Exxon under Attack for Exercising Prudence

A significant hurdle confronting negotiators trying to develop a strong climate agreement in Paris in December comes from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said “there is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries including Russia,” as described by Stanislav Belkovsky, a Russian political analyst.

Russia’s pledged carbon dioxide reductions ahead of the Paris talks reflect Putin’s skepticism. They actually amount to an increase in emissions. Russia has said its emissions will be “70 to 75 percent” of 1990 levels by 2030 – which amounts to an increase in emissions from 2012 levels since Russian emissions are currently far below the levels produced in the Soviet era.

Putin’s skepticism dates from the early 2000s, when, according to Andrey Illarionov, Putin’s senior economic advisor at the time, his staff “did very, very extensive work trying to understand all sides of the climate debate. We found that, while climate change does exist, it is cyclical, and the anthropogenic role is very limited. It became clear that the climate is a complicated system and that, so far, the evidence presented for the need to ‘fight’ global warming was rather unfounded.”

A new NASA study published in the Journal of Glaciology shows snow in Antarctica began a long-term accumulation 10,000 years ago and is adding much more ice to the continent each year than it is losing as some glaciers melt. The thinning of some glaciers has been shown to be due largely to geologic (volcanic) activity below the ice mass. According to NASA’s analysis, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001, slowing to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the lead author of the study, stated, “The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away.” The persistent ice mass accumulation in Antarctica confounds climate model predictions. As NASA’s analysis shows, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which said Antarctica was overall losing land ice, is just dead wrong. Both on land and at sea, ice growth continues.

Fires, most intentionally set by farmers practicing age-old slash and burn agriculture, are raging across Indonesia. According to the World Resources Institute, these fires have emitted 1.6 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide – twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as have been emitted from the rest of country’s economy combined, pushing Indonesia from the sixth biggest emitting country to the fourth in just six weeks.

Though the government has made it illegal to use fire to clear land for farming or palm oil production, the ban is largely unenforced. To date, 2015 has seen the second highest number of fires on record, with 117,878 fires currently burning. Emitting 1.6 billion tons of greenhouse gases, the Indonesian fires alone are equal the total emissions Brazil produces in a year from energy, agriculture, and land use combined.

Björn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist among other books on climate and economics, highlights the inherent limits of wind and solar power in a recent article. Over the next 25 years, the impact of solar and wind power for limiting climate change will be nearly non-existent, while the cost will be enormous. The main reason why wind and solar power cannot significantly impact climate change stems from the almost insurmountable obstacle that people need power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. Recognizing this, the International Energy Agency reports only 0.4% of global energy now comes from solar and wind. Even in 2040, the agency reports, if all governments actually keep their stated commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, solar and wind will make up just 2.2% of global energy.

Since wind and solar power sources can’t prevent climate change and are not competitive with other electric energy generating sources, why are companies building those facilities? Billionaire investor Warren Buffet has an answer: “[W]e get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”