Natural gas has no climate benefit and may make things worse | Faster

In fact, a shocking new study concludes that just the methane emissions escaping from New Mexico’s gas and oil industry are “equivalent to the climate impact of approximately 12 coal-fired power plants.” If the goal is to avoid catastrophic levels of warming, a recent report by U.K. climate researchers finds “categorically no role” to play for new natural gas production.

Back in 2014, a comprehensive Stanford study published in Science concluded “A review of more than 200 earlier studies confirms that U.S. emissions of methane are considerably higher than official estimates. Leaks from the nation’s natural gas system are an important part of the problem.”  More

Medibank to dump holdings in fossil fuels over climate change health fears | SMH

Climate action group 350.org Australia said the Medibank decision was critical in the absence of strong federal government action on the issue.

"At a time when we are seeing no federal leadership on climate change, Medibank's decision to drop polluting, high-carbon investments, and instead invest in low carbon alternatives, shows that the health sector is stepping up to fill the void," chief executive Blair Palese said.

"By citing the health impacts of climate change as the driving reason for its decision, Medibank has shown that moving from fossil fuels not only can be done, but must be done to protect customers, our environment and to mitigate risk."

HSBC Commits $100 Billion to Combat Climate Change | The Independent

South Australia experiences dramatic fall in energy costs after gas deal | The Guardian

15,000 Scientists Who Issued the Bleak 'Second Notice' to Humanity Say These 9 Steps May Save Us | Fortune

“By failing to adequately limit population growth, reassess the role of an economy rooted in growth, reduce greenhouse gases, incentivize renewable energy, protect habitat, restore ecosystems, curb pollution, halt defaunation, and constrain invasive alien species, humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperiled biosphere.”

The Trump administration just published a major report saying 'there is no convincing alternative explanation' for climate change | Business Insider

The Trump Administration just released a report that says there’s strong evidence for ‘continuing, rapid, human-caused warming of the global atmosphere and ocean.’

The scientific report is required by law, and must be submitted to Congress once every four years.

The findings conflict with the climate change-denying language President Trump and many of his advisors have used, but the results align with what scientists have been documenting for years.

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Exxon Quietly Researching Hundreds of Green Projects | Bloomberg

One of the world’s biggest oil companies is working on hundreds of low-carbon energy projects, from algae engineered to bloom into biofuels and cells that turn emissions into electricity.

The work by Exxon Mobil Corp. includes research on environmentally-friendly technologies in five to 10 key areas, according to Vice President of Research and Development Vijay Swarup. While any commercial breakthrough is at least a decade away, Exxon’s support for clean energy suggests the world’s most valuable publicly-traded oil company is looking toward the possibility of a future where fossil fuels are less dominant.

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New NASA Maps Have Very Bad News For Greenland's Melting Glaciers | Inverse

Nestled between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans is Greenland, a slab of ice and rock that has caused more controversy than one might expect from the least densely populated country in thew world. For a long time, the Mercator map misrepresented Greenland as a giant land mass almost as big as Africa, but a 1970s reassessment cut it down to size, showing that it’s actually only about one-fourteenth of the continent’s area.

Now, in a cruel coincidence, new NASA maps show that Greenland is actually — physically — shrinking, and it’s happening at a much quicker pace than scientists once thought.

On Wednesday, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a team of NASA scientists together with collaborators from over 30 institutions published the most accurate high-resolution maps of Greenland’s bedrock and coastal seafloor, using data from NASA’s OMG campaign — short for Ocean Melting Greenland, but apt for describing its scary findings. The maps revealed some terrible news for the country’s 54,100 inhabitants: While scientists had long known that some of the glaciers comprising the icy landmass were melting because of climate change, it now appears that up to four times the original number of glaciers are under threat.

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Greenhouse gas concentrations surge to new record | World Meteorological Organization

Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surged at a record-breaking speed in 2016 to the highest level in 800 000 years, according to the World Meteorological Organization's Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The abrupt changes in the atmosphere witnessed in the past 70 years are without precedent.

Globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 403.3 parts per million in 2016, up from 400.00 ppm in 2015 because of a combination of human activities and a strong El Niño event. Concentrations of CO2 are now 145% of pre-industrial (before 1750) levels, according to the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.

Rapidly increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have the potential to initiate unprecedented changes in climate systems, leading to “severe ecological and economic disruptions,” said the report.

Climate change is much, much worse than we thought, study finds | The Independent

The research challenges the ways that researchers have worked out sea temperatures until now, meaning that they may be increasing quicker than previously suggested.

The methodology widely used to understand sea temperatures in the scientific community may be based on a mistake, the new study suggests, and so our understanding of climate change might be fundamentally flawed.

The new research suggests that the oceans hundreds of millions of years ago were much cooler than we thought. If true, that means that the global warming we are currently undergoing is unparalleled within the last 100 million years, and far worse than we had previously calculated.

The published research paper can be found here.

 More from the Independent

Germany set to pay customers for electricity usage | The Independent

German power producers are poised to pay customers to use electricity this weekend. 

Wind generation is forecast to climb to a record on Sunday, creating more output than needed and driving electricity prices below zero, broker data compiled by Bloomberg show. It would be the first time this year that the average price for a whole day is negative, not just for specific hours.

Germany’s grid operators can struggle to keep the balance between how much energy people are using and how much is being produced when there are high amounts of wind generation. Negative prices mean that producers must either shut down power stations to reduce supply or pay consumers to take the electricity off the grid.

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A list 2017 | CDP

CDP, the world’s largest environmental disclosure platform, has just published its annual scores and analysis of how the biggest companies globally are responding to climate change.

Last year, they found many big companies failing to meet Paris Agreement goals. This year, companies are moving faster:  

• 89% of world’s biggest, most environmentally-impactful companies now have carbon emissions targets, with a fifth planning low-carbon into their futures to 2030 and beyond.

• 14% of 1,000+ sample are committed to aligning their targets with climate science, a 5% increase since last year. An additional 300+ companies (30%) plan to set science-based targets within two years.

• Companies are closing the emissions gap, with current targets taking the sample 31% of the way to a 2-degree world, up from 25% in 2016.

• The CDP A List names 159 leading corporates recognised as pioneers taking action on climate change, water and deforestation in 2017. Unilever and L'Oréal lead the way with A’s across all three areas.

Fourteen per cent of a sample of 1,073 responding companies have future-proofed their growth by committing to set science-based targets via the Science Based Targets initiative. 31 Australian companies responded, only 1 (3%) got A list ranking for climate change.

The press release and the full report can be downloaded.

Why climate change puts the poorest most at risk | Financial Times

The largest negative impacts of the shocks being made more frequent by global warming are on tropical countries. Nearly all low-income countries are tropical. Yet these countries are the least able to protect themselves. Thus they are innocent victims of changes for which they bear no responsibility. Read more

An Evening With Dr Paul Fisher

Please join us for a private dinner with Dr Paul Fisher, former executive director at the Bank of England. Dr Fisher is in Australia to brief organisations on the recommendations made by the Task Force on Financial Disclosures and to consider how Australian firms may be impacted. The recommendations could have a considerable impact on the way companies report risk and assess their investments.

Dr Fisher will also provide an update on developments in Europe, where he is a member of the European Commission’s high-Level Expert group on Sustainable Finance, which is drawing up detailed policy proposals to be implemented in the EU.  You can find the group’s interim recommendations in their first report here.

You will have the opportunity to meet other like-minded senior executives and participate in a conversation with Dr Paul Fisher. 

A limited number of seats are still available.

Click here for more information or to book your seat.

Have you booked your seat for the Climate Alliance National Conference?

We’re entering an era of unprecedented commercial change. Our energy systems, our cities, and our food production – and everything connected to them – will be transformed.

The speed, complexity and diversity of change is unpredictable. The operating scenario for every business sector has already begun to transform, and our banking and financial sectors are responding.  

The Climate Alliance 2017 National Conference offers you the opportunity to learn more about the key dynamics that will shape new operating scenarios for business.

Speakers include Fiona Wild, Dr Paul Fisher, Chloe Munro and Dr Karl Mallon.

More information and book you seat for Melbourne October 24th

More information and book your seat for Sydney October 26th

UK Government releases £2.5bn climate change plan | Independent

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Australia's coal & CSG delusion | RenewEconomy

Statistics don't show how high Australian power bills really are | finder.com.au