“According to Exxon’s own disclosures and an analysis conducted by IEEFA in 2022, only around 3 percent of the carbon captured there (roughly 6 million tonnes) has been permanently sequestered underground. Of the rest of the 240 million tonnes of carbon emitted over the facility’s first 35 years in operation, half has been sold to various oilfield operators for enhanced oil recovery, or EOR — a process by which oil companies inject carbon underground to get more oil out — and approximately 120 million tonnes has been vented into the atmosphere.”
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“When CO2 is actually sequestered underground, there’s no guarantee it stays there. “CO2 has a way of moving through the air, of leaking through pipelines, and because we have no cradle-to-grave tracking, we have no way of actually knowing how much is leaking, how much is really being collected, how much is hitting the wellhead, and how much is really staying underground,” Raffensperger said.
That’s not just concerning from a climate perspective, but from a public health perspective as well. Raffensperger notes that the pipelines built to transport condensed carbon from oil fields to storage facilities, or to other oil fields for EOR, are surrounded by “kill zones.”
“These are not your grandmother’s pipelines,” Raffensperger said. “They could be lethal. We talk about the kill zone or a fatality zone around a CO2 pipeline. We don’t talk about that with oil and gas pipelines. These are uniquely dangerous and underregulated.”
Following a 2020 CO2 leak and explosion in Satartia, Mississippi, that abruptly stopped cars on roadways, caused widespread dizziness and nausea, and sent several residents to the hospital, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration began looking into rules for CO2 pipelines. They were set to finalize that rule this summer, pending review by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, but that deadline has been extended to fall 2024. The lack of finalized safety regulations has not stopped the permitting of CO2 pipelines, though. The Summit pipeline, a massive project that would carry carbon across five states, just got the go-ahead in June for the first step of its construction process in Iowa: seizing land through eminent domain to make way for the pipeline.”
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“Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, has called the industry’s plan to offset its emissions with carbon capture “fantasy.”
But the US government is all in on that fantasy now.
“[The carbon capture tax credit] 45Q is not based on net climate benefit or net CO2 reductions, it’s based on gross CO2 capture,” Blackburn, the environmental lawyer, said. “Why would you think making carbon a commodity would reduce CO2 emissions? It’s like the opposite of carbon tax, we’re actually paying them to produce more of it.””
“The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet.
The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity’s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years.
The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions, and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping.
The length of the Earth’s day has been steadily increasing over geological time due to the gravitational drag of the moon on the planet’s oceans and land. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world’s oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator. This makes the Earth more oblate — or fatter — slowing the rotation of the planet and lengthening the day still further.”
“In Texas — a state that often sees some of the hottest temperatures in the country — extreme heat killed more than 330 people in 2023, setting a new record. More recently, millions of people in cities like Houston have had to deal with a massive heat wave while navigating power outages caused by Hurricane Beryl.
Despite the growing toll, there’s shockingly little regulation around protecting people from the effects of heat. It’s a stark contrast to how policies tend to treat the extreme cold. And while extreme cold continues to be deadlier than extreme heat, as heat waves become more dangerous, the gap between the two is likely to shrink.”
“Less than 17 percent of the $1.1 trillion those laws provided for direct investments on climate, energy and infrastructure has been spent as of April, nearly two years after Biden signed the last of the statutes.”
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“Trump has said he should have the power to refuse to spend congressionally appropriated money he considers wasteful, despite a 1974 law that says otherwise. This raises the prospect that he could attempt to pare Biden-era funding even if it’s at an advanced stage of distribution.”
“In the next few decades, a lot of coral will die — that’s pretty much a given. And to be clear, this reality is absolutely devastating. Regardless of whether snorkeling is your thing, reefs are essential to human well-being: Coral reefs dampen waves that hit the shore, support commercial fisheries, and drive coastal tourism around the world. They’re also home to an incredible diversity of life that inspires wonder.”
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“But even as many corals die, reefs won’t exactly disappear. The 3D formation of a typical reef is made of hard corals that produce a skeleton-like structure. When the polyps die, they leave their skeletons behind. Animals that eat live coral, such as butterfly fish and certain marine snails, will likely vanish; plenty of other fish and crabs will stick around because they can hide among those skeletons. Algae will dominate on ailing reefs, as will “weedy” kinds of coral, like sea fans, that don’t typically build the reef’s structure.
Simply put, dead reefs aren’t so much lifeless as they are home to a new community of less sensitive (and often more common) species.”
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“On the timescale of decades, even much of the reef rubble will fade away, as there will be no (or few) live corals to build new skeletons and plenty of forces to erode the ones that remain. Remarkably, about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide that we pump into the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. When all that CO2 reacts with water, it makes the ocean more acidic, hastening the erosion of coral skeletons and other biological structures made of calcium carbonate.”
“The periodic swings between El Niño and La Niña, collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), is a natural phenomenon cycling every three to seven years. Over the past year, the El Niño also synced with other natural patterns like the warm phase of the Atlantic Ocean’s temperature cycle, driving thermometers up further. But humanity’s relentless injection of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere is pushing these changes to greater extremes.”
“Warmer winters have meant fewer opportunities to revel in the snow, go sledding and skiing, or venture onto the ice. But beyond making certain activities less feasible, warmer winters are also set to have devastating environmental impacts.
Plants and animals could have their growth and hibernation patterns thrown off, for example. According to Theresa Crimmins, director of the National Phenology Network and an associate professor at the University of Arizona, plants’ pollination schedules could become misaligned if they’re emerging sooner than they normally would and the insects that pollinate them aren’t yet ready to do so. Plants that sprout earlier in the year could also have a tougher time surviving if an unexpected cold front or frost comes back and kills off the initial buds.
Pests like mosquitoes could become more prevalent, too, says Crimmins, and potentially contribute to more diseases, since colder winters tend to depress their population.
A shift in winter could have major impacts on water supply as well, leading to a much smaller snowpack than people in the American West and Southwest currently rely on. Frozen snow that slowly melts over time is a major source of water for these parts of the country, and that resource could be severely reduced if there isn’t much snow to work with. During warmer winters, there’s typically less snow and more rain, which leads to smaller snowpacks and potentially huge dips in water as less snowmelt flows into rivers.
“Water supply affects pretty much everything, not just our drinking water: water for agriculture, water for hydropower, water for municipal uses, water for environmental concerns. It’s really comprehensive,” says Cara McCarthy, a program manager at the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Water from these snowpacks can also help make sure the ground doesn’t become too dry, a factor that contributes to more frequent and more severe wildfires. The National Interagency Fire Center’s forecast through June has projected that parts of the Midwest and Southwest face a higher risk of wildfires this year due to the limited snowfall they received and a higher potential for drought.”