fossil fuel – Page 12 – Desdemona Despair

Trump looks on as EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, speaks during an event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on 9 January 2020 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

March 27, 2020

EPA suspends enforcement of environmental laws indefinitely at request of petroleum industry – “The EPA uses this global pandemic to create loopholes for destroying the environment”

By Rebecca Beitsch 26 March 2020 (The Hill) – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws Thursday, telling companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak. The temporary policy, for which EPA has set no end date, would allow any number of […]

Sunset over an offshore oil platform near Huntington Beach, California, August 2014 Photo: Pete Markham / Flickr

March 21, 2020

With the public distracted, U.S. Interior Department moves full speed ahead on oil and gas leases

By Maria Caffrey 20 March 2020 (UCS) – We are currently in a state of national emergency thanks in no small part to the Trump administration’s muzzling of public health experts and slow response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we all do our part to limit the extent of this outbreak, the Department of the Interior (DOI) instead appears to be […]

Paying with fire: Most oil and gas executives are rewarded for chasing growth, but shareholders could get burned. Graphic: Carbon Tracker Initiative

March 14, 2020

Fanning the Flames: How executives continue to be rewarded to produce more oil and gas at odds with the energy transition

13 March 2020 (Carbon Tracker) – Company pay practice doesn’t yet live up to climate ambition, with the gap between stated ambition and demonstrable action widening. The energy transition is a challenge to the traditional business model of the oil and gas industry, and companies are increasingly exposed to transition-related financial risks. Over the past […]

University of Rochester researchers in Greenland drill for ice cores, which contain air bubbles with small quantities of ancient air trapped inside. By measuring the carbon-14 isotope in air from more than 200 years ago, the researchers found that scientists have been vastly overestimating the amount of fossil methane emitted by natural sources, and have therefore been underestimating the amount of methane humans are emitting into the atmosphere via fossil fuels. Photo: Xavier Faïn / University of Grenoble Alpes

March 13, 2020

Methane emitted via human fossil fuel use “vastly underestimated”

By Lindsey Valich 19 February 2020 (University of Rochester) – Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and large contributor to global warming. Methane emissions to the atmosphere have increased by approximately 150 percent over the past three centuries, but it has been difficult for researchers to determine exactly where these emissions originate; heat-trapping gases like […]

The Blue Acceleration: global trends in human exploitation of ocean resources. Graphic: Jouffray, et al., 2020 / One Earth

February 26, 2020

The “blue acceleration”: Study shows humans’ surging incursions into the sea

By Grace Dungey 13 February 2020 (Mongabay) – Humanity has depended on the ocean for millennia. Today, however, the rush to the sea is occurring with unprecedented diversity and intensity, propelled by population growth and demand for diminishing terrestrial resources. A study published in January in the new journal One Earth analyzed 50 years of data on 18 kinds […]

Spatial cumulative extents of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. (A) Cumulative NESDIS anomaly daily composites integrated from 20 April 2010 to 21 July 2010. Daily fishing closures are marked with gray lines; the cumulative fishing closure area is marked with a thick dashed yellow line. The black star represents the location of the DWH blowout. (B) Cumulative value of daily average oil concentrations (ppb), integrated across the same time span as (A) and across water depths. Vertical depth layers are 0 to 1 m, 1 to 20 m, and in 20-m increments down to 2500 m. Sediment and water samples with higher-than-background concentration are marked in bright green and dark blue circles, respectively. Red crosses in (B) represent approximate locations of DWH-related oil detections reported in previous studies. Daily fishery closures are marked with black polygons; the cumulative fishery closure area is marked with a dashed thick polygon. AB, Apalachee Bay; DP, Deep Plume; EFS, East Florida Shelf; FK, Florida Keys; LC, Loop Current System; TXS, Texas Shores; WFS, West Florida Shelf. (C) Categorization of the modeled oil spill are as follows: (i) nontoxic, PAH concentrations above background level and smaller than 0.5 and 1 ppb at the surface (depth, 0 to 1 m) and in the water column (depth, >1 m), respectively; (ii) toxic-to-biota and invisible, PAH concentrations 0.5 to 17 ppb at the surface and above 1 ppb in the water column; and (iii) toxic and visible, PAH concentrations above 17 ppb. In (C), categories were computed according to maximal concentrations across time. (D) Duration of toxic concentrations across the domain. (E) LC50 of 12 experiments examining the photoinduced toxicity to blue crab (31), fiddler crab (33), mahi mahi (29, 30), red drum (32), and speckled sea trout (32) (for more details, see table S2). (F) The spatial extent of the toxic concentrations from (E); color codes in (F) are according to bar colors in (E), representing concentrations exceeding LC50. In (F), toxic PAH of 0.5 ppb was concentrations were considered for surface waters only (depth, 0 to 1 m). Graphic: Berenshtein, et al., 2020 / Science Advances

February 17, 2020

The toxic reach of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was much larger and deadlier than previous estimates – “Large areas of the Gulf of Mexico were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures”

By Darryl Fears 12 February 2020 (The Washington Post) – The spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was far worse than previously believed, new research has found. As the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history approaches its 10th anniversary in April, a study by two University of Miami researchers […]

Breakdown of total fossil fuel support in PIDG, 2002-2018, by sub-sector ($USD). Data: Source: Private Infrastructure Development Group Annual Report 2018. Graphic: Global Witness

February 6, 2020

Obscure investment fund uses UK aid money to finance fossil fuel projects – “A farcical situation where the Government, on one hand, spends aid money to mitigate climate change, and on the other hand finances fossil fuels all over the world”

6 February 2020 (Global Witness) – We are at the beginning of a year of climate spin by the British Government. This year, the UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. While the Government claims to be a ‘climate leader’, we reveal how a little-known investment group funded by the […]

Satellite view of tropospheric NO2 VCDs over the Permian basin for August 2018, seen from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) aboard NASA and ESA satellites. OMI has a ground pixel size of 13 x 24 km2 and was gridded onto a 0.07 by 0.07 degrees latitude/longitude grid. TROPOMI has a footprint of 3.5 x 7 km2 and was averaged onto a 0.02 by 0.02 degrees latitude/longitude grid. The increased spatial resolution of the TROPOMI measurements is clearly visible. The red outline denotes the area used for the multivariate regression fits. Graphic: Dix, et al., 2020 / Geophysical Research Letters

February 5, 2020

Air pollution from oil and gas production sites visible from space – U.S. and European satellites help scientists measure nitrogen dioxide from drilling, production, and flaring

15 January 2020 (CIRES) – Oil and gas production has doubled in some parts of the United States in the last two years, and scientists can use satellites to see impacts of that trend: a significant increase in the release of the lung-irritating air pollutant nitrogen dioxide, for example, and a more-than-doubling of the amount […]

Net U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by sector, 2005-2019. Graphic: Rhodium Group

January 12, 2020

Preliminary U.S. carbon emissions estimates for 2019 – Coming up short on climate targets

By Trevor Houser and Hannah Pitt 7 January 2020 (Rhodium Group) – After a sharp uptick in 2018, we estimate that US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions fell by 2.1% last year based on preliminary energy and economic data. This decline was due almost entirely to a drop in coal consumption. Coal-fired power generation fell by […]

Global primary energy consumption by region, 2010-2050. Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration International Energy Outlook 2019 reference case. Graphic: EIA

January 3, 2020

EIA projects nearly 50 percent increase in world energy usage by 2050, led by growth in Asia – Carbon dioxide emissions to grow from all three fossil fuel sources

3 January 2020 (EIA) – In its newly released International Energy Outlook 2019 (IEO2019) Reference case, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that world energy consumption will grow by nearly 50 percent between 2018 and 2050. Most of this growth comes from countries that are not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and […]