FIRST LOOK:

Multiple Permian Basin Fraud Lawsuits Underway: A second Permian Basin company is facing an SEC lawsuit for defrauding its investors, Earther reports. Just a week after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Heartland Group Ventures LLC, a Permian fracking company, for defrauding its investors and running a Ponzi scheme, it filed a suit against Marco "Sully" Perez and his "company" for defrauding more than 265 investors out of more than $9 million. Perez allegedly used the Ponzi scheme to fund his "extravagant lifestyle," spending cash on “luxury cars, a helicopter, private jet travel, and jewelry” along with his wedding on the Queen Mary. (Earther)

2017 Floods Set Off Crisis For Women And Girls In NE India: Devastating floods submerged nearly 3,000 square kilometers (1,158 sq. miles) of the northeast Indian state of Bihar in August 2017, killing 815 people and displacing nearly 900,000. They also set off a crisis of insecurity, violence, and trafficking for women and girls in the region. Extreme precipitation events and flooding are made worse and more frequent by climate change caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. The links between extreme weather events — and the extraction of fossil fuels — and increased violence against women and girls are well established. (Third Pole; Climate Signals background: Extreme precipitation increase, Flooding)

Florida Senate Committee Advances Anti-Solar Bill: Sunshine State senators on Tuesday advanced a utility-backed bill to restrict residents' ability to install solar panels on their homes. The bill, which would alter net metering rates so as to make installing solar panels less financially viable for Florida residents, backed by Florida Power & Light (which wants to own all solar generation) and is sponsored by Republican State Sen. Jennifer Bradley (who received $10,000 PAC contribution from FPL's parent company a month before she filed a bill nearly identical to text given to her by an FPL lobbyist). The bill would ravage small businesses that install solar panels across the state and make it harder for residents to install systems that reduce their power bills, and, according to a December NAACP op-ed, disproportionately burdens communities of color and other historically excluded communities hurt first and worst by climate change. “I can tell you that with my 30 employees, I can see at least 70% of them being no longer employed with Tampa Bay Solar, because there just wouldn’t be a customer base,” Steve Rutherford, the founder and President of Tampa Bay Solar, told Bay News 9. (E&E News, Tampa Bay Times, Bay News 9, Miami Herald, Florida News Times, Florida Politics, Axios, WFTS; Commentary: Lake Wales News, Editorial Board

OFFSHORE WIND: Biden admin to hold huge offshore wind sale, modernize grid (E&E News, AP, The Hill, CNN, The Verge, Politico Pro $, Bloomberg $, Politico Pro $, Reuters), how much should offshore wind cost? Look to Massachusetts (E&E News)

CLIMATE IMPACTS x ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: Resiliency collides with environmental justice in power plan (AP, Politico Pro $)

VOTING RIGHTS: Biden finally calls for Senate filibuster rule change to pass voting rights legislation (NewsOne), Biden, Harris bring words and no plan to Atlanta on voter rights (Black Wall Street Times), Senate Democrats on brink of defeat on voting legislation despite frantic push (CNN)

FOSSIL VOLATILITY: Natural gas surges 14% as cold snap ahead is expected to boost demand (CNBC)

POPULAR CULTURE: ‘Don’t Look Up’ – see the movie. Ignore the comet. (Part 1) (Yale Climate Connections), the phenomenon of ‘Don’t Look Up’ (part 2) (Yale Climate Connections)

METHANE: Investor group warns EU against labelling gas investments as green (Reuters, Bloomberg $)

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Climate fund aims to help indigenous people protect world's forests (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

ARGENTINA: Ground temperatures hit 129 degrees as argentina suffers Blackouts (Earther), South Atlantic oil is newest crusade of Argentina green movement (Bloomberg $)

KAZAKHSTAN: Kazakh government recalls bill on $6 billion UAE energy deal from parliament (Reuters)

AGENCIES: DHS unveils effort to recruit climate change professionals (The Hill)

EPA: EPA ramps up pressure over state pollution loopholes (E&E News), EPA to assess health impacts of leaded aircraft fuel (The Hill, E&E News), biologist ascends to top career staff job in EPA science office (E&E $), the Biden administration takes action on toxic coal ash waste, targeting leniency by the Trump EPA (InsideClimate News)

DOI: Lawsuit: BLM allowed grazing to harm species at Ariz. monument (E&E $)

FED: Fed chair points to ‘narrow’ but important climate role (E&E News), Feds warn of 'brute force' cyberattacks on energy infrastructure (E&E $), Powell likely won't do what green activists want most (Axios)

EXECUTIVE BRANCH: Rachael Rollins, first Black woman to be US attorney in Massachusetts, faces racist threats (The Root, The Grio, WGBH, CNN, MSNBC, Boston Globe $, CBS Boston, MassLive)

BUILD BACK BETTER ACT: Two things we learned from Senate hearings about Build Back Better and the Fed's approach to climate change (Washington Post $), Democrats cite NOAA report to push reconciliation bill (E&E News)

HOUSE: House panel sets crypto mining hearing for next week (Politico Pro $)

SENATE: Senate veers toward filibuster showdown (E&E $), Senate Energy Committee considers calls to speed 'glacial pace' of hydropower permitting (Utility Dive), Tina Smith isn’t giving up on her clean electricity program (E&E News)

WHITE HOUSE: White House departures send tremors through environmental community (Politico), White House expands clean energy push as legislation stalls (Axios)

POLITICS: ‘Wicked hard’: Biden, Congress struggle to curb US emissions (E&E News), is the US uniquely bad at tackling climate change? (Yale Climate Connections), progressives bow to reality of diminished hopes for Biden agenda (Bloomberg $)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: EPW Committee advances EPA, FWS nominees (Politico Pro $)

CITIES AND STATES: Climate change, legal cannabis, budget on [Maryland] legislative agenda (AP), Nebraska announces $500M plan to claim water from Colorado (AP), New Hampshire legislators, conservation advocates fight PUC decision gutting efficiency program (Utility Dive), Virginia governor can't exit cap-and-trade program [RGGI], AG says (E&E $)

CALIFORNIA: California’s Gov. Newsom says ​‘changes need to be made’ to the state’s polarizing net-metering proposal (Canary Media)

IMPACTS: Georgia’s warm 2021 capped by a near-record hot December (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), the rain in Spain causes financial pain (Politico EU)

OCEAN TEMPS: World ocean temperatures in 2021 were hottest ever recorded (Axios, E&E $)

RHODIUM GROUP REPORT: The latest data on US climate pollution is very bad (Vox)

EMISSIONS: There’s too much carbon going into the air to hit climate goals (Bloomberg $), ‘rapid stop’ to CO2 emissions needed to limit global warming to 1.5C, says Met Office (The Independent)

RENEWABLES: South African prepaid startup WiSolar plans initial fund raise (Bloomberg $)

BATTERIES: Nickel hits 10-year high as electric vehicle production ramps up (FT $)

STORAGE: Hydrostor secures $250 million from Goldman Sachs amid rising investor interest in long-duration storage (Utility Dive)

OIL & GAS: On the defensive a year ago, the American Petroleum Institute is back with bravado (InsideClimate News, Axios), API backs Biden's methane curbs on oil and gas operations (Politico Pro $), oil industry renews attacks on Democrats' methane fee (E&E $), US oil, gas lobby group wants recognition for methane reductions (Reuters), US oil production set to eclipse previous record despite climate push (FT $), forgotten oil well births a 100-foot geyser in West Texas (Texas Monthly)

COAL: Midwest power plants face shutdown after EPA proposes denying requests to keep using unlined coal ash ponds (Utility Dive), Indonesia relaxes export ban to allow 37 coal vessels to depart (Reuters), why not all coal phase-outs are created equal (Energy Monitor)

UTILITIES: Dominion finally gets approval for large-scale smart meter rollout (Virginia Mercury)

(MICRO)GRID: Kohler Power buys startup that uses game-theory math to manage microgrids (Canary Media)

EVs: Rivian ramps up production as COO steps down (E&E $)

FASHION: The future of fashion is justice (Atmos)

BUSINESS: Corporate greenhouse gas numbers don’t always add up (Bloomberg $)

SHIPS: Maersk accelerates net zero push in journey to cleaner shipping (FT $), Princess Cruise Lines pleads guilty to probation violation (AP)

FINANCE: Bank of England tells banks to quantify climate risks properly (Reuters), banks and insurers more focused on opportunities from climate change than the risks, says UK regulator (FT $)

WILDLIFE: Deep in the Australian bush, a scientific quest to uncover a hidden koala enclave (Washington Post $)

INTERNATIONAL: Costa Rica hydro plant gets new lease on life from crypto mining (Reuters), Germany to triple speed of emissions cuts after missed targets (Bloomberg $), Saudi Arabia calls for flexibility in energy transition (Reuters), utilities in Germany secure funding in the face of exploding energy prices. (New York Times $)

• Netflix’s ‘Don't Look Up’ is a lesson in climate messaging (Bloomberg, Clara Ferreira Marques op-ed $)
• In Haiti, disaster risks linger as another earthquake anniversary passes (The New Humanitarian, Dumas Maçon and Jessica Alexander analysis)
• Not everyone likes ESG (Bloomberg, Matt Levine column $)
• Winter is in full effect, and this year we must make sure our communities are prepared (Blavity, Valencia Gunder op-ed)
• An explosion of anger: what brought people to the streets in Kazakhstan? (The Real News, Yevgeniy Zhovtis interview)

Denier Finally Figures Out Idaho Isn’t Iowa, Then Fails To Correct State’s Climate Scientists 

Back on January 3rd, Boise State Public Radio published a short piece on some reports from a local university about what climate change might mean for Idaho. It links to a 2-page “Snapshot” of the full report’s climate section, and a “Key Findings” summary of the larger report, both of which give the usual sort of overview of how climate change will be bad for the state. 

For some reason though, this 74-second story caught the attention of Heartland Institute President James Taylor, who took to their Climate Realism page to complain about the “misinformation on Idaho climate” coming from “U. of Idaho and Boise State.”

Taylor tries to make three main points to justify saying misinformation is coming from journalism done by a National Public Radio affiliate about a University of Idaho report. Per Taylor, “the two universities teamed up to paint a dark picture of climate change in the Idaho,” [sic] but “objective data destroys the universities’ climate myths.” Which is, as Taylor might say, the wrong. Boise State Radio is just a professionally-run NPR affiliate housed at Boise State University, and of course, “objective data” is what the University of Idaho report is based on, not Taylor’s climate myths. 

He makes three feeble attempts to prove he knows better than real scientists. The first is a claim that Idaho’s not warming much so far, so their claims that it will warm a lot by 2100 “are simply absurd.” Which only makes sense if you don’t think accumulating carbon dioxide concentrations would increase the temperature, which would make you a climate denier. Which would be absurd, which Taylor, obviously, is. 

His second point is that “the flyer presents no good reason” why precipitation in Idaho would decrease as the planet warms, instead of the increase we’ve seen to date. Apparently Taylor didn’t realise the pamphlet he was looking at, clearly labeled “Snapshot” at the top and with a link for more information at the bottom, was not the whole report. Had he navigated his way one (1) whole click from the “Key findings” page to the full Idaho Climate-Economy Impacts Assessment page, he could have found links to all the full report chapters, and then the Climate Technical Report, a 24 page document that lays out the details Taylor apparently couldn’t find. 

Taylor’s final point is that (a cherry picked selection of) (the) Idaho’s crops are doing fine and the academic quoted “gives no reason why the beneficial impacts” of carbon pollution like “longer growing seasons will suddenly start harming rather than assisting crop production.” 

Again, had Taylor bothered to actually look for, or been capable of finding, the easily located Agriculture technical report, he could have seen the multitude of reasons: drought, storms, heat waves, and of course groundwater availability issues, all of which are thoroughly detailed and documented in the 46 page document. 

To summarize, then, Taylor’s first point is that it’s not warming much so far, so we don’t need to plan for warming in the future; his second that warming is already causing an increase, not decrease in precipitation (contradicting the first point, but whatever); and his third that actually, there is warming, but it’s good and crops like it. 

So climate change is not happening but is also changing rainfall and is actually "assisting rather than harming Idaho’s economy,” Taylor concludes. And everyone knows it, “except agenda-driven climate alarmists.”  

Fun fact: the University of Idaho school that produced the supposedly agenda-driven alarmist reports is the James A and Louise McClure Center for Public Policy Research, named for Idaho’s 3-term Republican Senator James McClure.

Clearly Taylor doesn’t know Idaho. In fact, this whole post is likely little more than an excuse to kick the dust off of some old state-level work he did in 2020, when he apparently got confused as to where he was, and multiple media sources mocked his presentation for repeatedly referring to (the) Idaho as Iowa. 

These days Taylor’s climate claims still aren’t even in the ballpark of being right, but hey, at least he got the state right this time!

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