In climate-related news from the past week:

From Reuters:  “Scientists amazed as Canadian permafrost thaws 70 years early.”

Excerpts:

Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.

A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilized the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia.

“What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir E. Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters by telephone. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.”

With governments meeting in Bonn this week to try to ratchet up ambitions in United Nations climate negotiations, the team’s findings, published on June 10 in Geophysical Research Letters, offered a further sign of a growing climate emergency.

The paper was based on data Romanovsky and his colleagues had been analyzing since their last expedition to the area in 2016. The team used a modified propeller plane to visit exceptionally remote sites, including an abandoned Cold War-era radar base more than 300 km from the nearest human settlement.

Diving through a lucky break in the clouds, Romanovsky and his colleagues said they were confronted with a landscape that was unrecognizable from the pristine Arctic terrain they had encountered during initial visits a decade or so earlier.

The vista had dissolved into an undulating sea of hummocks - waist-high depressions and ponds known as thermokarst. Vegetation, once sparse, had begun to flourish in the shelter provided from the constant wind.

Torn between professional excitement and foreboding, Romanovsky said the scene had reminded him of the aftermath of a bombardment.

“It’s a canary in the coalmine,” said Louise Farquharson, a post-doctoral researcher and co-author of the study. “It’s very likely that this phenomenon is affecting a much more extensive region and that’s what we’re going to look at next.”

Scientists are concerned about the stability of permafrost because of the risk that rapid thawing could release vast quantities of heat-trapping gases, unleashing a feedback loop that would in turn fuel even faster temperature rises.

From the Guardian:  “Himalayan glacier melting doubled since 2000, spy satellites show.”

Excerpts:

The melting of Himalayan glaciers has doubled since the turn of the century, with more than a quarter of all ice lost over the last four decades, scientists have revealed. The accelerating losses indicate a “devastating” future for the region, upon which a billion people depend for regular water.

The scientists combined declassified US spy satellite images from the mid-1970s with modern satellite data to create the first detailed, four-decade record of ice along the 2,000km (1,200-mile) mountain chain.

The analysis shows that 8bn tonnes of ice are being lost every year and not replaced by snow, with the lower level glaciers shrinking in height by 5 meters annually. The study shows that only global heating caused by human activities can explain the heavy melting. In previous work, local weather and the impact of air pollution had complicated the picture.

Joshua Maurer, from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth observatory, who led the new research, said: “This is the clearest picture yet of how fast Himalayan glaciers are melting since 1975, and why.” The research is published in the journal Science Advances.

The Washington Post:  “Temperatures leap 40 degrees above normal as the Arctic Ocean and Greenland ice sheet see record June melting.”

Excerpts:

Ice is melting in unprecedented ways as summer approaches in the Arctic. In recent days, observations have revealed a record-challenging melt event over the Greenland ice sheet, while the extent of ice over the Arctic Ocean has never been this low in mid-June during the age of weather satellites.

Greenland saw temperatures soar up to 40 degrees above normal Wednesday, while open water exists in places north of Alaska where it seldom, if ever, has in recent times.

It’s “another series of extreme events consistent with the long-term trend of a warming, changing Arctic,” said Zachary Labe, a climate researcher at the University of California at Irvine.

And the abnormal warmth and melting of ice in the Arctic may be messing with our weather.

Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the Greenland ice sheet appears to have witnessed its biggest melt event so early in the season on record this week (although a few other years showed similar mid-June melting).

“The melting is big and early,” said Jason Box, an ice climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

From Wired:  “The Midwest’s farms face an intense, crop-killing future.”

Excerpts:

The flooding that devastated the Midwest this spring damaged infrastructure and prevented farmers from getting crops planted on time. Though scientists can’t say if one storm or one wet season is the result of climate change, so far this year’s heavy rains are a perfect illustration of what scientific models of climate change predict for the region. And it’s only going to get more intense.

Those models warn that it’s going to get hotter, and that rain will continue to arrive in increasingly intense spring bursts, leaving long dry patches in the summer. “We’re fighting it at both ends in the Midwest right now. Too much too early and not enough late,” says Evan DeLucia, a professor of plant biology at the University of Illinois.

During the summer, the Midwest will see drought conditions similar to what California, Greece, or Italy have. A mediterranean climate seems nice, as a concept: temperate winters and warm, dry summers, guaranteed to get you an even tan. But, according to a report that DeLucia coauthored appearing in the journal Ecosphere today, if you’re a farmer trying to grow corn it means something very different: You need more water. Because the warmer the air is, the more water plants require.

From CBC:  “How climate change is thawing the 'glue that holds the northern landscape together.’”

Excerpts:

In one of the coldest places in Canada, Steve Kokelj is searching for Arctic thaw. He's driving the great Dempster Highway, 747 kilometres of gravel linking southern Canada to the Arctic.

"The large permafrost disturbances that we're seeing now have really developed in the last one to two decades," he says.

Kokelj is a permafrost scientist for the territorial government, and his job is to survey the alarming changes to the layers of ice and rock which underpin the North.

"Think of permafrost as sort of the glue that holds the northern landscape together.”

But as the Arctic warms three times as fast as anywhere else in the world, that permafrost — made up of leftover ice from the last glaciation, frozen for thousands of years — is degrading.

That's glaringly obvious as he pulls over to point out a huge hole carved out of the Dempster highway embankment. Elevated moisture and warmth have caused the side of the road to collapse.

From the Weather Channel:  “2019 On Track to Be Earth's Third Warmest Year on Record, NOAA Says.”

Excerpts:

The first five months of 2019 have been among Earth's top three warmest in 140 years of temperature records, according to a just-released analysis.

NOAA said Tuesday that global average temperatures across all land and ocean surfaces were third warmest for any January-through-May period, ranking only behind 2016 and 2017, in records dating to 1880.

Parts of central and southern Africa, southeast Asia, southern Brazil, the western Pacific Ocean, the Barents Sea, northwest Canada and northeast Alaska were among the areas that experienced a record warm first five months of 2019, according to NOAA.

Australia shattered its record warm January-May period in 2019, Australia's Bureau of Meteorology noted.

...

In business-as-usual news from the past week:

From AP:  “Amid urgent climate warnings, EPA gives coal a reprieve.”

Excerpts:

Amid scientists’ increasingly urgent warnings, the Trump administration ordered a sweeping about-face Wednesday on Obama-era efforts to fight climate change, easing restrictions on coal-fired power plants in a move it predicted would revitalize America’s sagging coal industry.

As miners in hard hats and coal-country lawmakers applauded, Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler signed a measure that scraps one of President Barack Obama’s key initiatives to rein in fossil fuel emissions. The replacement rule gives states more leeway in deciding whether to require plants to make limited efficiency upgrades.

Wheeler said he expects more coal plants to open as a result. But one state, New York, immediately said it would go to court to challenge the action, and more lawsuits are likely.

The EPA move follows pledges by candidate and then President Donald Trump to rescue the U.S. coal industry, which saw near-record numbers of plant closings last year in the face of competition from cheaper natural gas and renewables. It’s the latest and one of the biggest of dozens of environmental regulatory rollbacks by his administration.

From RigZone:  “Permian Oil Output Set to Keep Growing.”

Excerpts:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has forecasted that Permian oil production will hit 4.226 million barrels per day (MMbpd) next month in its latest drilling productivity report.

This marks the first time the EIA has projected oil output in the region to surpass the 4.2MMbpd mark in a drilling productivity report. Permian oil production in June was forecasted to come in at 4.171MMbpd in the EIA’s latest report. Back in May, the EIA anticipated that Permian oil output would be 4.173MMbpd in June.

From Oilprice.com:  “India Picks New Site For $44B Aramco-ADNOC Mega Refinery.”

Excerpts:

The Indian state of Maharashtra has identified a new location where India, in partnership with the state oil companies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, plans to build a giant US$44-billion refinery, the chief minister of Maharashtra state, Devendra Fadnavis, said on Wednesday. 

In June last year, Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) signed a framework agreement and a memorandum of understanding with a consortium of Indian national oil companies to join the mega project in the Maharashtra state on India’s west coast. Saudi Aramco and ADNOC will jointly own 50 percent of the new joint venture company RRPCL, while the other 50 percent will be held by the Indian consortium. The parties agreed to explore a strategic partnership and co-investment in the development of the US$44 billion mega refinery.  

By investing in the giant Indian refinery, the national oil companies of leading OPEC producers Saudi Arabia and the UAE would secure off-take for their crude in a strategic fast-growing oil market in Asia.

From Reuters:  “U.S. shale oil output to rise to record 8.52 million barrels per day in July: EIA.”

Excerpts:

U.S. oil output from seven major shale formations is expected to rise by about 70,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July to a record 8.52 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its monthly drilling productivity report on Monday.

The largest change is forecast in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, where output is expected to climb by 55,000 bpd to a fresh peak at 4.23 million bpd in July.

Production in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken shale basin is also expected to climb by 11,000 bpd to a record 1.44 million bpd, the data showed. Output from the nearby Niobrara basin is expected to rise by 10,000 bpd to a record high of nearly 730,000 bpd.

A shale revolution and production increases particularly from the Permian basin and the Bakken have helped make the United States the biggest crude oil producer in the world, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia.

From Reuters:  “Gazprom Neft says Bazhenov shale oil output to reach viability by 2022-2023.”

Excerpts:

Russia’s Gazprom Neft expects lifting costs at Bazhenov formation, the world’s largest shale oil resource, to gradually fall and reach an acceptable level for viable production by 2022-2023, a top company official said on Thursday.

Russia sits on huge reserves of shale oil, which needs more investments for developments than the conventional oil. Unlike the United States, it lacks technology and funds to produce shale oil in large volumes.

The break-even lifting costs for shale oil production at the formation stand at 8,500 rubles ($132) per tonne, Alexei Vashkevich, head of geological exploration and resource base development at Gazprom Neft, told reporters.

“We are ready to get that number in 2022-2023,” he said in comments, cleared for publication on Monday.

He said the company had been working to raise its effectiveness, including via implementation of state-of-the-art technologies.

The company plans to start commercial production of oil from Bazhenov formation in 2025, Vashkevich reiterated.

The International Energy Agency describes Bazhenov as the world’s largest source rock, a bed of ancient organic matter dating back to the Jurassic period which has given rise to most of the crude oil pumped from the fields of West Siberia.

Gazprom Neft estimates that the reserves of the light, low-sulphur and of low-viscosity Bazhenov formation stand at between 18 billion and 60 billion tonnes.

From Reuters:  “Oil group Total hopes new supercomputer will help it find oil faster and more cheaply.”

Excerpts:

Energy major Total said its new supercomputer - which has propelled it to a world ranking as the most powerful computer in the sector - will enable its geologists to find oil faster, cheaper and with a better success rate.

The Pangea III computer build by IBM will help process complex seismic data in the search for hydrocarbons 10 times faster that before, Total said on Tuesday.

The computing power of the company has been increased to 31.7 so-called ‘petaflops’ from 6.7 petaflops in 2016, and from 2.3 petaflops in 2013, Total said, adding that it was the equivalent of around 170,000 laptops combined.

From CBC:  “Trudeau cabinet approves Trans Mountain expansion project.”

Excerpts:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet have again approved the Trans Mountain expansion project, a crucial next step for the much-delayed pipeline project designed to carry nearly a million barrels of oil from Alberta's oilpatch to the B.C. coast each day.

The cabinet has affirmed the National Energy Board's conclusion that, while the pipeline has the potential to damage the environment and marine life, it's in the national interest and could contribute tens of billions of dollars to government coffers and create and sustain thousands of jobs.

Beyond approving the project, Trudeau also committed to directing every single dollar the federal government earns from the pipeline — which, when it's built, is estimated to be some $500 million a year in federal corporate tax revenue alone — to investments in unspecified clean energy projects.

From the Barents Observer:  “Oil company starts drilling on shores of great river Yenisey.”

Excerpts:

Operations are in the making at Payakha, the oil fields that could become among the biggest in the Arctic.

It is Neftegazholding, the company owned by former Rosneft leader Eduard Khudaynatov, that now unfolds major activities in the oil fields situated along great river Yenisey.

The Payakha could hold up to 1,2 billion tons of oil. Russia’s state mineral extraction agency Rosnedra earlier this year made a significant upgrade of the field’s resource potential.

Drilling on site started on the 13th of June.

“Today is a triumphant day,” Andrey Polyakov, company Vice President said in a ceremony. “The preparatory and testing phases are completed and we start drilling of the first group of wells in the unique Payakha area,” he underlined.

The Neftegazholding intends to produce an annual 26 million tons of oil on site. A big number of wells are to be drilled a special rig has been installed on site, facilitating working conditions on site. The installation is roof covered, which provides workers with protection against the harsh Arctic winds and severe temperatures.

The project includes the building of a more than 400 km long pipeline to Dikson, the town on the Kara Sea coast, as well as a major sea terminal. The oil is planned shipped both west- and eastwards on the Northern Sea Route.

It could become a key part of Vladimir Putin’s grand plan to boost annual shipments on the Northern Sea Route to 80 million tons by year 2024.

From CBC:  “Canadians are worried about climate change, but many don't want to pay taxes to fight it: Poll.”

Excerpts:

Canadians are deeply concerned about climate change and are willing to make adjustments in their lives to fight it — but for many people, paying as much as even a monthly Netflix subscription in extra taxes is not one of them, a new poll suggests.

The survey results, the first in a series from a poll commissioned by CBC News and conducted by Public Square Research and Maru/Blue to capture a portrait of the country in this election year, found that while nearly two-thirds of Canadians see fighting climate change as a top priority, half of those surveyed would not shell out more than $100 per year in taxes to prevent climate change, the equivalent of less than $9 a month.

The findings point to a population that is both gravely concerned about the heating of the planet but largely unprepared to make significant sacrifices in order to stave off an environmental crisis.

Just 34 per cent said they would go without air conditioning, 30 per cent would purchase a vehicle with an energy-saving mode and 25 per cent would fly less frequently. Fewer than one in five respondents who were willing to make changes to their lives said they would purchase an electric car (20 per cent), move to a smaller house or apartment (19 per cent) or give up eating meat (17 per cent).

Combined with the survey's findings of such a high level of concern about the cost of living — it ranked as both Canadians' biggest worry and their top election issue — the numbers suggest that while Canadians care about climate change, their financial concerns are more important.

Still, only six per cent said they'd like to make changes in their lives to fight climate change but "can't afford it.”

The concern about cost was most starkly demonstrated when respondents were asked how much they would be willing to pay in taxes every year to help prevent climate change.

Nearly one-third, or 32 per cent, said they were unwilling to pay anything at all, while 17 per cent said they would be willing to pay less than $100 in taxes every year. Netflix's most basic plan comes in at a yearly price tag of $120.

(Editor’s note:  Of course, this is not unique to Canadians.  See this Sky News story from May 2, 2019:  “Majority of Brits unwilling to cut back to fight climate change, poll finds.”)

From USA Today: “End of civilization: climate change apocalypse could start by 2050 if we don't act, report warns.”

Excerpts:

A chilling Australian policy paper outlining a Doomsday scenario for humans if we don’t start dealing with climate change suggests that by 2050 we could see irreversible damage to global climate systems resulting in a world of chaos where political panic is the norm and we are on a path facing the end of civilization.

The worst thing about it, say experts, is that it’s actually a fairly calm and rational look at just how bad things could get — and how quickly — if humans don’t stop emitting greenhouse gases into the environment.

The scenarios "don't seem that far-fetched to me. I don't think there's anything too crazy about them," said Adam Sobel, a professor of applies physics and mathematics at Columbia University in New York City who studies atmospheric and climate dynamics. 

The paper was written by an independent think-tank in Australia called Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration. It offer a scenario for 2050 in a world where humans didn't lower carbon emissions enough to keep the global temperature from rising.

Last year's United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said the world’s nations must quickly reduce fossil fuel use to keep the rise in global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius. The transitions, the report said, must start now and be well underway in the next 20 years. 

The Australian report imagines a world where that didn't happen and global temperatures warmed by 3 degrees Celsius or even more. That's a rise of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. While that may not seem like a lot, on a worldwide scale it is expected to result in massive, catastrophic shifts to the weather, agriculture and even the habitability of some areas. 

"Three degrees Celsius by 2100 is a pretty middle-of-the-road estimate. It's not extreme and it's totally believable," if serious action isn't taken, said Sobel.

The writers say their scenario offers a "glimpse into a world of 'outright chaos' on a path to the end of human civilization and modern society as we have known it, in which the challenges of global security are simply overwhelming and political panic becomes the norm.”

From Smithsonian.com:  “Record-Breaking Heat in Alaska Wreaks Havoc on Communities and Ecosystems.”

Excerpts:

Alaska in March is supposed to be cold. Along the north and west coasts, the ocean should be frozen farther than the eye can see. In the state’s interior, rivers should be locked in ice so thick that they double as roads for snowmobiles and trucks. And where I live, near Anchorage in south-central Alaska, the snowpack should be deep enough to support skiing for weeks to come. But this year, a record-breaking heatwave upended norms and had us basking in comfortable—but often unsettling—warmth.

Across Alaska, March temperatures averaged 11 degrees Celsius above normal. The deviation was most extreme in the Arctic where, on March 30, thermometers rose almost 22 degrees Celsius above normal—to 3 degrees. That still sounds cold, but it was comparatively hot.

“It’s hard to characterize that anomaly, it’s just pretty darn remarkable for that part of the world,” says Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy in Fairbanks. The state’s wave of warmth was part of a weeks-long weather pattern that shattered temperature records across our immense state, contributing to losses of both property and life. “When you have a slow grind of warming like that, lasting weeks or months, it affects people’s lives,” Thoman says.

From the Guardian:  “Thousands could perish annually in US if global heating not curbed, study finds.”

Excerpts:

Thousands of heat-related deaths in major US cities could be avoided if rising global temperatures are curbed, new research has found.

On current global heating trends, thousands of people are set to perish due to the heat every year across 15 major US cities, in an analysis by a team of British and American researchers.

Once the average worldwide temperature rises to 3C (5.4F) above the pre-industrial period nearly 5,800 people are expected to die each year in New York City due to the heat, more than 2,500 are forecast to die annually in Los Angeles and more than 2,300 lives will be lost annually in Miami.

This dire scenario would probably be avoided if the world was able to keep to its commitments made in the Paris climate agreement, where governments pledged to limit the global temperature rise to 2C, with an aspiration to keep the increase to 1.5C.

...

From Reuters:  “U.S. vows first oil lease sale in Alaska Arctic refuge this year.”

Excerpts:

The U.S. Interior Department is determined to sell oil leases for the first time this year in the ecologically sensitive but presumably petroleum-rich coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a Trump administration official said on Thursday.

“That lease sale will happen in 2019,” Joe Balash, the assistant interior secretary for lands and minerals management, told an oil industry conference in Anchorage.

The decision marks a likely turning point in a decades-long battle between environmental groups and fossil energy companies over the Beaufort Sea coast of the wildlife refuge, home to caribou, polar bear and other Arctic wildlife east of Alaska’s North Slope oil fields.

The refuge had been off-limits to oil and gas drilling until the end of 2017, when Congress passed a tax overhaul that included a mandate for oil leasing there.

The tax bill requires the Interior Department to hold a lease sale within four years, offering at least 400,000 acres for development within the coastal plain of ANWR, America’s largest wildlife sanctuary.

From the Houston Chronicle:  “Permian gas flaring hits new record highs for 'widespread waste,' pollution.”

Excerpts:

The flaring of natural gas in West Texas' booming Permian Basin has exceeded previous estimates and is now contributing to far more "widespread waste" and pollution than ever before, according to a new report.

Burned off or vented natural gas in the Permian is projected at a new high of 661 million cubic feet per day in June, way up from previous record highs of about 450 million cubic feet a day late last year, the Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy said Tuesday.

As companies drill for oil, they're also pumping out large volumes of associated natural gas that frequently has nowhere to go because of temporary pipeline shortages in the region. So they're opting to simply waste the gas by burning it off in a practice know as flaring until new outlets can carry their energy products to market.

Houston’s Kinder Morgan is currently building two massive gas pipelines to carry the product to the Gulf Coast markets in Corpus Christi and Houston, but only one of them will be completed this year.

"We anticipate that basin-wide flaring will stay above 650 million cubic feet a day before the Gulf Coast Express pipeline comes online in the second half of 2019," says Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad.

Methane, the main component of natural gas, is a potent greenhouse gas that traps considerably more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, helping to accelerate climate change.

From S&P Global Platts: “Shell sees LNG market growth at 4% a year, plans to 'grow with it': CEO.”

Excerpts:

Anglo-Dutch major Shell expects the global LNG market to grow by 4% a year to 2035 and the company plans to "grow with it," maintaining its leading position in the market, CEO Ben van Beurden said Tuesday.

Speaking at a management day in London, van Beurden said the company had an "unmatched" LNG supply portfolio globally with a 22% share of global LNG sales in 2018, and a trading function that allowed Shell to do "serious" optimization.

Global LNG imports in 2018 were some 314 million mt, according to industry group GIIGNL, but Shell sees the market doubling in size by 2035.

"The gas market and LNG in particular will continue to grow," van Beurden said, adding that by 2035 more than 70% of energy demand growth will be met by gas and renewables combined.

China and India, he said, would drive a lot of that growth thanks to their stated policy goal of a preference for gas over coal in power generation.

From the Barents Observer:  “Moscow’s new energy doctrine warns against green shift.”

Excerpts:

Subhead:  “International efforts against climate change are alright, but only as long as they do not encroach on the country’s oil and gas interests.”

Russia is experiencing dramatic and unprecedented climate change, and effects could be detrimental for national development. Consequences are already clearly seen in the country’s Arctic where ice is melting at record-speed and average temperatures several places have hiked up to five centigrades above normal.

However, for the country that controls a lion’s share of Arctic territories, the vast lands of the North are seen first and foremost as an area of natural resources and great revenue. And anything that could put those interests in jeopardy is perceived as a threat.

The new Energy Doctrine signed in mid-May by Vladimir Putin makes clear that Russia’s position as energy superpower is challenged by international efforts to combat climate change.

The document states that international climate efforts and the rapid shift to a “green economy” must be perceived as a foreign policy challenge. Likewise, it highlights that the growing share of alternative energy sources in the global fuel and energy balance is an issue of concern.

The energy doctrine makes clear that Russia «supports international efforts aimed at counter-acting climate change and is ready to cooperate in the field with all counties». 

At the same time it highlights that Russia takes part in the international climate policy issues only “to the extent to which it corresponds with its national interests.”

“Russia considers it unacceptable to assess the issues of climate change and protection of the environment from a biased point of view, [with] infringement of the interests of countries that produce energy resources and the deliberate ignoring of aspects of sustainable development such as general access to energy and development of clean hydrocarbon energy technologies.”

Russian authorities are well aware of the dramatic climate changes unfolding in the country. But for Moscow it is not climate change itself that is the most threatening. More important are the effects it could have on its position as global leader in energy production. Russia is the world’s biggest producer of oil and second biggest of natural gas and makes the lion’s share of its revenues from energy exports.

Consequently, the new doctrine describes the shrinking of Russia’s traditional energy markets abroad as a key security threat.

From S&P Global Platts: “Angola kick-starts plan to address dramatic output decline.”

Excerpts:

Angola's steep decline in crude production over the past three years has been tough to ignore. The government led by President Joao Lourenco has unearthed a plan that includes tendering as many as 50 marginal fields to foreign oil companies in a bid to revive its crude output.

On Tuesday, the newly created National Oil, Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANPG), which is responsible for all upstream concessions in the country, announced the details of its new licensing round, including a total of 10 blocks.

ANPG President Paulino Jeronimo, speaking at the Angola Oil and Gas conference in Luanda, said nine blocks will be offered in the Namibe basin, with one bock in the Benguela basin.

This round is aimed at ensuring "the replacement of reserves and the promotion of exploration activity," Jeronimo said.

In climate-related news:

From NBC News:  “Carbon dioxide hits a level not seen for 3 million years. Here's what that means for climate change — and humanity.”

Excerpts:

In the latest bit of bad news for a planet beset by climate change, the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has climbed to a level last seen more than 3 million years ago — before humans even appeared on the rocky ball we call home.

On Saturday, sensors at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii indicated that concentrations of the greenhouse gas — a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels — had reached 415 parts per million (ppm), meaning that for every 1 million molecules of gas in the atmosphere, 415 were of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun, and higher levels are associated with higher global temperatures and other effects of climate change, such as rising seas and unusual weather patterns.

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen an average of 2.5 ppm per year over the past decade, reaching 400 ppm in 2013 — and the level appears likely to go higher from here.

“We’re racing toward a state very different from the kind humans evolved in and that civilization developed in,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

The last time levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were this high came during the Pliocene Epoch, which extended from about 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago. During that period, average sea levels were about 50 feet higher than they are today and forests grew as far north as the Arctic, said Rob Jackson, a professor of earth system science at Stanford University. “Earth was a very different place,” he said. “You would hardly recognize the land surface, and my gosh, we don’t want to go there.”

From Deutsche Welle:  “Climate change: UN chief Guterres decries 'fading' global efforts.”

Excerpts:

Arriving in Auckland Sunday, Guterres said the world was "not on track" to confine the rise in global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as agreed in the 2015 Paris agreement.

"The paradox is that as things are getting worse on the ground, political will seems to be fading," said the UN secretary general.

"Climate change is running faster than what we are … the last four years have been the hottest registered," he said, adding that political inadequacy was evident “everywhere."

From New York Magazine:  “Los Angeles Fire Season Is Beginning Again. And It Will Never End.”

Excerpts:

You could see the smoke from space. The plume from last November’s Woolsey fire swept out toward Catalina and into the Pacific beyond by the same Santa Ana winds that had carried the flames all the way down the Malibu mountainside to the beach. The aftermath was eerie, the sunsets gorgeous, toxic ash falling from the sky in heavy lumps. Horses and alpacas and a giraffe wandered the sand, having fled flames that tore through local stables and ranches and a vineyard’s private zoo. The burn scar on the land, when the smoke cleared, stretched 152 square miles through Point Dume and Malibu and up to Calabasas and Westlake Village: 96,000 densely populated acres burned, 300,000 people evacuated from 100,000 homes, a city of 10 million terrorized in ways both familiar and unprecedented.

In the mythology of Los Angeles, fires are an eternal feature of the landscape — more permanent than any human settlement and an intimation that the city and its people remain rugged, no matter how comfortably plastic and protected life in its wealthy canyon sprawl might seem. But in a time of environmental panic, last year’s fires played more like a portent of something new, even an End of Days. The same resident of Inglewood or West Hollywood or Culver City who might once have looked up from his driveway to see the same smoke plume suspended above the city’s flatlands or driven past the same flickering flames along the 405 and thought, California, now sees them and thinks, Climate change.

Los Angeles can seem, in this way, ahead of its time, a sort of preview of what the rest of the country is only peeking at through stretched fingers — communities across the city contemplating what is to come and wondering just how comfortable, or even manageable, life under those conditions could possibly be. The Woolsey fire was twice as big as anything that had burned through Malibu before, yet it represented only a tiny part of the worst fire year in the history of the state — only 5 percent of the acres that burned.

From ThinkProgress:  “Deadly flooding is rocking Texas. Scientists say this is our future under climate change.”

Excerpts:

Communities across East Texas and the wider region are reeling after an onslaught of rain and flash flooding left Houston and other cities underwater this week. The heavy rain comes only weeks after the United States closed out the wettest 12 months on record, a period that has also seen much of the Midwest devastated by flooding.

Some Houston schools were closed Friday while the city’s fire department fielded more than 75 calls related to water issues across the area. Around 21 million people can expect possible flooding this weekend, including residents in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

The region-wide deluge is unusual, even though the Texas coast is prone to flooding, particularly in cities like Houston. The fourth-largest city in the country has struggled as rain becomes a more persistent issue, and one that Houston’s drainage infrastructure is not equipped to handle. The city is also still recovering from Hurricane Harvey, which hit in 2017, killing dozens of people and causing billions of dollars in damage.

But across the country, trends indicate that flooding is becoming the new normal. On Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the amount of U.S. land experiencing drought has dropped to its lowest levels in decades. That dive has come hand-in-hand with a major uptick in saturation — from May 2018 to April 2019, the country saw its wettest year on record.

From Nola.com:  “Attention Louisiana climate deniers: Insurers say climate change now biggest risk.”

Excerpts:

History is full of moments when communities facing an existential challenge have two fates.

They are saved by courageous leaders who ignore personal risks to show the way. Or they become examples of disastrous, life-ending choices.

Climate change has clearly placed Louisiana at one of those crisis points. But, so far, we have chosen that second course and are barreling toward disaster just a few decades away.

The evidence of this failure was captured in two headlines from last week’s news:

Louisiana’s GOP congressmen approve pulling U.S. out of Paris Climate Accords.

Climate change jumps to biggest risk for insurers.

That [last] chilling headline is the one community leaders and policy makers have been dreading for some time. And these quotes from that story won’t make them feel any better:

"Climate change took the biggest jump this year of I believe any risk that I can remember, seeing it jump from 7 percent up to 22 percent," said, Max Rudolph, fellow of the Society of Actuaries and author of the report.

Rudolph added that it's becoming harder for risk managers to avoid thinking about climate change. He pointed to major hurricanes in 2017 and the longer, more intense wildfire seasons we're seeing in the west.

"My personal opinion is that this is a case of the risk managers catching up to the actual risk that is out there," he explained.

Risk, of course, is the major factor that determines insurance rates.

And insurance rates can go a long way to determining how affordable an area is to live and work in. And that, in turn, can determine why businesses decide to move into an area — or leave it for a safer, more affordable location.

From the Seattle Times:  “May heat shrinks Washington snowpack, raising risk for tight water flows for fish and farmers.”

Excerpts:

The Pacific Northwest is again experiencing surging spring heat that shattered temperatures this past week and prompted red-flag warnings for fire risks in lowland portions of Southwest Washington.

Last year, intense May warmth brought a sudden melt of a big mountain snowpack, causing flooding in north central and northeast Washington as the Okanogan River reached its highest flood stage in four decades.

This year, the statewide snowpack, as of Friday, averaged only 58 percent of the median amount for that date. So instead of being concerned about high water, state officials are preparing for summer drought, which can raise the potential for wildfires, reduce irrigation flows to farmers and make life difficult for salmon that depend on cool water to survive.

“When you look at some of the snowpacks in some of the basins, it looks like they are doing a swan dive off a cliff,” said Jeff Marti, a state Ecology Department official who noted that Gov. Jay Inslee already has issued drought-emergency declarations in the Okanogan, Methow and upper Yakima watersheds, because low snowpacks are expected to crimp water supplies.

...

In business-as-usual news:

From Grist:  “The plastic industry is on track to produce as many emissions as 600 coal-fired power plants.”

Excerpts:

When you think about plastic, what comes to mind? Microplastics at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, whales dying with truckloads of garbage in their bellies, that zero-waste Instagram influencer you follow?

A new report shows it’s high time to think more about the fossil fuels that go into making those plastic products. The global plastic industry is on track to produce enough emissions to put the world on track for a catastrophic warming scenario, according to the Center for International Environmental Law analysis. In other words, straws aren’t just bad for unsuspecting turtles; plastic is a major contributor to climate change.

If the plastic industry is allowed to expand production unimpeded, here’s what we’re looking at: By 2030, global emissions from that sector could produce the emissions equivalent of more than 295 (500-megawatt) coal plants. By 2050, emissions could exceed the equivalent of 615 coal plants.

That year, the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions from production of single-use plastics like bags and straws could compose between 10 and 13 percent of the whole remainder of our carbon budget. That is, the amount of CO2 we’re allowed to emit if we want to keep emissions below the threshold scientists say is necessary to ensure a liveable planet. By 2100, even conservative estimates pin emissions from plastics composing more than half of the carbon budget.

So, congrats on ordering that metal straw from Amazon! But the report shows that the plastics industry is still planning on a major expansion in production.

Here are a few more takeaways from the report, which looked at the emissions produced by the plastics industry starting in 2015 and projected what emissions from that sector could look like through the end of the century:

• Of the three ways to get rid of plastics — recycling, landfilling, or incinerating — incinerating is the most energy intensive. In 2015, emissions from incinerating plastic in the United States were estimated to be around 5.9 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent.
• This year, production and incineration of plastic products will make as many emissions as 189 coal power plants — 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases.
• Plastics that wind up in the ocean could even fuck with the ocean’s ability to do what it has historically done a superb job at: sequestering carbon. That’s because the phytoplankton and lil ocean critters that help capture the CO2 at the surface of the ocean and drag it under are being compromised by — you guessed it — microplastic.

But it doesn’t look like the industry is going to slow its roll on refining oil for plastics anytime soon. In 2015, 24 ethylene facilities in the U.S. produced the emissions equivalent of 3.8 million cars. There are 300 more petrochemical facilities underway in the U.S. Two of those, one being built by ExxonMobil and another by Shell, could produce emissions equivalent to 800,000 new cars on the road per year.

From Oilprice.com:  “The Star Permian Basin Sends US Shale Production Up, Up And Away.”

Excerpts:

US oil production from the top seven major shale plays is set to reach new record heights in June, according to the US Energy Information Administration’s latest edition of its Drilling Productivity Report. 

Oil production

Production from the top seven plays will increase by 83,000 barrels per day in June from May 2019 levels, with the largest increase seen in the Permian Basin, which is set to increase from 4.117 million barrels of oil per day to 4.173 million barrels per day (+56,000). The second largest increasing region according to the report is the Bakken.

Gas production

Just as noteworthy, gas production is also set to increase in these seven plays, from 79.720 million cubic feet per day in May to 80.663 million cubic feet per day in June, with the Appalachia region seeing the largest increase, followed by Haynesville and then the Permian.

From Bloomberg:  “Climate Changed:  Lenders Scolded for Climate Ignorance in ‘Insane’ Florida Real Estate Deals.”

Excerpts:

Hurricane Michael killed seven people and caused more than $6 billion in damage in Florida in October, a toll compounded by warmer, higher seas and wetter air, the signs of climate change scientists have long warned about.

But investors have yet to pay any kind of meaningful attention, buying up long-dated debt and financing real estate decades into the future. That kind of market neglect means the Florida economy can be expected to “go to hell,” warned Spencer Glendon, a senior fellow at the Woods Hole Research Center and a former partner and director of investment research at Wellington Management.

“No one should be lending for 30 years in most of Florida,” he said at an investment conference in New York last week. “During that time frame, insurance will disappear and terminal values” -- future resale income -- “will shrink. I tell my parents that it’s fine to rent in Florida, but it’s insane to own or to lend.”

From the Guardian:  “BP pushed for Arctic drilling rights after Trump's election.”

Excerpts:

BP stepped up its campaign to be allowed to drill for oil in the Arctic sea and an Alaskan wildlife refuge after Donald Trump was elected president, according to documents that detail the British firm’s lobbying efforts.

Documents written by BP and oil industry groups show how the oil “supermajor” seized on the opportunity presented by Trump’s 2016 election victory to expand its offshore business, just seven years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Areas it targeted include the Arctic sea, where experts have warned an oil spill could be an ecological disaster, as well as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), not far from where BP spilled 222,000 gallons of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 2006.

Despite the reputational damage it had suffered after successive spills, BP played a key role in lobbying the government to loosen restrictions on oil drilling, according to documents obtained by Greenpeace’s investigative unit, Unearthed and shared with the Guardian.

From CBC:  “Keyera green-lights $1.3B Alberta natural gas pipeline.”

Excerpts:

Shares in Keyera Corp. rose by as much as nine per cent after it announced it will proceed with a long-anticipated $1.3-billion pipeline to bring natural gas liquids from northwestern Alberta to market.

The Key Access Pipeline System is designed to collect condensate and other petroleum liquids produced with natural gas in the Montney and Duvernay regions and bring it to the liquids processing and storage hub at Fort Saskatchewan, just northeast of Edmonton.

On a conference call on Wednesday, Keyera executives said shippers have signed long-term contracts accounting for about 65 per cent of the initial capacity of the pipeline, which is expected to come on stream in 2022.

The pipeline partners had each been pursuing similar projects with other investors before deciding to work together given their ownership interests in the gas processing plants that will supply much of the initial throughput on the system.

Analyst Nate Heywood of AltaCorp Capital pointed out the line will compete with Pembina Pipeline Corp.'s Peace Pipeline — a $500-million expansion of the latter was approved in January because of rising customer demand.

From the Wall Street Journal:  “Australia’s Conservatives Win Surprise Election Victory.”

Excerpts:

Australia’s conservative government eked out a surprise victory in Saturday’s national elections after voters in resource-rich districts turned against center-left opponents who had put climate change at the heart of their campaign.

Behind in polls for more than two years, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National coalition appealed to voters in battleground states such as Queensland, struggling at the end of a long mining boom, with a campaign focused on the economy and jobs.

Climate change, a thorny problem that has ripped apart governments, re-emerged as an election issue following a summer of wildfires, drought, floods and extreme temperatures: Voter support for policies aimed at addressing climate change was at the highest level since 2007. But, as in the U.S., divisions grew more stark as the issue gathered steam.

Labor campaigned on a pledge to reduce emissions by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030, after Australia under the conservatives became the first developed nation to abolish a price on carbon in 2014. The party also promised a push on renewable energy and electric vehicles.

While the message appealed to many city voters, voters in resource-rich regions worried Labor’s climate plan would drive up living costs and put coal miners out of work. Mr. Morrison’s government approved a controversial coal mine in northeastern Queensland planned by Indian conglomerate Adani Corp just days before declaring elections.

In climate-related news:

From New Scientist:  “Some UK coastal communities may have to move because of climate change.”

Excerpts:

Some coastal communities around the UK may have to eventually be moved because of the scale of flooding that climate change threatens to bring, the Environment Agency has warned.

In a report on the UK’s long term flooding strategy, the regulator said the country should be prepared for sea level rises and the flooding that 4°C of warming would bring.

At 1°C higher than temperatures are expected to rise with governments’ climate plans today, and 2°C more than the Paris climate accord demands, the agency is saying the UK should be braced for the worst.

Flooding has been repeatedly cited by government agencies, advisers and scientists as the biggest risk to the UK from climate change.

The EA said the government will need to spend at least £1bn every year up to 2065 on flood defences to protect buildings and infrastructure, almost double the £520m it is spending each year between 2016 and 2021.

From ABC (Australia):  “Climate change could slash $571b from property values, study warns.”

Excerpts:

A Climate Council study warns the value of Australian real estate could plunge over the next decade unless future governments have the political will to deal with climate change.

Key points:

• The Climate Council estimates Australian real estate will lose $571b, or almost 9pc, of its value by 2030
• The losses will be concentrated amongst 5-6pc of property owners, with many properties virtually uninsurable
• The report estimates $4 trillion could be wiped off economic growth over the next 80 years if carbon emissions do not fall

The research estimates residential property value losses of $571 billion by 2030 related to increased extreme weather events, inundation of some low-lying coastal properties and higher insurance premiums.

That would wipe approximately 9 per cent of the nation's total residential property value — about as much as has been lost so far in the current property downturn, which is on track to be the worst in Australia's recent history.

However, these losses would not be evenly spread, as an estimated 5-6 per cent of property owners bear the brunt of climate change risks.

As insurance companies reshape their risk strategies to manage extreme weather events, the report predicts, the cost of insuring properties — particularly those on the coast — could become unaffordable for one in 19 owners, who would have to pay annual premiums equivalent to 1 per cent of their property value.

A recent study by the Actuaries Institute — actuaries are the statisticians who calculate risk for insurers — warns that as many as one in 10 properties could become uninsurable by the end of this century due to climate change.

From NBC Connecticut:   “Warming Oceans Changing the Game for Connecticut Fishermen.”

Excerpts:

Our beautiful Connecticut coastline is at the forefront of climate change, warming four times faster than the global ocean. And while the gradually increasing water temperature may not be noticeable to beachgoers, to local fishermen it is changing the game.

“The amount of fish that we saw in the Long Island Sound the fish that are resident in Long Island Sound of the flounders and the different shellfish...those fish began to disappear noticeably disappear,” explained Gary Yerman, a fisherman and founder of New London Seafood Distribution.

Gary has been fishing out of Connecticut for 47 years. While his catches started in Long Island Sound, the evolving ecosystem has made trips longer and farther.

“Our trips were actually daytrips where we leave early in the morning,” Yerman said. “And we’d get back late in the evening and we download our fish and go the next day that turned into overnight fishing where would be gone for two days and then in the mid-80s when all we started seeing all of these changes and fisheries regulations changes and what not we ended up fishing in the ocean, in North Atlantic. We fish room all the way from Virginia to the Canadian line.”

Research is showing that water temperatures closest to the northeast coast are warming faster than 99 percent of global oceans. This supports the shift in the ecosystem that we’re seeing here in the northeast.

From the Wall Street Journal:  “Fed Readying Financial System for Climate-Change Shocks.”

Excerpts:

The Federal Reserve stands ready to respond to climate-change related weather disruptions to the economy and is working to ensure banks’ resilience from unexpected shocks tied to a warming global environment, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress in an April letter.

“Although addressing climate change is a responsibility that Congress has entrusted to other agencies, the Federal Reserve does use its authorities and tools to prepare financial institutions for severe weather events,” Mr. Powell wrote in a letter to Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii), on April 18.

“Over the short term, these events have the potential to inflict serious damage on the lives of individuals and families, devastate local economies (including financial institutions), and even temporarily affect national economic output and employment,” Mr. Powell wrote. “As such, these events may affect economic conditions, which we take into account in our assessment of the outlook for the economy,” the central bank leader said.

From New Food Economy:  “Massive banana disease, worsened by climate change, threatens global crops.”

Excerpts:

You may have heard that virtually all bananas we eat are from the genetically identical Cavendish cultivar. You’ve also likely heard about a big, scary disease called Fusarium Wilt (also known as Panama Disease) that evolved to threaten the previously resistant Cavendish. (Panama Disease basically knocked out the last great banana cultivar, the Gros Michel—French for “Big Mike!”)

But there’s another, less dramatic disease that actually causes larger global yield losses than Fusarium Wilt. It’s called Black Sigatoka or Black Leaf Streak disease, and climate change has increased its risk by 44 percent since the 1970s, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Exeter.

Unlike Fusarium Wilt, Black Sigatoka does not kill off entire banana farms. Rather, it affects the plant’s leaves, which can in turn interrupt the fruit ripening process and depress yield by up to 80 percent, according to the study.

The fungus that causes Black Sigatoka thrives on wet leaves and in temperatures that hover around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers found that climate change has bred precisely these conditions in many banana-growing regions in Latin America. They came to these conclusions by cross-referencing experimental data on Black Sigatoka infections with 60 years of climate data. “I was surprised by the strong climate change signal in the data, for Latin America,” researcher Dan Bebber wrote in an email. “Conditions have definitely improved for the fungus across large areas.”

...

Meanwhile, in business-as-usual news:

From Reuters:  “EIA raises forecast for 2019, 2020 U.S. crude output growth.”

Excerpts:

U.S. crude oil production is expected to rise by 1.49 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2019 to average 12.45 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday, up from its previous forecast for a rise of 1.43 million bpd.

The EIA forecast output in 2020 will rise by 930,000 bpd to 13.38 million bpd, a bigger increase than it previously estimated.

The latest forecast puts the United States on track to reach the 13-million-bpd milestone in the fourth quarter of 2019.

The United States has overtaken Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s biggest oil producer, thanks to a shale revolution.

“According to the May outlook, EIA still expects that the United States will begin exporting more petroleum and other liquids than it imports in the fourth quarter of 2019, continuing for the foreseeable future,” EIA Administrator Linda Capuano said in an email. “The shift toward becoming a net petroleum and other liquids exporter marks a first for the United States since 1948,” Capuano said.

From Rolling Stone:  “Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending.”

Excerpts:

The United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion.

The study defines “subsidy” very broadly, as many economists do. It accounts for the “differences between actual consumer fuel prices and how much consumers would pay if prices fully reflected supply costs plus the taxes needed to reflect environmental costs” and other damage, including premature deaths from air pollution.

These subsidies are largely invisible to the public, and don’t appear in national budgets. But according the the IMF, the world spent $4.7 trillion — or 6.3 percent of global GDP — in 2015 to subsidize fossil fuel use, a figure it estimated rose to $5.2 trillion in 2017. China, which is heavily reliant on coal and has major air-pollution problems, was the largest subsidizer by far, at $1.4 trillion in 2015. But the U.S. ranked second in the world.

The human, environmental and economic toll of these subsidies is shocking to the conscience. The authors found that if fossil fuels had been fairly priced in 2015, global carbon emissions would have been slashed by 28 percent. Deaths from fossil fuel-linked air pollution would have dropped by nearly half.

Oil, gas and coal companies — and their stooges in public office — have long argued that making consumers pay for the full impacts of fossil fuel use would cripple the economy. The IMF experts call bullshit on this idea, revealing that the world would, in fact, be more prosperous. Eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels would have created global “net economic welfare gains” in 2015 of “more than $1.3 trillion, or 1.7 percent of global GDP,” the study found. (These net gains are “calculated as the benefits from reduced environmental damage and higher revenue minus the losses from consumers facing higher energy prices.”)

For the United States, the $649 billion in fossil fuel subsidies exceeded even the extravagant amount of money the country spent on defense. To offer a sense of scale, Pentagon spending accounted for 54 percent of the discretionary federal budget in 2015. In comparison to another important, but less well-funded part of the federal budget, fossil fuel subsidies were nearly 10 times what Congress spent on education. Broken down to an individual level, fossil fuel subsidies cost every man, woman and child in the United States $2,028 that year.

From The Barents Observer:  “Arсtic oil field could be Russia’s biggest discovery in 30 years.”

Excerpts:

A major oil development project could soon unfold in the Yenisey River delta. Near the area where the great Russian river runs into the Kara Sea are vast oil resources stored under the local permafrost.

Russia’s state mineral extraction agency Rosnedra now confirms that the resource estimates of the Paykha fields amount to as much as 1,2 billion tons, newspaper Kommersant reports.

That is one of the biggest estimates ever made for a Russian oil field.

The sudden upgrade of the fields comes as the Russian government is hectically struggling to add shipment volumes to the Northern Sea Route. President Vladimir Putin has requested a boost in Arctic shipping to an annual of 80 million tons by year 2024 and new infrastructure and industry is planned built to meet the ambitious target.

The Payakha fields could become a key part of the picture.

Previously, it was believed that the field by 2024 could provide up to five million tons to the Northern Sea Route. That estimate might now be increased.

Furthermore, the Payakha resources could become a crucial component in the new Arctic oil pipeline planned by Rosneft. The state oil company says it intends to build a 600 km long pipeline from the Vankor fields in western Siberia to the coast of the Taymyr Peninsula. It will have the capacity to carry 25 million tons per year and could potentially include also the Payakha resources.

From Oilprice.com:  “There’s Tremendous Room For Growth In Offshore Oil & Gas.”

Excerpts:

The Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, Texas celebrates its 50th birthday this week, begging the question – what will the next 50 years hold for the offshore market?

Luckily, the data can provide some clues. Rystad Energy has analyzed the historic investments and oilfield service purchases of the world’s 50,000 oil and gas fields (1). While the forecast is uncertain, our analysis paints a fascinating picture of how offshore could contribute to the future of the service industry.

“Total greenfield project sanctioning, summed up to the present day, only accounts for 40% of estimated volumes of offshore projects ever being sanctioned. Likewise, the brownfield market has only begun, with total historical expenditures accounting for only about 20% of estimated brownfield spend over the projects lifetime, leaving 80% of brownfield spending to the future. And the decommissioning market is still in its nascent form,” says Audun Martinsen, head of oilfield services research at Rystad Energy.

Let’s drill down through the data.

We estimate that around 800 billion undiscovered barrels of oil and gas equivalents exist globally, hinting that exploration will still be in business in the next 50 years.

From S&P Global Platts:  “China's Apr crude oil imports rebound to record high 10.68 mil b/d.”

Excerpts:

China's crude oil imports in April hit a record high of 10.68 million b/d, rebounding from 9.3 million b/d in March, preliminary data from the General Administration of Customs showed Wednesday.

On a barrels per day basis, the volume represented a 14.9% month-on-month jump, and rose 10.8% from April 2018.

The previous record high was 10.48 million b/d in November 2018 and the country's crude imports were hovering above 10 million b/d for four months until March, when the volume fell to 9.3 million b/d.

From Rigzone:  “Most US Offshore Resources Not Up for Grabs.”

Excerpts:

Ninety-four percent of the United States’ offshore resources are not available for investment.

That’s what Eric Oswald, vice president for the Americas at ExxonMobil, revealed during a presentation at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, Texas, on Wednesday.

“You guys know how much of the U.S. offshore is available for investment? … Six percent. Ninety-four percent of our nation’s resources offshore … are not available for us to invest in,” Oswald told delegates attending the presentation.

“Who’s losing there? I mean it’s the country, right? It’s a huge amount of potential lost there … That’s an astonishing number,” he added.

From the Wall Street Journal:  “Flying Coast-to-Coast Nonstop Has Rarely Been Cheaper.”

Excerpts:

From Los Angeles, a flight to New York is sometimes cheaper these days than a flight to Chicago, even though it’s 2½ hours longer. From Boston, you can fly 2,611 miles to Los Angeles cheaper than 91 miles to Nantucket.

Flying coast-to-coast nonstop has rarely been cheaper. Airlines are embroiled in a fare war, with the number of seats on transcontinental routes at an all-time high. Between Los Angeles and either New York or Boston, several airlines have $317 round-trip fares on June travel dates. Some tickets drop as low as $295 round trip. That’s in peak summer season.

United, Delta, American, JetBlue and Alaska are battling for market share, mostly from California cities to New York. The fight isn’t just in the coach cabin: They’re offering deep discounts in premium cabins, too.

Up front, four of the five big carriers offer lie-flat beds, and those seats sometimes go for as low as $1,200 round trip. The same seat to London from New York—a route a bit longer than New York-Los Angeles—could cost at least five times as much.

“It’s far more competitive today than it was five years ago and 10 years ago,” says Andrew Nocella, United’s chief commercial officer.

Coast-to-coast routes are some of the most heavily traveled in the world, attracting premium cabins full of investment bankers, media executives and celebrities. These routes are key to winning contracts from big corporations and loyalty from frequent fliers.

In climate-related news:

From CarbonBrief:  “State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019.”

Excerpts:

Global surface temperatures in 2019 are on track to be either the second or third warmest since records began in the mid-1800s, behind only 2016 and possibly 2017.

On top of the long-term  warming trend, temperatures in 2019 have been buoyed by a moderate El Niño event that is likely to persist through the rest of the year.

That’s one of the key findings from Carbon Brief’s latest “state of the climate” report, a quarterly series on global climate data that now includes temperatures, ocean heat, sea levels, greenhouse gas concentrations, climate model performance and polar ice.

Ocean heat content (OHC) set a new record in early 2019, with more warmth in the oceans than at any time since OHC records began in 1940.

The latest data shows that the level of the world’s oceans continued to rise in 2019, with sea levels around 8.5 centimetres (cm) higher than in the early 1990s.

Atmospheric methane concentrations have increased at an accelerating rate, reaching record highs in recent months, though scientists are divided on the cause of this trend.

From Grist:  “Climate change’s deadliest effects are unfolding under the sea.”

Excerpts: 

Think of the dangers climate change poses to animals, and you’ll likely picture skinny polar bears or cliff-diving walruses (collective sob). But it turns out that our overheating planet is actually wreaking the most havoc on creatures out of our sight: marine life.

Sea animals like crabs, lobster, and fish are dying off at twice the rate of land animals, according to a study published in Nature on Wednesday.

The researchers looked at more than 400 cold-blooded animals on land and sea, including lizards, dragonflies, lobsters, and mussels. They found that creatures that people rely on for food (fish, mollusks, shellfish) are among the most vulnerable, especially in the developing world, where many rely on them for a regular protein source.

From the Guardian:  “North American drilling boom threatens big blow to climate efforts, study finds.”

Excerpts:

More than half of the world’s new oil and gas pipelines are located in North America, with a boom in US oil and gas drilling set to deliver a major blow to efforts to slow climate change, a new report has found.

Of a total 302 pipelines in some stage of development around the world, 51% are in North America, according to Global Energy Monitor, which tracks fossil fuel activity. A total of $232.5bn in capital spending has been funneled into these North American pipeline projects, with more than $1tn committed towards all oil and gas infrastructure.

If built, these projects would increase the global number of pipelines by nearly a third and mark out a path of several decades of substantial oil and gas use.

In the US alone, the natural-gas output enabled by the pipelines would result in an additional 559m tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide each year by 2040, above 2017 levels, according to Global Energy Monitor, citing International Energy Agency figures.

From Bloomberg:  “Soaked Midwest Farmers Can Blame Warm Pacific for Juicing Storms.”

Excerpts:

American farmers raising their fists to the sky this year may be better off directing their ire toward the ocean.

Abnormally warm water in the eastern Pacific, along with a weak El Nino along the equator, have pumped a train of storms across the U.S. That has soaked fields that need to be planted with corn, soybeans and cotton and slowed barges full of grain, coal and chemicals struggling against the stiff current of the Mississippi and other Midwest rivers.

“The huge region of above-normal ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific is helping ‘juice’ storms arriving in the U.S.,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. “Another factor contributing to this year’s wet winter was a strong sub-tropical jet stream, probably boosted by a weak El Nino, that funneled copious moisture from the Pacific Ocean into the U.S.’’

While the storms will certainly catch the attention of researchers, climate change is also making things worse because the heat puts more energy into the atmosphere and allows it to hold about 7 percent more moisture than pre-industrial times, Francis said.

“That moisture is a potent source of energy for storms and it also fuels heavier precipitation,’’ she said. “One clear symptom of climate change is a large uptick in heavy precipitation events, especially east of the Rockies.’’

From the Washington Post:  “New EPA document tells communities to brace for climate change impacts.”

Excerpts:

The Environmental Protection Agency published a 150-page document this past week with a straightforward message for coping with the fallout from natural disasters across the country: Start planning for the fact that climate change is going to make these catastrophes worse.

The language, included in guidance on how to address the debris left in the wake of floods, hurricanes and wildfires, is at odds with the rhetoric of the EPA’s own leader, Andrew Wheeler. Just last month, Wheeler said in an interview with CBS that “most of the threats from climate change are 50 to 75 years out.”

Multiple recent studies have identified how climate change is already affecting the United States and the globe. In the western United States, for example, regional temperatures have increased by almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1970s, and snowmelt is occurring a month earlier in areas, extending the fire season by three months and quintupling the number of large fires. Another scientific paper, co-authored by EPA researchers, found that unless the United States slashes carbon emissions, climate change will probably cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars annually by 2100.

...

In business-as-usual news:

From Oilprice.com:  “Rystad: Oil Wells To Be Drilled To The Moon And Back.”

Excerpts:

A new study published today by Rystad Energy forecasts that there will be more than a million kilometers of new oil and gas wells drilled by 2023 globally; the distance of these wells combined is more than the distance to the moon and back.

Behind this push for oil and gas wells is North American shale, which, Rystad says, is expected to account for 600,000 kilometers of the million.

Rystad’s Head of Consulting, Erik Reiso, refers to the drilling onslaught to be seen in North America as “in a league of its own thanks to the shale boom,” with six of ten of the new wells in North America drilled in shale basins—wells that are typical longer than other types of wells.

While the top four offshore operators are expected to account for a quarter of the new offshore wells, the top ten onshore operators will account for only a third of the new wells in the next five years.

Discoveries of conventional resources on a global scale in Q1 2019 hit 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent, Rystad said in a separate statement to Rig Zone on Monday, with February seeing 2.2 billion boe of that. More than 2.4 billion boe of that was discovered by oil majors, with ExxonMobil coming out on top.

“If the rest of 2019 continues at a similar pace, this year will be on track to exceed last year’s discovered resources by 30 percent,” Rystad Upstream Analyst Taiyab Zain Shariff said in a company statement sent to Rig Zone.

From Oilprice.com:  “Booming Oil & Gas Help Texas Exports Grow 3 Times Faster Than U.S. Average.”

Excerpts:

The value of exports of oil and gas from Texas jumped by 45 percent, CNBC reports, citing data from trade research firm WISERTrade.

The value of Texas’ petroleum and coal product exports increased by 5 percent.

The value of Texas exports in January and February this year exceeded US$50.9 billion, a rise of 9 percent on the year—triple the U.S. national export growth of 2.6 percent in the first two months of the year, according to WISERTrade data.

As per WISERTrade, Texas accounted for almost 20 percent of all U.S. exports in the first two months of 2019, compared to 11 percent share for California. Over the past few years, the share of California of national exports has declined, while the share of Texas has grown, thanks to the soaring production and the rise in exports from the U.S. Gulf Coast after the U.S. removed restrictions on crude oil exports in 2015.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the value of the Texas crude oil exports stood at US$38.675 billion in 2018, a surge of 127 percent from 2017.

From Oilprice.com: “Africa’s Largest Oil Producer Aims To Double Production.”

Excerpts:

Africa’s largest oil producer, Nigeria, is dusting off an ambitious plan to double its oil production by 2025, aiming to pump as much as 4 million bpd in six years’ time—a goal that analysts think may be too ambitious for the country to achieve.

OPEC member Nigeria currently pumps around 2.2 million bpd in crude oil and condensate. In March, Nigeria’s crude oil production stood at 1.733 million bpd, up by 11,000 bpd from February, according to OPEC’s secondary sources.

 

In the latest round-up of climate-related news:

From Deutsche Welle: “German forest fire risk spikes amid high temperatures, drought.”

Excerpts:  

Sun and warmth might seem like the perfect weather for Easter. But experts warn that Germany is far too dry, almost everywhere in the country.

Normally, the lucrative cash crop known as rapeseed, or canola, blooms throughout the German state of Thuringia at the end of May. But this year, you would look in vain for the yellow blossoms that are usually turned into one of the western world's main sources of cooking oil.

According to Andre Rathgeber of the Farmers' Association of Thuringia, the prognosis for rapeseed is so bad, most farmers have decided to clear the land for other crops.

This is because the land is far too dry, especially in the key area about 60 cm (23 inches) below the surface, said German Weather Service (DWD) meteorologist Corina Schube.

The risk is especially dire for the country's many pine forests, where extremely thirsty trees drain the soil much more quickly than other types of timber. Unusually massive storms in recent years have added to the problem, as now dead wood and leaves litter the forest floor in much greater amounts — making perfect kindling.

From CNN:  “Greenland is melting even faster than experts thought, study finds.”

Excerpts:

Climate change is eliminating giant chunks of ice from Greenland at such a speed that the melt has already made a significant contribution to sea level rise, according to a new study. With global warming, the island will lose much more, threatening coastal cities around the world.

Forty percent to 50% of the planet's population is in cities that are vulnerable to sea rise, and the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is bad news for places like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Mumbai.

Researchers reconstructed the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet by comparing estimates of the amount of ice that has been discharged into the ocean with the accumulation of snowfall in the drainage basins in the country's interior for the past 46 years. The researchers found that the rate of ice loss has increased sixfold since then -- even faster than scientists thought.

From the Washington Post:  "Vietnam just observed its highest temperature ever recorded: 110 degrees, in April.”

Excerpts:

Vietnam broke its national high temperature record Saturday, the latest in a mounting list of records to fall as the world continues to warm.

The scorcher set the mercury thermometer soaring to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.4 Celsius) in the community of Huong Khe, a rural district in Ha Tinh province. It’s situated in Vietnam’s northern central coast region, about 150 miles south of the capital, Hanoi. Its average temperature is in the 80s at this time of year.

A temperature of 110 degrees is enough to soften your crayons, liquefy chocolate and raise the temperature inside a parked car past 140 degrees.

The record was first reported by Etienne Kapikian, a forecaster with Meteo France, France’s meteorological agency.

Sweltering heat covered the entire Indochina peninsula over the weekend. Danang hit 100 degrees. Hue topped 105.

What makes the heat even more striking is that it’s only April. Most places in Vietnam see their hottest temperatures in June or July.

From the New Scientist:  “The UK has already had more wildfires in 2019 than any year on record.”

Excerpts:

The UK has been hit by nearly a hundred large wildfires in 2019, making it the worst year on record already.

The hot spell in February and the recent Easter heatwave have contributed to a total of 96 major wildfires of 25 hectares or larger, eclipsing the previous high of 79 across the whole of 2018.

Researchers told New Scientist that the figures, collated by the European Forest Fire Information System, were evidence that climate change had already heightened the risk of wildfires in the UK.

More than 100 firefighters battled wildfires over the Easter weekend across Illkley Moor and Marsden Moor in West Yorkshire. Another fire broke out on moorland near Marsden on Tuesday afternoon, requiring ten fire engines to attend.

There were also wildfires in Cornwall, Dorset, Derbyshire, Northern Ireland, the Peak District, Rotherham, Wiltshire and Wales, according to the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC).

Scotland was affected by fires across the Highlands, including a large one that posed a “serious risk” to the Moray windfarm.

The spate of blazes follows a series of major wildfires during the hot, dry weather of 2018, including the Saddleworth Moor fire near Manchester, which burned for five days and made pollution levels spike.

From the Boston Globe:  “Climate change has increased world economic inequality, study says.”

Excerpts:

A new study from Stanford University says global warming has increased the wealth gap between the world’s countries by enriching cooler, wealthier countries and dragging down growth in hotter, poorer countries.

The study found that “most of the poorest countries on Earth are considerably poorer than they would have been without global warming,” climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, lead author of the study, said in a statement from Stanford.

The study, which looked at the period from 1961 to 2010, was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was co-authored by Marshall Burke, a Stanford assistant professor of Earth system science.

From the Washington Post:  “It’s been exceptionally warm in Greenland lately and ice is melting a month early.”

Excerpts:

You might have heard about the exceptional heat this year in the northern hemisphere and around the world. March was just declared the second warmest on record globally.

Records have been shattered in Alaska. Scotland hit 70 degrees in February. Winter warmth has torched the U.K., Netherlands and Sweden as well — coming on the heels of Europe’s warmest year on record. But they’re not alone.

Greenland is baking, too. In fact, its summer melt season has already begun — more than a month ahead of schedule.

Marco Tedesco is a professor in atmospheric sciences at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. He monitors behavior of the cryosphere — the part of earth’s water system that is frozen. He says melting of this extent shouldn’t begin until May. “The first melt event was detected on April 7,” he wrote in email.

...

In business-as-usual news:

From Reuters:  “Exxon Mobil makes new oil discovery offshore Guyana.”

Excerpts:

Exxon Mobil Corp said on Thursday the U.S. oil major along with its partners have made an oil discovery offshore Guyana, which adds to the previously estimated 5.5 billion barrels of oil-equivalent.

The discovery was in the Turbot area of Stabroek Block, which is expected to become a major development hub, Exxon said.

This is the thirteenth discovery on the block, which is part of one of the biggest oil discoveries in the world in the last decade.

From Oilprice.com:  “Kuwait Could Add 400,000 Bpd Heavy Oil Output By January 2020.”

Excerpts:

Kuwait will start this year the first phase of a heavy oil field production, aiming to boost heavy crude output to 430,000 bpd from 60,000 bpd by January, the official Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reports.

Heavy crude oil production from the first phase of an oil field in northern Kuwait, known as “Al-Ritqa” is forecast to hit 11,000 bpd in August this year, KUNA quoted Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) as saying.

The Al-Ritqa oil field project is aimed at boosting heavy crude oil production to 430,000 bpd from 60,000 bpd via multiple production phases by January, Fatama Al-Kanderi, who is responsible for project planning at KOC, said at a recent panel discussion organized by the Kuwaiti oil ministry.

Increasing heavy crude output in northern Kuwait is one of the pillars of the Kuwaiti 2040 oil production strategy, KUNA quoted Al-Kanderi as saying at the panel.

Nearly two years ago, Kuwait announced plans to increase its crude oil production capacity to 4.75 million bpd by 2040, compared to a current capacity of 3.15 million bpd.

From Oilprice.com:  “China’s Newest Oil Hotspot Is In America’s Backyard.”

Excerpts:

Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua  said on Tuesday that an affiliate of Chinese oil major CNPC, Great Wall Drilling, was drilling for oil off Cuba’s coast as part of a joint venture with state-owned oil firm Cuba Petroleum Company (CUPET).  

"Our deposits extend out to sea, so increasingly, wells are longer and to reach them we need cutting-edge technology that we have accessed through the Great Wall Company," Julio Jimenez, CUPET's director of drilling, told Xinhua.

The site of the drilling operation is reportedly near the coastal town of Boca de Camarioca, about 75 miles east of Havana, and is a 1,475-meter-deep well extending some 4,692 meters out to sea. Workers hope to reach 6,950 meters where geological studies show a hydrocarbon deposit is located. Great Wall management claims that several new wells have been drilled more effectively using Chinese drilling technology.

"We have increased the efficiency of drilling, lowered the cost of building the wells, and drilled several highly productive wells, in addition, we have supported the finding of new deposits," said Meng Fanji, Great Wall’s deputy manager.

From S&P Global Platts:  “Record 2018 US natural gas demand largely driven by power demand: FERC.”

Excerpts:

US natural gas and power markets experienced higher average prices in 2018, while gas markets had record high demand and supply, and power generation capacity additions were led by gas-fired and wind-powered resources, federal regulators said Thursday.

"In 2018, natural gas demand reached a record high, driven primarily by increased demand for natural gas-fired generation and LNG export growth," according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's 2018 State of the Markets Report that was presented at the commission's monthly agenda meeting in Washington.

Record-high gas demand was coupled with record-high production, with the largest growth from the Marcellus Shale and the Permian Basin. But demand growth outpaced production growth, which resulted in consistently lower-than-average storage levels that "at times were the lowest in more than a decade," the report said.

From Inside Climate News:  “Canada’s Tar Sands Province Elects a Combative New Leader Promising Oil & Pipeline Revival.”

Excerpts:

The home province of Canada's tar sands elected a combative, conservative leader this week who came out swinging on the side of the country's struggling oil industry. Jason Kenney promised to cancel Alberta's carbon tax, lift a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands and create a "war room" to combat the oil industry's opponents.

In his acceptance speech, Kenney told the crowd: "As long as there is growing global demand for oil and gas, the question is who will provide it.”

From Oilprice.com:  “U.S. Greenlights Two Major LNG Export Projects.”

Excerpts:

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved on Thursday two liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects that will add to the growing U.S. export capacity of the super-chilled fuel.

FERC approved the project for the Driftwood LNG export terminal and associated pipeline on the west bank of the Calcasieu River, south of Lake Charles, Louisiana, proposed by Tellurian, and the Port Arthur LNG facility in Texas planned by Sempra Energy.   

“We look forward to beginning construction and delivering first LNG in 2023,” Tellurian’s President and CEO Meg Gentle said today, commenting on the Driftwood LNG approval.

Tellurian’s timeline for the Driftwood LNG project includes final investment decision this year, the start of construction this year, and start of operations in 2023.  

Another 10 proposed LNG export projects are pending FERC approval at the time being, the commission said today.

In climate-related news from the past few days:

From Reuters: “Climate change targets are slipping out of reach.”

Excerpts:

For all the commentary around a transition to a clean energy system, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is still continuing to rise rapidly and shows no sign of slowing down.

Climate change targets are slipping out of reach as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to march higher, leaving policymakers confronting uncomfortable choices.

If the concentration continues to rise, policymakers will have to plan for a world with significantly higher temperatures, or rely on untested strategies to remove CO2 from the air later in the century.

Countries that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have committed themselves to limit the increase in global average temperatures above pre-industrial levels.

Under the UNFCCC Paris Agreement, concluded in 2015, signatories are committed to holding the global average temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Science advisers on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have estimated the limits imply an atmospheric CO2 concentration of no more than 450 parts per million (for 2 degrees) or 430 ppm (for 1.5 degrees).

On current trends, these limits will be reached sometime between the late 2020s and the late 2030s, which leaves less than 10 or 20 years to make profound changes to the energy system and the global economy.

But energy systems are notorious for changing slowly, because they are embodied in long-lived capital investments such as domestic appliances, industrial machinery, power plants, pipelines and transmission systems.

Given the projected life of current equipment and the slow pace of replacement, it is becoming increasingly hard to envisage a scenario in which atmospheric CO2 can be held below 430-450 ppm in the next two decades.

From Yale Environment 360:  “Melting Permafrost Releasing High Levels of Nitrous Oxide, A Potent Greenhouse Gas.”

Excerpts:

Thawing permafrost in the Arctic may be releasing 12 times as much nitrous oxide as previously thought, according to a new study published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, can remain in the atmosphere for up to 114 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The research, led by scientists at Harvard University, involved measuring greenhouse gas levels over 120 square miles of melting permafrost in the North Slope of Alaska. The data, collected using a small plane, showed that the nitrous oxide emitted over the course of just one month of sampling in 2013 was equal to what was thought to be the region’s yearly emissions. The findings back up similar results from other recent studies that used core samples from Arctic peat to measure rising nitrous oxide emissions.

Nitrous oxide emissions have been rising globally in recent decades thanks to the expansion of industry and intense fertilizer use. But scientists had long thought that emissions of the gas from melting permafrost were “negligible,” as the EPA described it in a 2010 report.

“Much smaller increases in nitrous oxide would entail the same kind of climate change that a large plume of CO2 would cause,” Jordan Wilkerson, an atmospheric chemistry graduate student at Harvard and lead author of the new study, said in a statement.

Wilkerson and his colleagues warned that their results provide just a snapshot of what is happening in the Arctic, given that the region contains 5.6 million square miles of permafrost. They said follow up studies are needed to more thoroughly examine the potent emissions.

“We don’t know how much more [nitrous oxide] is going to increase,” Wilkerson said, “and we didn’t know it was significant at all until this study came out.”

From Inside Climate News:  “2018's Hemispheric Heat Wave Wasn't Possible Without Climate Change, Scientists Say.”

Excerpts:

Subhead:  Heat waves are covering wider areas, and people are suffering the consequences. With 2°C of warming, most summers will look like 2018, scientists say.

A study presented this week at a scientific conference in Vienna now shows that last summer's extreme heat was an "unprecedented" hemispheric event that would not have happened without heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution, the researchers said, and that it lasted longer and was more widespread across the Northern Hemisphere than previously realized.

All summers will be like last year if the world warms 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, said the study's lead author Martha Vogel, an extreme-temperature researcher with ETH Zürich Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science. Even with 1.5 degrees Celsius warming, 25 percent of the Northern Hemisphere will experience a summer as hot as the summer of 2018 two out of every three years, she said.

Research has shown that increasing global temperatures are causing more frequent, prolonged heat waves. But this study maps the spreading geographical extent of extreme heat events and shows last summer's heat as a hemispheric event.

From the AP:  “California races to deter disaster as towns face fire risk.”

Excerpts:

Impoverished towns in the shadow of Mount Shasta. Rustic Gold Rush cities in the Sierra Nevada foothills. High-dollar resort communities on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Ritzy Los Angeles County suburbs.

They all could be the next Paradise.

A McClatchy analysis reveals more than 350,000 Californians live in towns and cities that exist almost entirely within “very high fire hazard severity zones” — Cal Fire’s designation for places highly vulnerable to devastating wildfires. These designations have proven eerily predictive about some of the state’s most destructive wildfires in recent years, including the Camp Fire, the worst in state history.

Nearly all of Paradise is colored in bright red on Cal Fire’s map — practically the entire town was at severe risk before the Camp Fire raged through last November, burning the majority of homes in its path and killing 85 people.

Malibu, where the Woolsey Fire burned more than 400 homes last year, also falls within very high hazard zones. As does the small Lake County town of Cobb, much of which was destroyed by the Valley Fire in 2015.

“There’s a lot of Paradises out there,” said Max Moritz, a fire specialist at UC Santa Barbara.

From CBC:  “Arctic is warmest it's been in 10,000 years, study suggests.”

Excerpts:

New research suggests Canada's Arctic is the warmest it has been in 10,000 years — and the temperatures are still climbing.

The study was recently published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Researchers studied permafrost samples in the Yukon near the Dempster Highway and determined that temperatures in the Arctic today are almost 2 C warmer than at any time in the past 10,000 years.

The temperatures recorded today are even higher than the previous highs believed to have occurred during the early Holocene period, about 9,900 and 6,400 years ago, when Earth's axis was tilted more strongly toward the sun, the report states.

Duane Froese, a professor at the University of Alberta and a co-author of the study, suggests that time period may actually be much longer.

"I would guess we're getting back over 100,000 years since we've seen temperatures at least this warm," he said.

From the New York Times:  “Central American Farmers Head to the U.S., Fleeing Climate Change.”

Excerpts:

The farmer stood in his patch of forlorn coffee plants, their leaves sick and wilted, the next harvest in doubt.

Last year, two of his brothers and a sister, desperate to find a better way to survive, abandoned their small coffee farms in this mountainous part of Honduras and migrated north, eventually sneaking into the United States.

Then in February, the farmer’s 16-year-old son also headed north, ignoring the family’s pleas to stay.

The challenges of agricultural life in Honduras have always been mighty, from poverty and a neglectful government to the swings of international commodity prices.

But farmers, agricultural scientists and industry officials say a new threat has been ruining harvests, upending lives and adding to the surge of families migrating to the United States: climate change.

And their worries are increasingly shared by climate scientists as well.

Gradually rising temperatures, more extreme weather events and increasingly unpredictable patterns — like rain not falling when it should, or pouring when it shouldn’t — have disrupted growing cycles and promoted the relentless spread of pests.

From the Guardian:  “Europe at risk from spread of tropical insect-borne diseases.”

Excerpts:

Insect-borne diseases such as dengue fever, leishmaniasis and encephalitis are on the rise and are now threatening to spread into many areas of Europe, scientists have warned.

Outbreaks of these illnesses are increasing because of climate change and the expansion of international travel and trade, the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases was told in Amsterdam on Saturday.

Even previously unaffected areas in higher latitudes and altitudes, including some parts of northern Europe, are at risk of outbreaks unless action is taken to improve surveillance and data sharing, the researchers said.

From Reuters:  “Record-early Alaska river thaw follows high winter temperatures.”

Excerpts:

Key Alaska rivers that are usually frozen at this time of year are now free-flowing, with record-early thaws following record-high winter and spring temperatures.

In the interior Alaska city of Nenana, ice on the Tanana River gave way just after midnight on Sunday. It was by far the earliest breakup in the 102-year history of the Nenana Ice Classic, an iconic Alaska betting pool in which participants predict when thaw will sink a wooden tripod placed on the ice.

The previous earliest breakup of the Tanana, a tributary of the Yukon River, was April 20, a mark reached in 1998 and 1940.

Another record-early thaw happened on Friday on the Kuskokwim River at the southwestern city of Bethel. The previous earliest ice-breakup date for the Kuskokwim Ice Classic was also April 20, in 2016. The Friday ice breakup was the earliest for that part of the Kuskokwim in 92 years of records kept by the National Weather Service.

At both rivers, records show that breakup has been happening, on average, about a week earlier since the 1960s, not counting this year’s record thaws.

This year’s breakups followed an extraordinarily warm Alaska winter with near-record-low ice in the Bering Sea and a record-hot March statewide.

...

Meanwhile, in business-as-usual news:

From Oilprice.com:  “U.S. Energy Consumption Hits All-Time Record.”

Excerpts:

Energy consumption in the United States reached an all-time high last year, data from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory showed.

According to the laboratory, the United States consumed 101.2 quadrillion British thermal units of energy, or quads, last year, up on the previous record of 101 quads, reached in 2007. Yet the 2018 figure also represents the highest annual increase since 2010, at 3.6 percent.

The figures reflect a similar surge in energy demand globally. In its latest Global Energy  & CO2 Report, the International Energy Agency said last year saw a 2.3-percent jump on the year, which was twice as high as the average demand increase rate for the last decade. This increase was the result of a growing global economy, the authority said, as well as greater heating and cooling needs in some parts of the world.

From Reuters:  “U.S. shale output forecast to hit record 8.46 million bpd in May: EIA.”

Excerpts:

U.S. crude oil output from seven major shale formations is expected to rise by about 80,000 barrels per day (bpd) in May to a record 8.46 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its monthly drilling productivity report on Monday.

The largest change is forecast in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, where output is expected to climb by 42,000 bpd to a fresh peak of about 4.14 million bpd in May.

In North Dakota’s Bakken region, shale production is estimated to rise by about 11,000 bpd to about 1.39 million bpd, easing from a record 1.41 million bpd hit in January. In the Eagle Ford region, output is expected to edge higher by 7,000 bpd to about 1.43 million bpd, which would be the highest monthly output since January 2016.

From Reuters:  “Exxon Mobil wins three exploration blocks offshore Argentina.”

Excerpts:

U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil Corp said on Tuesday its unit and an affiliate of Qatar Petroleum had won three exploration blocks offshore Argentina.

The three blocks will add about 2.6 million net acres to Exxon’s existing holdings in Argentina, the company said. The blocks are located in the Malvinas basin, about 200 miles (320 kms) offshore Tierra del Fuego.

Exxon’s existing Argentina holdings include 315,000 net acres spread over seven blocks in the onshore Neuquén Basin of the Vaca Muerta unconventional oilfield and a business support center in Buenos Aires.

ExxonMobil will have a 70 percent stake, while Qatar Petroleum’s affiliate will hold the rest.

The Argentine government issued a statement on Tuesday saying it received offers for the exploration of three offshore oil and gas basins from 13 companies for a total of $995 million. The country’s energy secretariat was expected to confirm which companies were awarded which areas next month.

From Oilprice.com: “Red Hot Permian Set To Jolt U.S. Shale Output To New Record.”

Excerpts:

Crude oil production from the seven key shale regions in the United States is expected to increase by 80,000 bpd from April to hit a record 8.46 million bpd in May, with the Permian accounting for half of the monthly growth, the EIA said in its latest Drilling Productivity Report.

Crude oil production from the seven major shale producing regions is set to increase from 8.38 million bpd this month to 8.46 million bpd next month. The fastest-growing region, the Permian, is expected to see its crude oil production jump by 42,000 bpd from April to hit a record high of 4.136 million bpd in May, according to the EIA estimates—a figure that would place the US hotspot as OPEC’s third-largest producer behind only Saudi Arabia (9.79 bpd) and Iraq (4.52 bpd).

From Oilprice.com:  “U.S. Doubles Oil Exports In 2018.”

Excerpts:

The United States nearly doubled its oil exports in 2018, the Energy Information Administration reporting on Monday, from 1.2 million barrels per day in 2017.

The 2.0 million barrels of oil per day exported in 2018 was in line with increased oil production, which averaged 10.9 million barrels per day last year, and was made possible by changes to the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) which allowed it to load VLCCs.

The changes to LOOP and to the sheer volume of exports were not the only changes for the US crude oil industry. The destination of this oil shifted in 2018 as well, and even shifted within the year as the trade row between China and the United States took hold.

Overall, Canada remained the largest buyer of US oil in 2018, at 19% of all oil exports, according to EIA data. During the first half of 2018, the largest buyer of US crude oil was China, averaging 376,000 barrels per day. Due to the trade row, however, US oil exports to China fell to an average of just 83,000 barrels per day in the second half, after seeing zero exports to China in the months of August, September, and October.

From the Indy Star:  “Out-of-state coal interests are funding a battle to keep Indiana coal plants from closing.”

Excerpts:

Across the nation, coal-fired power plants are rapidly being retired — a cost-conscious, clean-energy trend that has spurred some of the world's largest coal interests to fund an aggressive effort to keep them running, including here in Indiana.

The Energy Policy Network is leading that effort. The nonprofit bills itself as a national advocacy organization working "to develop energy and environmental policies that balance environmental values, business needs and consumer interests.”

Presentations made by the nonprofit's executive director, however, make its mission clear: keep companies purchasing Wyoming coal. The organization does so by intervening in utility proceedings on the state level, where they employ coal lobbyists to argue against the closure of coal plants. 

Now, EPN has set its eyes on Indiana as its next "battleground." It plans to spend $175,000 to fight NIPSCO's applications to purchase wind power to replace its coal-powered electricity, according to an email obtained by a public records request and provided to IndyStar.

From Reuters:  “U.S. EPA chief defends big energy projects, says climate not top priority.”

Excerpts:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a proposal to speed state-level permitting decisions for energy infrastructure projects soon, the agency’s chief told Reuters on Thursday, blasting states that have blocked coal terminals and gas pipelines on environmental grounds.

President Donald Trump is seeking to boost domestic fossil fuels production over the objections of Democrats and environmentalists concerned about pollution and climate change. On Wednesday he issued a pair of executive orders targeting the power of states to delay energy projects.

“We started working on it in advance, so we hope to have something out soon,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview. He was unable to provide a precise timeline.

Wheeler said he believes climate change is a problem, but that it had been overblown by former President Barack Obama’s administration - at the expense of other bigger issues like water quality.

“Yes, climate is an issue and we are working to address it, but I think water is a bigger issue,” he said.

Wheeler dismissed the findings of a report released earlier this week by EPA scientists in the journal Nature Climate Change that detailed the scale and urgency of climate change.

He said while he encouraged EPA scientists to carry out and publish research, he stressed the recent paper “did not reflect EPA policy.”

From Reuters:  “Under Trump, U.S. drilling permits on federal lands soar.”

Excerpts:

The United States approved nearly 40 percent more oil and gas drilling permits on public lands in 2018 than it did the previous year thanks to an automated online system introduced in the waning days of the Obama administration, helping reduce a big backlog of applications.

President Donald Trump has made it a priority to speed permitting and reduce regulation as a way to boost production of oil, gas and coal from public lands - an agenda that has pleased the energy and mining industries but outraged environmentalists concerned about pollution and climate change.

The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management approved 3,991 drilling permits in fiscal 2018, up from 2,887 in 2017, the agency said, an increase of 38 percent. The average time to process an application to drill with BLM was cut nearly in half to 63 days from 120 days in 2017.

In climate-related news:

From Inside Climate News:  “Global Warming Is Pushing Arctic Toward ‘Unprecedented State,’ Research Shows.”

Excerpts:

Global warming is transforming the Arctic, and the changes have rippled so widely that the entire biophysical system is shifting toward an "unprecedented state," an international team of researchers concludes in a new analysis of nearly 50 years of temperature readings and changes across the ecosystems.

Arctic forests are turning into bogs as permafrost melts beneath their roots. The icy surface that reflects the sun's radiation back into space is darkening and sea ice cover is declining. 

Warmth and moisture trapped by greenhouse gases are pumping up the water cycle, swelling rivers that carry more sediment and nutrients to the sea, which can change ocean chemistry and affect the coastal marine food chain. And those are just a few of the changes. 

The researchers describe how warming in the Arctic, which is heating up 2.4 times faster than the Northern Hemisphere average, is triggering a cascade of changes in everything from when plants flower to where fish and other animal populations can be found.

Together, the changes documented in the study suggest the effects on the region are more profound than previously understood.

From the AP:  “Global warming is shrinking glaciers faster than thought.”

Excerpts:

Earth’s glaciers are melting much faster than scientists thought. A new study shows they are losing 369 billion tons of snow and ice each year, more than half of that in North America.

The most comprehensive measurement of glaciers worldwide found that thousands of inland masses of snow compressed into ice are shrinking 18 percent faster than an international panel of scientists calculated in 2013.

The world’s glaciers are shrinking five times faster now than they were in the 1960s. Their melt is accelerating due to global warming, and adding more water to already rising seas, the study found.

“Over 30 years suddenly almost all regions started losing mass at the same time,” said lead author Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich. “That’s clearly climate change if you look at the global picture.”

From Bloomberg:  “New Satellite Photos Show Climate Change Is Sweeping Europe.”

Excerpts:

Subhead:  Swedish forest fires, retreating glaciers and arid cropland attest to a new reality.

Climate change is picking up pace in Europe, thrusting farmers and power generators onto the front lines of a battle with nature that threatens to upend the lives of the half billion people who occupy the world’s biggest trading bloc.

Last year was the third hottest on record and underlines “the clear warming trend” experienced in the last four decades, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, which operates a network of satellites for the European Union that collects weather, soil, air and water data.

Copernicus lenses captured dozens of images illustrating how climate change is unfolding on Europe’s landscape. The images were made available to coincide with a gathering of 15,000 scientists in Vienna at an annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union, which assesses the issue each year.

From the Guardian:  “Two-thirds of glacier ice in the Alps 'will melt by 2100’.”

Excerpts:

Subhead:  If emissions continue to rise at current rate, ice will have all but disappeared from Europe’s Alpine valleys by end of century.

Two-thirds of the ice in the glaciers of the Alps is doomed to melt by the end of the century as climate change forces up temperatures, a study has found.

Half of the ice in the mountain chain’s 4,000 glaciers will be gone by 2050 due to global warming already baked in by past emissions, the research shows. After that, even if carbon emissions have plummeted to zero, two-thirds of the ice will still have melted by 2100.

If emissions continue to rise at the current rate, the ice tongues will have all but disappeared from Alpine valleys by the end of the century. The researchers said the loss of the glaciers would have a big impact on water availability for farming and hydroelectricity, especially during droughts, and affect nature and tourism.

“Glaciers in the European Alps and their recent evolution are some of the clearest indicators of the ongoing changes in climate,” said Daniel Farinotti, a glaciologist at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and one of the research team.

From CNBC:  “Climate change will crush real estate values for investors who don’t prepare, new report says.”

Excerpts:

For any investor, measuring opportunity against risk is critical. And for real estate investors in particular, risk is rising exponentially in the age of climate change.

To that end, big real estate firms are pouring significant resources into calculating climate risk and its likely effect on property portfolios — everything from increasingly extreme weather to a rise in sea levels.

“This process will be painful for investors who are caught off guard, but those who are prepared have the potential to outperform,” a new report from the Urban Land Institute said.

Damage to U.S. real estate from extreme storms hit a record high in 2017. Natural disasters, including floods, mudslides and wildfires, cost more than $300 billion in damage, the bulk of it to residential and commercial real estate.

From Bloomberg:  “Investors Should Worry If Climate Goals Are Missed, Report Warns.”

Excerpts:

Investors be warned: If the planet heats up by more than two degrees, it’s going to get a lot harder to make money.

That’s the conclusion of investment advisory firm Mercer LLC, which modeled the financial fallout from two, three and four degrees Celsius of global warming through 2100 in a report released Monday.

The report marks one of the first attempts to model sector-specific investment risks from climate change over decades. If warming is limited to no more than two degrees, coal and other fossil fuels lose the most in value, because countries have shifted toward cleaner energy. If temperatures rise further, sectors with the biggest losses will include industrials and agriculture.

“Asset owners should consider climate change at every stage of the investment process, from investment beliefs, policy and process to portfolio construction decisions,” said Deb Clarke, global head of investment research for Mercer, which is owned by Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc.

...

In business-related news:

From Oilprice.com:  “Oil & Gas Discoveries On The Rise As Oil Majors Dive In.”

Excerpts:

Oil and gas exploration is off to a flying start in 2019, with majors taking a bigger bite of the conventional resources discovered in the first quarter, according to Rystad Energy.

Global discoveries of conventional resources in the first quarter reached a robust 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe). Most of the gains were recorded in February, posting 2.2 billion barrels of discovered resources – the best monthly tally on record since August 2015.

“If the rest of 2019 continues at a similar pace, this year will be on track to exceed last year’s discovered resources by 30%,” says Taiyab Zain Shariff, Upstream Analyst at Rystad Energy.

From a global perspective, the push for substantial new discoveries shows no signs of slowing down, with another 35 high impact exploration wells expected to be drilled this year, both onshore and offshore. Three such highly prospective wells are already underway: the Shell-operated Peroba well, off Brazil, with pre-drill prospective resource estimates of 5.3 billion boe; Eni’s Kekra well in Pakistani waters, with pre-drill prospective resource estimates of 1.5 billion boe; and the Total-operated Etzil well off Mexico, with pre-drill prospective resource estimates of 2.7 billion boe.

“If these wells prove successful, 2019’s interim discovered resources will be the largest since the downturn in 2014,” Shariff remarked.

From the Washington Post:  “Trump to issue executive orders seeking to speed up oil and gas projects.”

Excerpts:

President Trump is planning to issue a pair of executive orders on Wednesday to “help American energy companies avoid unnecessary red tape” by making it easier for firms to build oil and gas pipelines and harder for state agencies to intervene, according to the White House.

The executive action seeks to rein in states’ power by changing the implementation instructions, known as guidance, that are issued by federal agencies , according to a former Trump administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his relationships.

The order would also alter Transportation Department rules to allow the shipment of liquefied natural gas by rail and tanker truck, he said. And it would seek to limit shareholder ballot initiatives designed to alter companies’ policies on environmental and social issues. Trump will ask the Labor Department to examine whether retirement funds that pursue those investment strategies are meeting their responsibility to maximize returns.

A second order, focused on cross-border energy projects, would clarify that the president is solely responsible for approving or denying pipelines and other infrastructure that cross international boundaries. The secretary of state has previously played that role.

From Rigzone:  “EOR Push May Make the Permian Even Bigger.”

Excerpts:

Standing at the center of the prolific Permian Basin, Scott Hodges explains how the future of the world’s largest oil field may very well depend on what he calls jokingly calls the "really smart guys.”

Hodges, a 57-year-old manager with Occidental Petroleum Corp., runs a cluster of installations at the Hobbs oil field, where dozens of wells don’t pump a single barrel of oil but instead do the opposite: push stuff -- lots of it -- into the ground.

Occidental runs the operation in southeast New Mexico as part of its so-called enhanced-oil-recovery program, injecting carbon dioxide and water underground to force out crude that might otherwise languish in the reservoir. EOR already works in conventional oil fields -- now the company is trying to make it work commercially in shale rock.

If Occidental and its rivals’ experiments with similar techniques are successful -- a big if, in the view of many others -- it could further transform the Permian, which is already the world’s largest oil patch. To do that, knowing how the oil, gas, CO2 and water work together thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface is crucial.

From Oilprice.com:  “Energy Minister: Saudi Arabia Could Be Natural Gas Exporter In Five Years.”

Excerpts:

Saudi Arabia could begin natural gas exports in five-six years as it has already begun talks with neighboring Gulf Arab states to build natural gas pipelines, S&P Global Platts quoted Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih as saying at the Gulf Intelligence energy forum in Riyadh on Monday.

The Saudis will soon launch feasibility studies for a pipeline out of the Kingdom to some of its allies in the Persian Gulf, according to the Saudi minister.  

Large volumes of natural gas have been found in the Red Sea, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted al-Falih as saying last month.

In January this year, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive Amin Nasser told Reuters in an interview that the oil firm was looking to spend billions of U.S. dollars on natural gas acquisitions in the United States as part of Aramco’s strategy to bolster its gas business and become a global natural gas player. 

At the end of February, Nasser said that Saudi Arabia aims to export as much as 3 billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2030 as part of its goal to boost the international footprint of its natural gas business.

In November last year, Nasser said that Saudi Aramco, already a top global oil producer but not as strong in gas production, will boost efforts to grow its natural gas output, from both conventional and unconventional reserves.

Saudi Aramco’s gas development program is expected to attract as much as US$150 billion in investments over the next decade, Nasser said. Natural gas production is expected to jump to 23 billion standard cubic feet a day from the current 14 billion cubic feet a day, Aramco’s top executive said in Dubai a few months ago.

Here is today’s climate-related news:

From USA Today: “Earth's carbon dioxide levels highest in 3 million years, study says.”

Excerpts:

Carbon dioxide – the gas scientists say is most responsible for global warming – has reached levels in our atmosphere not seen in 3 million years, scientists announced this week in a new study. 

At that time, sea levels were as much as 65 feet higher than they are now, Greenland was mostly green and Antarctica had trees.

“It seems we’re now pushing our home planet beyond any climatic conditions experienced during the entire current geological period, the Quaternary,” said study lead author Matteo Willeit of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “A period that started almost 3 million years ago and saw human civilization beginning only 11,000 years ago. So, the modern climate change we see is big, really big; even by standards of Earth history.”

From the BBC:  “Climate change: Warning from 'Antarctica's last forests’.”

Excerpts:

Scramble across exposed rocks in the middle of Antarctica and it's possible to find the mummified twigs of shrubs that grew on the continent some three to five million years ago.

This plant material isn't much to look at, but scientists say it should serve as a warning to the world about where climate change could take us if carbon emissions go unchecked.

The time period is an epoch geologists call the Pliocene, 2.6-5.3 million years ago.

It was marked by temperatures that were significantly warmer than today, perhaps by 2-3 degrees globally. These were conditions that permitted plant growth even in the middle of the White Continent.

Higher, too, were sea-levels. It's uncertain by how much, but possibly in the region of 10-20m above the modern ocean surface.

What's really significant, though, is that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was very similar to what it is today - at around 400 CO2 molecules for every million molecules of air. Indeed, the Pliocene was the last time in Earth history that the air carried this same concentration of the greenhouse gas.

And it tells you where we're heading if we don't get serious about addressing the climate problem, cautions Prof Martin Siegert from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

The Guardian's take on that news:  “Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole.”

Excerpts:

Subhead:  "Pliocene beech fossils in Antarctica when CO2 was at similar level to today point to planet’s future.."

Trees growing near the South Pole, sea levels 20 metres higher than now, and global temperatures 3C-4C warmer. That is the world scientists are uncovering as they look back in time to when the planet last had as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it does today.

Using sedimentary records and plant fossils, researchers have found that temperatures near the South Pole were about 20C higher than now in the Pliocene epoch, from 5.3m to 2.6m years ago.

Many scientists use sophisticated computer models to predict the impacts of human-caused climate change, but looking back in time for real-world examples can give new insights.

The Pliocene was a “proper analogy” and offered important lessons about the road ahead, said Martin Siegert, a geophysicist and climate-change scientist at Imperial College London. “The headline news is the temperatures are 3-4C higher and sea levels are 15-20 metres higher than they are today. The indication is that there is no Greenland ice sheet any more, no West Antarctic ice sheet and big chunks of East Antarctic [ice sheet] taken,” he said.

From Minnesota Public Radio:  “Study: Great Lakes hit hardest by climate change in U.S.”

Excerpts (intro to audio):

The warming climate has already affected your favorite great lake.

A new study finds climate change in the Great Lakes region is happening faster than the rest of the U.S.

Lucinda Johnson, a study co-author and associate director at the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, joined Climate Cast to discuss.

...

Meanwhile, in the world of business:

From Oilprice.com:  “Russia Seeks New Arctic Oil Frontier.”

Excerpts:

Rosneft, Russia’s state-controlled oil company and the largest oil producer in the country, plans to develop an Arctic cluster of oil fields over the next five years.

These plans by Rosneft—led by a close ally of Vladimir Putin’s, Igor Sechin—fit the Russian President’s ambition to develop Arctic oil and gas resources and adjacent regions, as well as the so-called Northern Sea Route—a shipping lane through Russian Arctic waters stretching from Europe to the Far East.

Russia’s Arctic oil development has stalled in recent years due to the western sanctions that have had international majors, including ExxonMobil, pull out of some exploration projects in Russia.

Now Rosneft is pledging increased efforts to fulfill Putin’s Arctic development ambitions, aiming to have first oil produced in the so-called Arctic cluster of fields by 2024 and to boost cargo traffic on the Northern Sea Route.

For Rosneft, the Northern Sea Route, if connected to inland oil fields in Russia’s north, could provide another export avenue for its oil, especially to the markets in Asia.

From RigZone:  “Key Buyers Push US Oil Exports to Record Highs.”

Constantly evolving hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies have opened up more U.S. petroleum resources than ever imagined. Crude production has boomed 140 percent over the past decade to 12.1 million barrels per day (bpd). During the course of 2018, for instance, output rose nearly 25 percent, even more impressive since domestic prices (WTI) had fallen 23 percent to $46 per barrel by the end of December. This flood of supply is just one of a number of key factors that have allowed U.S. oil exports to rapidly grow.

The U.S. oil business was gifted its historic lift at the end of 2015, when a law change allowed crude sales to go beyond neighbor Canada. In addition, U.S. shale oil is a lighter, sweeter grade, and the country’s refining system is mostly configured to process heavier, sour kinds that have historically been imported from Mexico, Canada, and Venezuela. In other words, combined with very high but flat domestic demand, the U.S. has had a surplus of oil to ship abroad.

From OilPrice.com:  “Tanzania To Begin Talks With Majors On $30B Deepwater LNG Project.”

Excerpts:

Tanzania’s government will start this month talks with major international firms to define the commercial terms for a deepwater liquefied natural gas (LNG) project off the coast of the east African country expected to be worth US$30 billion.

Negotiations are set to begin this month and to conclude by September, The East African news outlet quoted Tanzania’s Energy Ministry as saying.

Major international companies have been exploring for gas offshore Tanzania and have found sufficient quantities for a potential LNG plant.

In climate-related news:

From CBC:  “Canada warming at twice the global rate, leaked report finds.”

Excerpts:

Canada is, on average, experiencing warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, with Northern Canada heating up at almost three times the global average, according to a new government report.

The study — Canada's Changing Climate Report (CCCR) — was commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada. It says that since 1948, Canada's annual average temperature over land has warmed 1.7 C, with higher rates seen in the North, the Prairies and northern British Columbia.

In Northern Canada, the annual average temperature has increased by 2.3 C.

According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), since 1948, global average temperatures have increased by about 0.8 C.

Along with these temperature increases, the CCCR says Canada is experiencing increases in precipitation (particularly in winter), "extreme fire weather" and water supply shortages in summer, and a heightened risk of coastal flooding.

From The Local:  “Sweden’s temperature is rising more than twice as fast as the global average.”

Excerpts:

The average temperature in Sweden is rising more than twice as fast as the global average temperature, according to a new report by the country's national weather agency SMHI.

Between 1991 and 2018, Sweden's annual average temperature rose by 1.7C compared to average temperatures in pre-industrial times, which SMHI calculated using data from the years 1861-1890. In the same period the global average temperature only rose by 0.73C.

"It is in line with what we can expect based on existing climate scenarios and calculations of how global warming might affect us, something that is already happening today," Erik Kjellström, professor of climatology for SMHI, said in a statement presenting the findings.

"The temperature is rising faster in the Arctic, especially during the winter, and this can also be seen here in Sweden. In northern Sweden, the largest increase can be seen in winter.”

But as last summer's heatwave, drought and wildfires showed, the effects of a warmer Sweden will not only be felt during the winter. A governmental climate study from 2017 warned that summer temperatures in northern Sweden could increase by as much as 7C by 2080.

...

In business-related news:

From Oilprice.com:  “France’s Total Boosts Angola Oil Production With New Start-Up.”

Excerpts:

French supermajor Total said on Tuesday that it had started up production at the Kaombo Sul oil development, adding 115,000 bpd to bring Total’s overall production capacity to 230,000 bpd, equivalent to 15 percent of Angola’s output.

Also from OilPrice.com:  “Qatar Petroleum: Global LNG Demand To Grow 2% A Year.”

Excerpts:

Worldwide demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) will increase at a rate of 2 percent every year in the next fifteen years, the chief executive of one of the world’s top LNG providers, Qatar Petroleum, said on Tuesday.

“China, along with India, will continue to lead Asia as the main drivers behind the growth of global LNG demand,” Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs and President and CEO of Qatar Petroleum, said at the LNG2019 conference in Shanghai.

From All Africa:  “South Africa's 'Game-Changing' Oil Find.”

Excerpts:

In early-February, South Africa discovered huge reserves of oil and gas off its shores. President Cyril Ramaphosa, along with many experts, described the find as a "game-changer" and promised legislation to ensure the "world class" discovery is properly regulated to ensure it benefits all concerned.