro Publica has a great piece. It notes that projections for how much carbon capture and storage can do have increased even as the world fiddles while the planet burns more and more, and we get more and more behind the curve of serious action.

THIS:

Right now, globally, we’re permanently burying less CO2 than a single large power plant can emit in a year.

Is the bottom line. 

That's followed by the lies of Big Oil and Big Neoliberal International Government being exposed:

Some experts point to the CO2 that gets pumped into the ground to help extract oil as proof CCS works. But that process, called enhanced oil recovery, isn’t designed to function the same way and isn’t monitored as stringently. 

Global leaders are betting on carbon capture working now more than ever. 

The models used in the latest United Nations assessment presume the technology succeeds. 

IEA representatives and U.N. modelers say their projections reflect what the world has to do to achieve its goals of averting extreme warming.

There you are. 

The story then crunches the math.

On carbon-capturing plants? We'd have to plant THREE Texases or a bit more; or one Mexico, which is that same size. You see that happening? 

Plus, we'd need to be building countless injection sites — after doing proper geological study to determine each one works — AND monitoring all of them. You see that happening? 

And the price tag:

[B]y 2050, the world could be spending half a trillion dollars — more than China’s military budget, and 10 times more than the U.N.’s humanitarian and development aid budget — each year.

To coin a phrase: You see that happening? 

Related? Pro Publica does a deeper dive of how Big Oil, and specifically BP (stands for "Bullshitting about Petroleum") specifically bought off Princeton scientists in its "Wedges" study 22 years ago, and bought them off on ... carbon capture.

Yes, bought them off:

While its chief executive, John Browne, was rebranding his company as Beyond Petroleum, BP sought out researchers who were already thinking about how to address climate change without replacing fossil fuels. The company found them at Princeton University, where it set about amplifying their work by donating $15 million to start the Carbon Mitigation Initiative. The research program was framed around finding solutions to climate change while keeping fossil fuels in play, focusing heavily on carbon capture.

What else is there to say? 

Maybe this:

BP executives were deeply involved throughout the paper’s creation, according to an investigation by ProPublica and Drilled. [Robert] Socolow and [Stephen] Pacala, the authors of “Wedges” and the new center’s co-directors, not only discussed ideas with the company but, in a departure from academic norms, passed drafts back and forth and welcomed extensive feedback. 

Like a book publisher shaping a clunky early draft into a bestseller, an executive at the company suggested the scientists punch up the language, which they did. Browne himself suggested wording that became a part of the title. Together they helped make wonky scientific ideas more digestible for popular consumption. BP even tried — unsuccessfully — to revise a version of it. 

“Chaps, I have had a go at rewriting the paper,” Browne’s climate adviser wrote the researchers at one point.

THERE's the smoking gun. 

The two scientists of course deny anything nefarious:

Socolow and Pacala say they were sincere in their intent to solve climate change in the best way they believed possible, at a time when it was not obvious that wind and solar would succeed the way they have today. The researchers say BP had no control over the scientific content of the paper. They rejected the view that technologies didn’t exist to start solving climate change immediately and hoped carbon capture offered, as Pacala said, a way to make fossil fuels “climate safe.”

OK, well, do I totally believe that? 

Not really. 

Per his Wiki, post-retirement, Socolow has been a big pusher of the "personal carbon footprint." You know who else pushes that? Big Oil. "Guiltwashing" is a form of "greenwashing." 

You know what else Socolow does, per a link on his Wiki? He continues to push carbon capture, and that's as of a 2024 Washington Post op-ed. In other words? He's a liar.

That said, BP wasn't alone, of course. It was simply the most aggressive oil major, in part as the biggest non-American, non-national, oil company. 

That said, not only was BP not alone, Princeton was also not alone.

In the trifecta? As described by Pro Publica in detail in another story,  just like Big Tobacco, is Big Oil buying off scientists to do its bidding.  

This:

Corporate funders sponsored entire centers, paid the salaries of researchers, kept offices on campus and in some cases had veto power over projects.

Companies maintain they are supporting innovation and needed science. Universities say that with safeguards, sponsorship enhances research programs while preserving academic independence. 

Still, the impact of funding constitutes a pattern that Benjamin Franta, an associate professor of climate litigation at University of Oxford, called the “colonization of academia.”

Is just right. 

Super El Niño could mean a new global temperature record

Both Inside Climate News, referencing James Hansen among others, and Live Science have the details.

First, it's coming, period and end of story.

Second, per Hansen, its likely effects are not only another wakeup call for the planet in general, and a wakeup call for wingnuts and denialists who won't listen, they're a wakeup call for climate change Obamiacs or climate change neoliberals (I use both terms), like Michael Mann, who have accused the likes of Hansen of being alarmist.

This:

Even a moderately strong El Niño during the next 12 to 18 months could drive the average global temperature to about 1.7 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level, climate scientist James Hansen told Inside Climate News. Hansen doubts the world will meaningfully cool back down to below the 1.5 degree Celsius mark after the El Niño fades.

Is the reality. 

The kumbaya that Mann, Katharine Hayhoe, Bob Kopp and others want to sing is not. And, like head-faking canaries in a coal mine, they keep singing.

And, the further part of the reality is that this is likely to be a strong one, not just a moderately strong one. 

Per Live Science, the World Meteorological Organization has already issued a 61 percent of a "strong" El Niño, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a 25 percent chance of a "very strong" one by November. (Cue somebody in the Trump Admin to try to quash that.) 

==

James Hansen says that due to increases in forcing, with an accelerating rate of global warming (discussed by me briefly here last month) this is likely to be a record year even without an El Niño. 

Love me some James Hansen, but I'm more skeptical of nuclear power than he is

Here's Hansen writing about IPCC censorship of climate change warming and forcing last year. And, since the UN is a government, even though it has no First Amendment, that is censorship in the narrow, proper sense.

In parts of the piece, about halfway down, comes the more problematic part.

First, I had this in my "restacking" comments.

Comments are interesting. I’m not deadset against nuclear power, but I’m more skepticaal than many of the commenters, including Hansen. I’m skeptical of nuclear power being as green as claimed (though it’s certainly better than gas, let alone coal). Also, having grown up in Gallup, New Mexico, and being old enough to remember the collapse of the tailings pond dam at the Church Rock mine, I still look carefully at safety issues on uranium mining and processing as well as nuclear plants. I don’t know if most commenters here do that or not. 

As for more modern reactors? Especially the touted thorium ones? If state-capitalist China actually out commercial reactors, or even conclusively demonstrates that its just-launched experimental reactor can scale up, we can talk.

We'll go from there. 

Hansen's first comment, the halfway down, starting with a 1990s starting point on this by him:

Almost unlimited subsidy of renewable energies was adopted in many U.S. states and some other nations via “Renewable Portfolio Standards,” requiring utilities to obtain a growing fraction of their energy from renewable energies. This approach, as contrasted with “Clean Energy Portfolio Standards,” spurred the development of natural gas as the complement to intermittent renewable energy, and, as a consequence, expansion of fracking, pipelines, and methane leakage. Nuclear power, given the costs of the fuel and materials to build a power plant, has potential to be the least expensive among the firm, dispatchable, energy sources, but attainment of its potential, as with other sources, requires extensive R&D and experience. Thus, it is ironic that the COP now suddenly asks for nuclear energy output to be tripled

Well, to be cynical more than skeptical, but, at bottom line, "on the one hand, I have shit, on the other, I have potential." 

Second, per later comments, yes, some of the Gang Green enviros may have been partially "captured" by the natural gas portion of fossil fuels. Sierra certainly was. But, I don't really listen to anybody to the "right" of Center for Biological Diversity, while noting I don't know its stance on nukes.

Third, "intermittent renewable energy"? Maybe not in the 1990s, but there IS today this thing called "battery storage." Also, Hansen should know that in places like Denmark and Norway, the entire country has, for brief periods of time in the last couple of years, "metered backward" because 100 percent of electricity was coming from renewables and overflowing.  

Now, let's jump earlier in that same paragraph:

[F]ailure to support development of nuclear power as a carbon-free source of energy was widespread.

Uhh, totally not true, as far as lifecycle emissions, James. 

This ignores, per this piece of mine, with the aid of Counterpunch, carbon costs of uranium mining, uranium refining, long-term waste storage, and the high carbon costs of concrete containment domes.

Here's your graphic detail:

Per Counterpunch, those estimates come from a professor at Stanford, not exactly a bastion of leftism as a university. Mark Jacobson's whole piece is here, with link to PowerPoint slides that are basis of a book by him being here. Now, per Hansen's rightful bashing of the IPCC on other grounds, the fact that Jacobson references IPCC estimates, even though the numbers are from his own work, may be used to take him down.

I wouldn't do that unless one's on very solid ground. Beyond that, per notes 18 and 19 on his Wiki page, he has responded to critics. 

But, let's say Jacobson is off by a factor of three. Nuclear is still no better than wave or tidal, then. (In case you're wondering, not just because of the massive concrete for a dam, but because of backed-up decaying plant life in the lake behind a dam and other things, yes, hydro is not all that green.)

Beyond that, per Counterpunch, with the global warming portion of climate change, in many places, summertime cooling water for nuclear plants will become less and less available, not just because of potential lack of water, but warming of shallow water in already-warm locations.

Anyway, now, back to Hansen. 

His piece doesn't at all discuss safety issues.

I am NOT primarily talking "Iranian terrarists stealing uranium from a nuclear plant," let alone plutonium from a breeder reactor. 

Rather, I am in part talking long-term waste storage, since we have no Yucca Mountain, and unlike France, have not bribed some rural ghetto part of Merikkka to take the waste, and unlike China or Russia, are not authoritarian countries who can force decisions on where nuclear waste is buried. 

Second, there's mine safety issues.

As I note in that piece, I grew up where the "other" 1979 nuclear safety incident happened.

Gallup, New Mexico, just east of Church Rock, where the dam for a tailings pond broke and dumped radioactive water in the Puerco River, and nobody told rural Navajos, or the city of Gallup, right away.

I also know from that area about the exploitative treatment, especially in early years, of Navajo and Pueblo miners. And, while not a conspiracy theorist in general, per Karen Silkwood, Kerr-McGee was ultimate owner of that Church Rock mine. 

Today, in places like Congo, uranium miners are exploited as bad or worse.

And, on the environmental side, things aren't better today. Modern injection-extraction uranium mining?  It's as nasty, or potentially so, as fracking on steroids. It's also highly water-intensive.

Finally, on uranium, given how low-grade much of current commercially mined ore already is, on the economic side, there's the issue of scalability. 

Thorium-fuel reactors? Yes, per one commenter, the US once had an experimental thorium reactor. Or two; a late 1960s one at Oak Ridge, then a bigger 1970s one at Shippingport. There's others that have been built occasionally in other countries. China just started one. If it's all it's cracked up to be, why aren't there more? Well, per Wiki's piece, thorium reactors have disadvantages as well as advantages. It says China plans to have commercial thorium reactors by 2030. We'll see. It's a country with a state capitalism economy and authoritarian government, and with limited oil and natural gas reserves. If thorium was the bee's knees, don't you think China would be further down this road? On the other hand, China gets only 5 percent of its electric power from nukes today, versus nearly 20 percent in the US.

To put it bluntly? The Shippingport experimental thorium reactor was 50 years ago. If thorium is so damned good, why hasn't some country in the world started a commercial thorium reactor by now? And, no, here in the US it wasn't entirely killed off by chasing uranium breeder reactors,

And, while we're here, contra this Reuters piece, no, nuclear fusion is not just around the corner. 

And while we're really really here?

Ahh, this guy Brent James, apparently trying to play gotcha with this comment, as part of a semi-conspiratorial take on the rise of renewables.

The correct answer is the one I’ve given — both wind and solar themselves have become more efficient, as has battery storage. HOW MUCH more efficient, I don’t know. More efficient? Yes. And, with costs continuing to drop.

I don’t need to be a registered and licensed utility electric engineer to know that. And, if renewables don’t integrate into the grid perfectly, even if not as badly as he insinuates? The fault, dear Brutus, may be in part with the grid, not renewables being tied into it. 

As for the oilfield loving renewables? Even in Texas, there's a push to decarbonize, plus, as the western and more remote part of the Permian becomes ground zero for new fracking, it's a helluva lot easier to drop a few solar panels in the field rather than trying to tie into the existing grid. 

As for another comment of his? I did give him an AI summary off Duck Duck Go's search.

"Renewable electricity storage batteries are improving significantly, with battery storage costs declining by 93% from 2010 to 2024, driven by technological advancements and increased manufacturing. Additionally, the adoption of lithium-ion batteries, particularly lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistries, has surged, enhancing efficiency and lifespan, making them more effective for energy storage applications."

He never responded. And, after I edited and updated my first response to him to note that? He blocked me.

Finally, let me get back to the semi-conspiratorial ideas about Gang Green environmental groups, fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear power, that certainly seem to be held in some degree by Hansen himself, not just this Brent James.

As noted above, I'm well aware of Sierra, and to some degree, other Gang Greens pushing the narrative of natural gas as "clean." I'm also aware that money was behind that, and primarily to be anti-coal. See this piece from Time.

Gang Greens bit on that before renewables really started surging. Gas was better than coal, and nuclear power was back-shelved anyway. Post-2003, and "mushroom clouds" in Iraq, and the disintegration of the old USSR, nuclear proliferation worried had proliferated. Not building nuke plants was one way of lessening that.

Otherwise, even years after 2003, the natural gas segment of the fossil fuels world was just pushing gas, period, as far as I see it. It wasn't pushing renewables behind that, nor was it pushing against nuclear behind that. If anything, it might already then thought it had more to fear from renewables.

As for Hansen's belief? And James' even more? Per this site, yeah, we seem in the land of the conspiracy theory. And, contra it, Jacobson did NOT "lose" his lawsuit. See his Wiki page.

Otherwise, that site (top hit on Duck Duck Go when I asked if natural gas companies were trying to kill nukes through Sierra et al) has no links to its "originating members." Web searches of half a dozen at random left me less than impressed.

One of them, somewhat more impressive on background, Ripudaman Malhotra, thinks that fusion, if not just around the corner, is closer than it's been before. I don't believe it's that much closer, and with Commonwealth CFS, note its CEO's ties to Trump. Follow the money.

Another piece by that guy ignores non-chemical "battery" storage of surplus renewable electricity, such as water systems. In another piece, on nuclear waste, he doesn't scale up the amount of waste that will be produced with a massive nuclear power expansion. Also, contra his implication otherwise, France still has nuclear waste even after reprocessing. (Sigh) See Wiki, which also breaks down waste by radioactivity level and lifespan, and rather than using cute descriptors like:

The total volume of all the spent fuel is 22,000 cubic meters, which would fill one football field (100 yards by 55 yds) to a depth of 13 feet!

Gets straight to cubic meters.

And, in reality, France alone has almost 4,000 cubic meters of high-radioactivity, long-life waste, which could eventually hit 25,000 cubic meters. 

That said, this guy does NOT tout thorium.

One more issue. Union of Concerned Scientists, touted by many of the pro-nuke groups and individuals, per this piece, DOES worry about nuclear waste. It also notes many of today's currently operating nuke plants are marginally profitable to unprofitable. So, a massive nuclear expansion would do what to electric bills? This has LONG been a problem in the industry, and largely ignored by nuke pushers. 

And, that said, speaking of UCS, I suggest Hansen, and people uncritically agreeing with him, I suggest they read Andrew Cockburn, and via him, Edwin Lyman of UCS. Lyman talks about continual weakening (not just by Trump) of US reactor safety standards and more. That includes the abandonment of requirements for concrete containment domes. That and other relaxed standards SHOULD BE scary as hell.

Finally, I don't know about UCS, but none of the other people, including Malhotra, talk about mine worker safety, only power plant and waste safety.

Finally, and yes, while not operating 24/7, wind is as efficient as nukes in producing electricity. 

And, I've wasted enough time. 

Earth Day 2026: And?

As I noted on Shitter, and in comment to a good piece of snark on Substack by friend Lyle Lewis?

Earth Day is the day when pseudoenvironmentalists and environmentalists lite pretend to deeply care about environmental issues. 

But, it's true?

Look at Jared Huffman, claiming to be an environmentalist, except when it comes to letting cows continue to shit in Point Reyes. Result? Cows drive away tule elk. Ravens eat plover eggs when they run out of worms in cow shit. Park Service ignores the former and ropes off a section of Drake's Beach as critical nesting habitat for the latter rather than addressing the actual problem.

Per a piece I heard on NPR this morning, asking listeners what they saw as the biggest problem?

For me, No. 1 is the climate crisis. And, we're past "climate change." The Colorado River is drying up and will continue to do so the rest of this century. We're on target for 4°C, maybe 5°C, of increased heat from pre-industrial times within 100 years. That's 7-9°F. That latter faces neoliberal climate change Obamiacs like Michael Mann, perhaps worse at times for the cause than climate change deniers.

That said, the climate change deniers don't help. And, in the western US, that means increased wildfires, like the KNP Complex Fire in Sequoia five years ago:

Or the Dixie Fire blowing up in Lassen the same year. I was there the day it blew up.

No. 2 is the Sixth Mass Extinction. Besides megafauna and lesser fauna, globalization and related issues threatens a lot of flora. So does mass monocrop agriculture. The chemicals behind that threaten many birds.

No. 3, as Lyle talks about in that piece and elsewhere, is "overshoot," the overextraction of vital resources. Beyond petroleum, water is an obvious one. Overusing the Colorado River is a clear example. Another, as I said in calling out Suzanne Bellsnyder over Proposition 4, is groundwater — in her case, the Ogallala Aquifer.

No. 4 is what's behind all of this — neoliberal capitalism. That's the bottom line.

So, with Earth Day now 56 years old, we can celebrate accomplishments, like the Endangered Species Act in the US, while at the same time note failures, such as US politicians of both duopoly parties, not just Republicans, undercutting it and other environmental issues when they get in the way of capitalist economics. We can globally note Dear Leader conspiring with Xi Jinping to keep the Paris climate accords entirely voluntary. And, we can note climate change Obamiac scientists overselling Paris in the past.

Don't be fooled again. 

That said, a side note or two, riffing on my Earth Day 2016 piece.

National parks not only can get loved to death, they do. This has gotten worse in our COVID and post-COVID world, abetted not only by Trump slashes to federal nature funding, but death by a thousand paper cuts or stasis from Obama and Biden.

Second, Earth Day was founded about urban environmentalism. The record there since 1970 isn't perfect either. But, to be better? Start at home. In cities and towns, pick up trash. Homeowners, businesses and apartment complex owners? Stop overwatering and overfertilizing lawns. Plant native plants. Stop using petroleum-wasting Amazon so much.

Third, lets note that "wilderness" areas don't stay wilderness without management, and at least since not the development of agriculture, but organized pastoral nomads and even large-scale hunter-gatherers, "natural" environments have been managed by humans. Stop calling American Indians "Roussellian noble savages." It tain't so. 

Am I perfect on this? No. I just took a big old jet airplane on vacation, per the Sequoia photo. But, I have a reasonable amount of striving. I boycott a few companies over environmental issues, just like others over Israel. I fight the temptation to use artificial intelligence, and its electricity consumption, beyond already being here on the Net. I stay attuned to local nature. 

Global warming may actually be speeding up

No sugarcoating this reporting from Popular Mechanics:

What [Stefan] Rahmstorf, along with fellow co-author and U.S. statistician Grant Foster, discovered was that the world warmed an average rate of 0.35 degrees Celsius in the past decade, a significant increase from the 0.2 degrees Celsius increases typically recorded since 1970. This is obviously worrying, since not only is the planet warming, but the rate at which it’s warming may be accelerating, complicating the timeline for addressing the climate crisis.

Ouch.

The authors explain how they got to this point: 

The new finding was made by stripping away natural influences, such as El Niño events, volcanic eruptions, and solar activity, to analyze the underlying rate of warming.

That said, this would further backstop James Hansen's late-2023 findings, viciously attacked by Michael Mann. It would further backstop Peter Brannen's new book.

Per both of them, we have a "good" chance of hitting 5°C within a century. 

Is this too high? 

PM notes that other scientists have found accelerated warming, but at "just" 0.27 degrees.

Do the math. That's 2.7°C in a century, plus the 1.5 currently, for a total of 4.2. (The 3.5 would get us to 5C.) 

Greg bin Laden is once again full of shit

Greg bin Laden, living up to his Obamiac mindset, is full of shit when he claims climate change is not accelerating. I've written about the James Hansen news myself, and climate change Obamiacs like Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe are full of shit. I said at that link that I would take Hansen over Mann any time.

Bin Laden, as a #BlueAnon librul, doesn't want to listen to "doomers" because they challenge how much we REALLY have to do on this issue and he doesn't want to hear that. And he IS that, per my old piece about him and "wife" Stephanie Zvan, over Assange, that made both of them go ballistic.

We now have data that indicate global warming within climate change may be speeding up.

Fuck off.