energy production – Page 6 – Desdemona Despair

Images taken of offshore oil and gas production facilities. (A) Small satellite facilities around a central hub facility. (B) Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera imagery of hydrocarbon emissions from a central hub facility. Two sources are identified: cold venting and an unknown piece of equipment. (C) Other shallow water facilities. (D) Deep water facilities with flaring. Graphic: Negron, et al., 2023 / PNAS

April 4, 2023

Gulf of Mexico oil worse for climate than thought, study – “Expanding production in shallow waters, the way it’s been done historically, would have disproportionately high climate impacts”

By Drew Costley 3 April 2023 (AP) – Offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico are releasing far more climate-changing methane than official estimates show, according to a new study published Monday. Using data collected from aircraft in part, climate scientists found the additional methane coming from oil and gas platforms in the Gulf […]

The Doomsday Clock in 2023. In 2023, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the clock to 90 seconds from midnight, the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. Graphic: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

January 25, 2023

2023 Doomsday Clock statement: A time of unprecedented danger – It is 90 seconds to midnight

By John Mecklin 24 January 2023 (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) – This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds […]

Percentage of OECD countries experiencing higher-than-average inflation, 1970-2022. The global inflation shock that began in the United States in 2021 and took hold worldwide in 2022 will have powerful economic and political ripple effects in 2023. It will be the principal driver of global recession, add to financial stress, and stoke social discontent and political instability everywhere. Today’s historically high inflation comes from multiple sources. First was the Covid-19 pandemic, which prompted governments to cushion the fall in incomes with extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimulus at the same time that it disrupted global supply. Then, just as the United States and Europe were coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines, China doubled down on its zero-Covid policy, locking down the global economy’s most important manufacturing and shipping hubs. Finally, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s sanctions in response put a strain on the global supply of energy, food, and fertilizer. This unprecedented confluence of overlapping shocks pushed inflation to levels most countries hadn’t seen in nearly 50 years. Graphic: Eurasia Group

January 22, 2023

Eurasia Group’s Top Risks for 2023 – “The risks this year are the most dangerous we’ve encountered in the 25 years since we started Eurasia Group”

By Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan 3 January 2023 (Eurasia Group) – Russia has no way to win in Ukraine. The European Union is stronger than ever. NATO rediscovered its reason for being. The G7 is strengthening. Renewables are becoming dirt cheap. American hard power remains unrivaled. Midterms in the United States were decidedly normal […]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg of Sweden listens as Vanessa Nakate of Uganda speaks at a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on 19 January 2023. The activists urged attendees to give less power in the climate-change fight to oil companies. Photo: AP

January 21, 2023

Greta Thunberg: It’s “absurd” to think oil companies causing the climate crisis have a solution to it – “As long as they can get away with it, they will continue to invest in fossil fuels, they will continue to throw people under the bus”

By Rachel Koning Beals 19 January 2023 (MarketWatch) – Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, age 20 and arguably the face of a generation that wants to roll back decades of reliance on oil and gas by means of alternative energy sources, had a message Thursday as she mingled with the corporate and political bigwigs meeting […]

Summary of all global warming projections (nominal scenarios) reported by ExxonMobil scientists in internal documents and peer-reviewed publications (gray lines), superimposed on historically observed temperature change (red). Solid gray lines (and asterisked numerical labels) indicate global warming projections modeled by ExxonMobil scientists themselves; dashed gray lines indicate projections internally reproduced by ExxonMobil scientists from third-party sources. Shades of gray and numerical labels scale with model start dates, from earliest (1977: lightest, “1”) to latest (2003: darkest, “12”). Numerical labels correspond to panels in Fig. 1, which displays all original graphical projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists. Observations reflect the smoothed annual average of five historical time series. Graphic: Supran, et al., 2023 / Science

January 21, 2023

Exxon disputed climate findings for years. Its scientists knew better. “ExxonMobil scientists knew about this problem to a shockingly fine degree as far back as the 1980s, but company spokesmen denied, challenged, and obscured this science.”

By Alice McCarthy 12 January 2023 (The Harvard Gazette) – Projections created internally by ExxonMobil starting in the late 1970s on the impact of fossil fuels on climate change were very accurate, even surpassing those of some academic and governmental scientists, according to an analysis published Thursday in Science by a team of Harvard-led researchers. Despite those […]

The sun rises behind a lignite excavator at the Garzweiler lignite coal mine near the village of Luetzerath, Erkelenz, Germany, Tuesday, 10 January 2023. The village of Luetzerath was to be demolished to expand the Garzweiler lignite coal mine near the Dutch border. Photo: Michael Probst / AP Photo

January 10, 2023

German police drag away activists protesting coal mine expansion – “We are peaceful, what are you? We’re here for your children too.”

LUETZERATH, Germany, 10 January 2023 (Reuters) – Police on Tuesday began dismantling barricades and dragged away activists staging a sit-in protest against the expansion of an opencast lignite mine that has highlighted tensions over Germany’s climate policy during an energy crisis. The demonstrators, many wearing masks or balaclavas, have for weeks been protesting against the […]

Police officers stand guard as activists protest on 8 January 2023. Protesters oppose the destruction of the hamlet of Luetzerath, Germany for the expansion of the Garzweiler open-cast lignite mine by Germany’s utility RWE. Photo: Thilo Schmuelgen / REUTERS

January 9, 2023

German police prepare to clear climate activists from condemned coal village

9 January 2023 (DPA) – German police will soon move to evict climate activists from a deserted village in the west of the country before its demolition for opencast coal mining, a senior officer said Monday. Energy giant RWE intends to demolish Lützerath in order to mine the area. Residents have left, but climate activists […]

Police guard a lignite excavator near the German village of Luetzerath, 4 January 2023. Luetzerath was to be razed to expand Garzweiler lignite coal mine near the Dutch border. The tactic of energy company RWE was to quickly dredge away areas that can be used for activism and resistance. Photo: Marius Michusch / hessen.social

January 7, 2023

Protests erupt near German village set to be razed to expand coal mine

BERLIN, 2 January 2023 (AP) – Scuffles broke out on Monday outside a village in western Germany that is to be razed to allow the expansion of a coal mine, a plan that is drawing resistance from climate activists. Activists threw fireworks, bottles and stones at police outside the village of Luetzerath before the situation […]

Median real (CPIH-adjusted) hourly employee pay (2022 prices) by cohort in the UK, 1975-2020. Generational pay progress has stalled for those born after 1980. Graphic: Resolution Foundation

December 23, 2022

Intergenerational audit for the UK in 2022 – “Decades of low pay growth, higher housing costs, and high and rising intergenerational wealth inequality means the young entered this crisis with low levels of financial resilience”

14 November 2022 (Resolution Foundation) – Our fourth Intergenerational Audit – part of the ESRC-funded Connecting Generations partnership – provides an analysis of economic living standards across generations in Britain. In so doing, it analyses the latest data across four domains: In each of these domains, we assess how different people of different ages and birth […]

A youth runs over what remains of the glacier that lost most of its volume during the last years, on top of the Zugspitze Mountain near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Saturday, 25 June 2022. Once the world had hope that when nations got together, they could stop climate change. Thirty years after leaders around the globe first got together to try, that hope has melted. Photo: Michael Probst / AP Photo

December 23, 2022

Climate negotiations: 30 years of melting hope and U.S. power – “Such innovative, exciting proposals were put forward in the early years, which if they had been implemented, we would be in a so much better situation”

By Seth Borenstein 4 November 2022 (AP) – Thirty years ago there was hope that a warming world could clean up its act. It didn’t. The United States helped forge two historic agreements to curb climate change then torpedoed both when new political administrations took over. Rich and poor nations squabbled about who should do what. During […]