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Biden Discusses Climate Action In SOTU: In a speech that led with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden also touted his administration's efforts to address climate change in his first State of the Union address Tuesday night by focusing primarily on its immediate financial benefits for U.S. families. Biden said the bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year will create good jobs modernizing infrastructure to "withstand the devastating effects of the climate crisis and promote environmental justice," and offered his plan to build a national EV charging network as an example. Biden also said his plan to cut inflation by passing pieces of the now-defunct Build Back Better Act would help save families $500 per year through a combination of tax credits for efficiency and weatherization, as well as clean energy production and reducing the cost of EVs that save families money at the pump. Biden did not mention the dire IPCC report issued the day before nor the impacts of climate change the report concluded are hitting the world harder and sooner than previously thought. Climate groups and progressive lawmakers raised alarm over what they say is the administration's insufficient action on climate change and other progressive priorities such as immigration reform and voting rights. "It's time to go faster," Sam Ricketts of Evergreen Action, told CNN. "You're going to need to see federal agencies to do things more aggressive, more climate-oriented than they've ever done before." (Address: AP, Washington Post $, New York Times $, Insider, Vox, NPR; Climate groups: (CNN, Truthout; Lawmakers: Politico, Insider, USA Today)

GOP Attacks On Biden Over Energy, Russia Not Based On Facts: Republican efforts to blame President Biden's climate policies for rising gasoline prices and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are unmoored from factual reality, Politico Pro reports. GOP candidates and elected officials claim Biden is destroying the U.S. oil and gas industry and undermining American "energy independence" by expanding clean energy,  although the U.S. continues to export more oil and gas than it imports, and became the world's largest LNG exporter late last year. Republicans like Garret Graves (La.) are also demanding Biden sanction Russian oil and gas exports, which would hurt U.S. allies in Europe and drive global energy prices higher. “This is the same tired argument they've been making for the last several years where we live in this binary world where countries have to either buy our fossil fuels or Vladimir Putin’s," Rep. Jared Huffman (D., Calif.) told Politico. "In a decarbonized world he is powerless, his country is poor and they’ll be looking for a new leader.” (Politico Pro $)

Exxon Announces Russia Exit, Nord Stream 2 Fires Workforce: Exxon Mobil will wind down its activity in Russia and will halt new investments in the country, the American oil major announced Tuesday. Following similar announcements from BP, Shell, and Equinor, Exxon said it will "carefully manage" its withdrawal from the Sakhalin-1 LNG project, its only remaining project in the country, in which Russian oil company Rosneft is a major stakeholder. It did not indicate a financial cost or timeline for unwinding from the project, which it operates. Also Tuesday, the Swiss company behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline declined to confirm reports that it had filed for bankruptcy, but did confirm it had fired all its workers. (Exxon: CNN, Politico, Wall Street Journal $, Reuters, New York Times $, NPR; Nord Stream 2: Axios, Wall Street Journal $, Bloomberg $; Bankruptcy reports: Reuters, AFP, OilPrice, FT $, South China Morning Post; Commentary: The Guardian, Nils Pratley column)

(Another) Atmospheric River Deluges PNW: An atmospheric river dumped six inches of rain in two days on the Pacific Northwest, setting off flood warnings across Washington and Oregon as well as concerns over avalanches and landslides. Increasing extreme precipitation events are a clear signal of climate change, caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. The region has been deluged by as much as 50 inches of rain since last November, causing catastrophic flooding in the U.S. PNW and British Columbia in November, which Canadian researchers determined were made substantially more likely by climate change. Large swaths of Australia are also submerged, inundated by catastrophic floods that have killed at least 10 almost a year after extreme rainfall forced 18,000 people in the same region to evacuate their homes. (Washington Post $; Australia: Washington Post $, Buzzfeed, Axios, AP, Democracy Now; Climate signals background: Flooding, Extreme precipitation increase)

IPCC WGII: Who pays? UN climate report reignites global fight for compensation (Reuters), The IPCC is finally using the right words to talk about climate change inequality and justice (TIME), A hotter planet means a hungrier planet, climate report warns (Reuters), UN report highlights cautionary tales of climate finance that backfires (Reuters)

• REGIONAL IMPACTS: UN: Droughts, less water in Europe as warming wrecks crops (AP), UN: Africa, already suffering from warming, will see worse (AP), UN: Climate change to uproot millions, especially in Asia (AP)\

WAR IN EUROPE: Europe and Ukraine's plan to link power grids (Reuters, explainer), How Europe can kick its Russian gas habit (Reuters), How fast can Europe wean itself off Russian gas? (Canary Media), Italy can cope without Russian gas, explores alternatives-Draghi (Reuters), Russia scrambles to maintain oil sales, lifeblood of economy (Wall Street Journal $), Ukraine Invasion Pushes Clean-Energy Transition (Wall Street Journal $), Both parties unveil energy bills to battle Russian aggression (E&E $), Republicans seize on Ukraine to attack Biden's climate policies. But the facts are against them. (Politico Pro $), Tax energy firms' windfall profits to raise green cash, EU to tell countries - sources (Reuters), How Russia’s invasion could hamper Biden’s climate agenda (E&E News), Ukraine presses Biden, Senators to hit Russian energy exports (Politico)

• US THREATS & IMPACTS: Gas pipelines pose a growing cyber risk for US power supply (Politico Pro $), Could Russia's invasion of Ukraine mean fewer near-term cyberattacks on US utilities? (Utility Dive), What the Russia crisis means for US electricity mix (E&E News)
• SPR: Biden opens strategic oil reserve for new crude release (Politico Pro $), IEA countries agree to release 60 million barrels of oil (Axios), US, other world powers to tap strategic oil reserves in bid to ease gasoline prices (Washington Post $), US, allies to release 60 million barrels of oil from reserves (The Hill)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Rich nations urged to pay $60 bln a year to protect developing-world nature (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

DENIAL: IPCC report calls out ‘vested interests’ delaying climate action (DeSmog), Laura Ingraham’s latest attempt to undermine investments in green energy reveals Fox’s sinister motives (Media Matters)

EXTREMELY SUBTLE METAPHORS: After burning for days, a ship carrying thousands of luxury cars sinks (New York Times $)

WEST VIRGINIA v. EPA: Conservative justices express some support for limiting Biden’s ability to curtail greenhouse gas emissions (Inside Climate News), SCOTUS probes EPA power as climate scientists sound alarm (E&E News), Supreme Court hints at constraining Biden on climate (Axios), Utilities urge Supreme Court to dismiss challenge to EPA's fleetwide carbon emissions approach (Utility Dive), The Supreme Court appears eager to gut the EPA, but can’t figure out how to do it (Vox)

EPA: Report: EPA's enforcement drop undermines equity goals (E&E $), EPA tosses Trump-era review process for science advisers (E&E News), EPA car rule challengers take cues from power plant fight (E&E $), Fuels groups target EPA vehicles rule as unauthorized 'transformation' of auto sector (Politico Pro $), Ethanol producers, 16 states challenge EPA US vehicle rules (Reuters), Hill takes notice as Supreme Court mulls EPA climate powers (E&E News)

DOI: Biden administration won't appeal invalidation of offshore oil leases (The Hill), IG: [Trump-era] FOIA ‘awareness program’ troubled some Interior staff (E&E News)

WHITE HOUSE: White House tackles Miss. flooding after axing pumps project (E&E $)

HOUSE: Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act passes US House, on track to become law (Black Wall Street Times), Ocasio-Cortez: McCarthy doesn't want to 'alienate his base' of white supremacists (The Hill), GOP sees an opening in attacking Dems on critical minerals (E&E News

SENATE: Hill progressives want new utility lobbying rules (E&E $)

ELECTIONS: “People like us are capable of representing us” (Mother Jones)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Banking panel pushes ahead on climate-focused Fed nominee [Sarah Bloom Raskin] (E&E $), Where's Biden's regulations nominee? (E&E $)

TRIBES: Tribes hope for a ‘reboot’ as Yellowstone marks 150 years (E&E News)

CITIES AND STATES: Burlington expands program that gives renters and public access to EV chargers (Energy News Network), As families of trans kids fear state investigation, advocacy groups are suing Texas (The 19th* News)

• CALIFORNIA: Calif. carbon market sells out, hits record price (E&E News), California debates naming heatwaves to underscore deadly risk of extreme heat (The Guardian), California bill could make it easier for houses of faith to build affordable housing (Religion News Service)

FERC: FERC endorses massive Klamath dam removal decades in the making (E&E News)

IMPACTS: Climate change brings extreme, early impact to South America (AP), From food to floods, Africa 'not ready' for climate stress, its scientists say (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Last year's Texas ice storm affected 12.8M homes — report (E&E $), March will feature a spike in severe weather risk over the lower 48 (Washington Post $), Sea-level rise could bring toxic floods to California coast (Yale Climate Connections), The ski industry is preparing for a future that will require more manufactured snow (NPR), Climate change is already taking a big bite out of our food supply (Mother Jones), Climate crisis: Will small California farms survive soaring heat? (Al Jazeera)

SCIENCE: As climate dangers rise, scientists predict disasters before they happen (Reuters), How climate data scarcity costs lives (The New Humanitarian), Weather satellite rockets to orbit to monitor US West (AP)

HEAT: [2021 PNW] Heat wave a glimpse of climate change’s impact in North America (AP)

DROUGHT: California endures one of its driest January and February stretches as drought worsens (Washington Post $), Dry boat ramps, exposed rocks at Lake Powell reveal the cost of Colorado River drought (Arizona Republic)

WILDFIRES: Satellite to track extreme weather and fires in western U.S. launched Tuesday (Washington Post $)

RENEWABLES: Capricorn, BHP back startup promising cleaner lithium mining (Bloomberg $), How offshore wind farms could transform land (New York Times $), Coal miners Peabody ventures into solar (Reuters), Investors poured more than half a billion into solar software in the last week alone (Canary Media), NREL-backed nonprofit team to advance solar for BIPOC houses of worship (Solar Power World), California solar group withdraws ballot initiatives (Politico Pro $)

FOSSIL RISK AVERSION: Insurer AIG steps back from coal, Arctic energy underwriting (Reuters)

BUILDINGS: Powerful groups take aim at aggressive building standards in climate legislation (Maryland Matters)

LNG: First LNG cargo shipped from new US terminal as demand soars (Bloomberg $)

OIL & GAS: How a wrinkle in the oil futures market has clogged America's oil pump (NPR), Oil closes above $100 a barrel first time since 2014 as Russia’s war worsens supply concerns (Houston Chronicle), Biden administration won’t appeal judge’s ruling revoking gulf of Mexico drilling leases (Washington Post $)

NUKES: Uranium may regain ‘critical’ status despite USGS move (E&E News)

COAL: China's Russian coal purchases stall as buyers struggle to secure financing (Reuters)

UTILITIES: A net-zero future for gas utilities? Switching to underground thermal networks (Canary Media), Avangrid, Exelon among 90+ organizations joining DOE challenge to slash carbon emissions 50% by 2032 (Utility Dive)

BITCOIN: Ukraine-Russia war puts limelight back on Bitcoin – and its carbon footprint (Energy Monitor)

MOTOR SPORTS: Taking the wheel for green change (The Hill)

AVIATION: Swiss says it will be first airline to use fuel made from sunlight (Reuters)

AGRICULTURE: Kenyan farmers test insurance to ward off climate-driven hunger (Thomson Reuters Foundation), California’s strict new law preventing cruelty to farm animals triggers protests from big US meat producers (Inside Climate News), Edible extinction: why we need to revive global food diversity (Yale Environment 360), Regenerative farming goes a step beyond organic farming and aims to be carbon neutral (WBUR)

BUSINESS: Private report shows how Amazon drastically undercounts its carbon footprint (Reveal), Amazon Web Services to share emissions data as tech giants race to green the cloud (Wall Street Journal $)

CARBON REMOVAL: Researchers ask a climate question: Convert CO2 or bury it? (E&E $)

WILDLIFE: Do salmon have rights? (Grist)

INTERNATIONAL: Greece specifies terms for geothermal exploration licencing (Reuters)

TOXIC MASCULINITY KILLS: Hounds chased a Yellowstone National Park mountain lion into a tree. Then Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte shot it. (Washington Post $)

• Ban yachts (New Republic, Kate Aronoff column)
• Learning Black history should be a tradition, not a trend (Black Wall Street Times, Tanesha Peeples op-ed)
• We must adapt to climate change. Can we do it in ways that solve other problems too? (Environmental Health News, Elizabeth Sawin op-ed)
• How do we force our leaders to lead and ourselves to take action in the face of multiple crises? (The Guardian, Jess Harwood op-ed)
• The future is now: Doubling down on fossil fuels is not the solution to New England's energy needs (Utility Dive, Joe Curtatone)
• A sicker, poorer, and less abundant world (The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer analysis)
• In Lismore, this is more than a flood, it is a catastrophe – and I am still praying we will be saved (The Guardian, Sue Higginson op-ed)
• Black Ukrainians need support from African diaspora amid signs of racism (Black Wall Street Times, Tanesha Peeples op-ed)
• The cure for our oil addiction (The Hill, William Becker op-ed)
• Germany’s climate left gets serious (Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board $)
• A lesson in energy masochism (Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board $)
• Pleas to stop buying Russian oil and gas go unheeded (Bloomberg, Javier Blas column $)
• Fossil fuels link Russia and climate crises (Bloomberg Law, Mustafa Santiago Ali op-ed)

Koonin Self-Debunks In Latest WSJ Op-Ed, Accuses Alarmists Of Cherry Picking By Himself Pointing To Record 5-Year Greenland Ice Loss 

Steven Koonin loves to say wrong things about climate change. Why wouldn’t he!? It’s gotten him press, book sales, and a job at the polluter-funded American Enterprise Institute to supplement his NYU paycheck. (Pity the students who take his classes!) 

He said tons of wrong things on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently, and a real scientist had to go on and clean up the mess. He said wrong things for fracker-funded PragerU, and fact-checkers rated his claims about Greenland’s ice melt as “mostly false.”  

Now he’s back at it, going on about Greenland’s ice melt in a WSJ op-ed. Koonin’s headline claimed that Greenland’s melting ice, on track to submerge coastlines and turn every city from London to New York to Miami to Hong Kong into Atlantis and entirely submerge every small island nation like St. Lucia, is “no cause for climate-change panic.” That’s because, per the subheadline, “the annual loss has been decreasing in the past decade even as the globe continues to warm.” Oh?

Koonin attempts to dispute the science of Greenland’s ice melt, and uses a graph that shows annual ice loss from 1900 to 2021. There are up and down swings, until 1970, where it dips hard until 1980, and begins to climb back through the ‘90s, and then spikes from 50 gigatons of ice loss a year in 2000, to 250 gigatons of ice lost in 2010, the highest on the chart. Then it held out at that record ice-loss pace for a few years, before dropping down to “just” 200 gigatons of ice melt in 2020. 

This, according to Koonin, is good news, because “the annual loss of ice has been decreasing in the past decade even as the globe continues to warm.” He then says that natural cycles have been important before, and that maybe we’ll see a continuation of the slowing in the future, which “would be inconsistent with the IPCC’s projection and wouldn’t at all support the media’s exaggerations.”  

But of course climate change isn’t defined by short-term trends over just a decade. Instead, “climate unfolds over decades,” in contrast to “much climate reporting today [that] highlights short-term changes when they fit the narrative… but then ignores or plays down changes when they don’t, often dismissing them as ‘just weather.’” 

“Although short-term changes might be deemed news,” those changes “need to be considered in a many-decade context.” 

The person who wrote those lines, directly debunking how Steven Koonin took a few years of regression to the mean after a record decades-long spike in order to misleadingly use short-term changes to make news? 

Steven Koonin! In the conclusion of his op-ed! Directly after doing the very thing he calls out!

It’s incredible, really, the level of obliviousness Koonin has apparently reached, to be able to claim a few years of not-quite-record ice loss after a few years of record ice loss after decades of ice loss acceleration, and then turn around and accuse others of cherry-picking short-term changes! It's also pretty insulting to the Journal's readers.

What’s worse? Koonin very much knows that focusing on just a decade out of a larger trend is shoddy science, as just days later, he responded to a thorough rebuttal of his claims by saying  that “focusing on what happened in the last decade is a characteristic tactic of people who want to disguise what the real data are.” 

Unlike most of his other claims on climate, that is something we can undoubtedly say Koonin got right.  

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