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FIRST LOOK: 

The tenth edition of the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook will be released TODAY at 3:00 pm EST and will be available to download here. BloombergNEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy will host an event TOMORROW at 12:00 pm EST to answer questions about the trends from the year in clean energy.  

UN Body Agrees To Craft Legally Binding Plastics Treaty: UN negotiators agreed on Wednesday to create a legally binding global treaty to "end plastic pollution" by 2024. The agreement, which will cover the full lifespan of plastics, including their production and could include a ban on single-use plastics, was hailed by the head of the UN Environment Program as the most important international environmental agreement since the Paris Agreement seven years ago. "The issue is not just plastic in the ocean; the issue is plastic pollution throughout its life cycle,” David Azoulay, a lawyer at the Center for International Environmental Law, told the Washington Post, citing the inclusion of a negotiating committee specifically charged with plastic production. The agreement is also the first to formally recognize the key, and hazardous role trash pickers play. “We waste pickers have to be involved in this process,” Ruiz Grisales of Bogotá, Colombia, who began working at dump sites at the age of 12 and is now a leader in the  Latin American and Caribbean Network of Waste Pickers, told the New York Times. “We work the trash 12, 14 or 16 hours a day … It’s a poverty trap," he added. Just 9% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled and a ban on new and single-use plastics will be "the million-dollar question" of the treaty negotiations, Azoulay said. The VP for plastics of the American Chemistry Council, a trade association that counts Chevron, Exxon, and Shell among its top members, said reducing and regulating plastic production, "very shortsighted." The U.S. is the world's largest source of plastic pollution. (New York Times $, Washington Post $, AP, Reuters, Bloomberg $, Yale Environment 360, Thomson Reuters Foundation, FT $, The Hill)

Patriarchy And Climate Change Form Vicious Cycle Of Harm: Climate change disproportionately harms women, and in particular trans women and women of color, Atmos reports. “At the end of the day, the histories, the systems that have created the climate change crisis that we’re in are patriarchal systems,” Vanessa Raditz, a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia researching the effects of diaster response on queer people, told Atmos. Women and children are 14 times more likely to die during a disaster than men, according to a 2017 UN brief, due to myriad issues including such basic inequities as the fact that women and girls have less access to education and thus may be unable to read about impending disaster and react accordingly. They're also more at risk of sexual or physical assault when forced to travel long disstances to access necessary supplies. Exclusive policies and threats of violence prevent trans women from accessing restroom and shower facilities in disaster shelters and can be forced to accept men's clothing, which can cause or exacerbate body dysmorphia and other mental health issues. Inequities and discrimination that trans women face "on a day-to-day basis [also] become exacerbated during a time of disaster,” Raditz said. (Atmos)

Massive Floods Submerge Eastern Australia: Half a million Australians are under some level of evacuation order as catastrophic floods continue to deluge huge swaths of eastern Australia with more rain to come. The increase in extreme precipitation and the flooding it causes are some of the clearest signals of climate change, caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. The flooding in Queensland and New South Wales, caused by torrential rains dropping a month's-worth of rain in a matter of days, has already killed at least 14 people and are expected to be worse than the floods that ravaged the same region about a year ago – which themselves were the worst in 60 years. The country's two biggest insurers are expected to exceed their budgets for weather disasters by hundreds of millions of dollars, adding to the already-existing concerns over the insurance industry's ability to cope with increasing climate disasters. Floodwaters have submerged town centers, swept away whole herds of cattle, and drowned and stranded wildlife. (AP, Reuters, The Guardian; Insurance: FT $; Cattle: The Guardian; Wildlife: HuffPost; Photos: The Guardian, NPR, USA Today; Climate Signals background: Extreme precipitation events, Flooding)

ENVIRONMENTAL (IN)JUSTICE: How workers’ rights and environmental justice movements collide in California’s Central Valley (Environmental Health News), Incentives inform and inspire highly efficient affordable housing in Massachusetts (Energy News Network), How making the outdoors more inclusive can help fight climate change (NBCLX)

WAR IN EUROPE: How Russia's invasion of Ukraine 'holds the environment hostage' (The Hill), Will the Russian invasion accelerate peak oil? (E&E News)

• US POLITICS & LOBBYING: Republicans seize on Ukraine to attack Biden's climate policies. But the facts are against them. (Politico), Oil industry stirs blowback after weaving war into US lobbying (Bloomberg $), Even before Ukraine crisis, majority of Americans wanted country to prioritize renewable energy development, poll shows (CNN, E&E $), Russian hacking threat hovers over US gas pipelines (Politico), Ukraine war upends Biden’s agenda on energy, climate change (AP, New York Times $), Ukraine crisis an opportunity to shift from fossil fuels, [Rep. Sean Casten] says (The Hill)
• SANCTIONS: Oil, gas, wheat and aluminium jump as Russia sanctions bite (Reuters), US finance firms urged to sever ties with Russian oil (E&E $), US utilities push White House not to sanction Russian uranium (Reuters), US nuclear industry presses White House on Russian uranium imports: report (The Hill), Companies cut Russia operations and trade as sanctions tighten (Reuters, factbox), Charting Russia's US oil sales (Axios)
• EXXON: Exxon plans to exit Russia, bans new investments (E&E News)
• EURO GAS DEPENDENCE: Europe's natural gas problem gets worse (Axios, Bloomberg $), Germany is prepared if Russia stops gas exports -economy minister (Reuters, Reuters), Europe's plan to wean itself off Russian gas faster (Reuters, Factbox)

SOTU: What Biden said — and didn’t say — on climate (E&E News), All the energy takeaways (E&E News), As Biden touts anti-Russia response in SOTU, US remains addicted to fossil fuels that drive war (Democracy Now), Biden's State of the Union climate pitch was short but revealing (Axios), Biden’s State of the Union address ignored Black America, critics say (NewsOne)

IPCC WGII: UN report could change the conversation on ‘loss and damage’ at November’s climate negotiations (Grist), Climate responses that backfire are a growing problem, IPCC says (Bloomberg $), Save nature to protect people on fast-heating planet, IPCC scientist urges (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Thirty startling numbers from the new IPCC climate report (Bloomberg $), They're finally listening': Indigenous peoples play major role in new climate report (Arizona Republic)

SCIENCE: Why climate solutions will fail without the help of social scientists (Vox)

FED NOMINEES: How fossil-fuel companies are stonewalling Sarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination to the Fed (The New Yorker $, New York Times $)

EPA: Enviros to EPA: Focus on pollution's cumulative impacts (E&E $)

DOE: Gas groups sue to block DOE efficiency rule (E&E $)

THE HILL: Republicans are embracing carbon border fees to counter Putin (Washington Post $), Republicans unleash energy attacks on Biden, Democrats (E&E News)

HOUSE: House oversight panel postpones Big Oil hearing amid Ukraine crisis (Reuters)

SENATE: Bread-and-butter pitch on ‘Build Back’ fails to woo Manchin (E&E News), Manchin fans faint hopes for stalled social, climate bill (AP), Manchin proposes dramatically scaled down version of Build Back Better (The Hill), Manchin lashes out at FERC on pipeline permitting (E&E $), Manchin outlines energy demands as Dems mull next steps (E&E News), Manchin, Murkowski to introduce bipartisan bill to block Russian energy shipments to US (Politico Pro $), Murkowski: Blocking Russian oil to stop Putin is worth the 'hurt' to Americans (Politico)

KETANJI BROWN JACKSON NOMINATION: Senate Dems set Supreme Court nomination hearing schedule (E&E News), Supreme Court pick Jackson gears up for Hill meetings (E&E $), Tucker carlson called out after 'racist' attack on Ketanji Brown Jackson (HuffPost, Media Matters, Yahoo)

POLITICS: Lawmakers improve on LCV environmental scorecard (E&E $), As Biden pivots, Democrats seek to salvage his domestic agenda (New York Times $)

CITIES & STATES: California sets biomethane targets for utilities in bid to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (Utility Dive)

IMPACTS: 5 signs of how climate change is unraveling Earth’s ecosystems (Vox), From food to floods, Africa 'not ready' for climate stress, its scientists say (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Risks to global supply chains rising as climate change worsens, IPCC warns (FT $)

WILDFIRES: Eerie smoke-filled dust storm, or ‘haboob,’ descends on Paraguay (Washington Post $), Fight fire with fire: Burns lessen fire risk in Pinelands (AP)

• JIM FIRE: Firefighters battle blaze in Southern California forest (AP, LA Times $)

HURRICANES: Florida University to design ‘Category 6’ hurricane wind and surge simulator (Washington Post $)

WATER: Seed funding needed for major water recycling project in Southern California (CAL Matters)

RENEWABLES: After 139 years of coal mining, peabody expands into solar (Bloomberg $), First Solar shares sink after revenue miss, disappointing guidance (CNBC), Solar rally fizzles as First Solar says supply woes will persist (Bloomberg $)

BATTERIES: A controversial lithium mine in Nevada is one step closer to operation (Grist), Before invasion, Ukraine’s lithium wealth was drawing global attention (New York Times $)

LNG: Fuel-starved Europe offers push needed for US gas projects (Bloomberg $)

METHANE: China’s energy sector methane emissions dwarf US and Russia (Bloomberg $)

OIL & GAS: $100+ oil is the new reality after Russia's Ukraine invasion (Axios), OPEC+ agrees gradual output hike despite oil price rally, intensifying Russia supply fears (CNBC), Why $100 a barrel oil could be bad for the energy transition (Bloomberg $)

WOOD: Wood-burning stoves raise new health concerns (Undark)

EVs: As Biden plans EV charger rollout, location questions take the fore (Utility Dive), Biden touts charging network expansion in State of the Union amid 85% jump in 2021 US EV sales (Utility Dive), Ford creates business unit for electric cars (Axios)

FASHION: Big retailers are getting into the secondhand market. Will that change how we shop? (Grist)

BREATHING EASIER: Astrazeneca targets planet-warming inhalers to cut emissions (Bloomberg $)

AGRICULTURE: Brazil’s beef industry starts to tackle methane emissions (FT $), Crop insurance comes to grips with climate change (E&E News)

BOOKS: Extreme North by Bernd Brunner — a voyage through an imagined past (FT $)

BUSINESS: Software helps businesses reduce carbon pollution (Yale Climate Connections)

CARBON PRICING: Carbon tumbles most in almost a decade as war spooks investors (E&E $)

CARBON REMOVAL: How carbon-eating rocks could help fight climate crisis (The Guardian)

WILDLIFE: This map shows where biodiversity is most at risk in America (New York Times $)

INTERNATIONAL: Tunisia announces clean electricity projects worth $410 mln, seeks further investment (Reuters)

• Former Navy secretary: The addiction to fossil fuels empowers Putin (The Hill, Ray Mabus op-ed)
• Latest energy wake-up call: How long must we depend on autocratic petro-states? (The Hill, Andreas Karelas op-ed)
• GOP objections to Emmett Till Act says more about them than us (Black Wall Street Times, Ezekiel Walker op-ed)
• Will closing Australia’s biggest coal-fired power station early really cost thousands of jobs? (The Guardian, Graham Readfearn op-ed)
• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates our need to break away from oil (Yes Magazine, Mark Trahant analysis)
• The EU must learn from its failed gas policy (Energy Monitor, Sonja van Renssen op-ed)
• I’m mad Biden didn’t address student loan debt in his SOTU address (Black Wall Street Times, Tanesha Peeples op-ed)
• The Supreme Court’s ‘major question’ (Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board $)

Tony Watts Asks For Help ‘Designing an Experiment’ To Confirm Urban Heating Myth Watts’ Project Debunked A Decade Ago

One of the constant false criticisms deniers make of climate science is that researchers can only get funding for studies that prove climate change is caused by fossil fuels, so they therefore only design and carry out such experiments, and that’s why the overwhelming majority of climate science finds that burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gasses are warming the planet. 

Which makes the latest disinfo effort from Anthony Watts so amusing, because not only does he set out to do exactly the thing deniers accuse legitimate climate scientists of doing, he’s not even smart enough to figure out how to do it himself!  

Much like how he sought to recruit new essays from his audience with their best climate denial takes, but had to postpone announcing winners because Watts got Covid and moved (and definitely not because he needed more time to get entries that weren’t written in crayon on flattened-out tin foil hats before announcing the results of “the ifrst [sic] ever WUWT Essay contest” on Friday), he has again turned to his blog readers for help. 

Apparently half-inspired by denier-for-hire Willie Soon’s latest deliverable, which retreads ground Watts covered a decade ago, about how “the final product” of temperature data that’s been corrected, “is so much warmer than stations that have not been encraoched [sic] upon by urbanization and artificials urfaces [sic] such as asphalt, concrete, and buildings,” Watts blogged. 

This is the argument that climate scientists have been tricked by the fact that cities are warmer than rural areas and as a result, the temperature record showing warming is actually wrong because really it’s just showing that more thermometers are located at airport runways and next to A/C units blowing hot air on them. 

But here’s the thing: Watts and other deniers only “know” that urban areas are warmer than rural ones because of climate science, so while they may think they “discovered” this error, the reality is that scientists have known about the issue all along, and corrected for it, and those are precisely the changes to the raw data that deniers claim are actually making warming look worse. And Watts very well knows that there’s no substance to this theory, because he was personally involved in a research project testing exactly that hypothesis, and despite being funded in part by Koch money, it confirmed the consensus science was accurate.

Which is probably why Watts is not actually trying to prove his hypothesis with a scientific “experiment”, so much as trying to simply assert its validity with a demonstration. That’s where the other half of his inspiration comes from. Back in 2011, Watts set out on a lengthy, time-consuming effort to prove that a video illustrating the “high school physics” of carbon dioxide warming a small glass jar was actually a great big fake, mostly because it wasn’t shot in a single take and Watts himself couldn’t figure out how to make it work. Watts, of course, blames Al Gore for his inability to get a “high school physics” demonstration right. 

Now, 11 years later, Watts has come up with the genius idea of combining these two old, failed pursuits, to create a “visualization” of the concept that urban thermometers bias the dataset. He’s thinking about using “red and blue food coloring” in some vials to show how mixing them up clouds the record. “Some lab equipment, some tubing and some pumps will be needed.” He’s not sure for what, exactly, though, and welcomed “a discussion of ideas on how to do this accurately and convincingly.” 

Anthony Watts has had ten years to come up with a decent reason for his continued crusade against the climate consensus. And even the financial support he’s getting from the Heartland Institute in recent years doesn’t seem to have given him any fresh inspiration. 

Instead, he’s left reliving his glory days- but even those sucked! 

He’s struggling to come up with his own “high school physics” demonstration to revive the hypothesis disproven by a project he himself worked on, and a decade later and none the wiser he’s left crowdsourcing ideas from his blog audience who, as it turns out, are not exactly chock full of valuable science-communications advice.

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