oil supply sigint

[grarpamp]

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/divestment-has-pulled-26-trillion-dollars-out-of-the-fossil-fuels-industry
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fossil-fuel-divestment-has-doubled-in-the-last-15-months
http://divestinvest.org/2016-report/
A little over a year ago, it was big news that thousands of people and
hundreds of institutions controlling more than $2.6 trillion in total
assets had pledged to remove their investments from stocks, mutual
funds, and bonds that invest in fossil fuel companies. A year later,
that number has doubled. According to a report by DivestInvest, a
philanthropy helping to lead the movement, more than 688 institutions
and 60,000 individual investors worth $5.2 trillion have pulled their
investments from fossil fuel companies and have reinvested a portion
of their assets into clean energy companies. In September 2015, 436
institutions and 2,040 individuals worth $2.6 trillion had divested.
For comparison, the total net worth of investors who had pulled out of
the fossil fuel market was just $52 billion in September 2014.
Divestment is increasingly seen as one of the stronger moves that
private citizens and companies can take to support the move to clean
energy. The movement started in earnest in 2011 when college students
began petitioning their institutions to remove their assets from
stocks, bonds, and mutual funds that invest in fossil fuel companies.
What was seen as a gimmick at the time appears to be gaining real
momentum a year after the Paris Climate Treaty was signed.


http://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-energy-department-balks-at-trump-request-for-names-on-climate-change-2016-12
The Department of Energy said Tuesday it will reject the request by
President-elect Donald Trump's transition team to name staffers who
worked on climate change programs. Energy spokesman Eben
Burnhan-Snyder said the agency received "significant feedback" from
workers regarding a questionnaire from the transition team that leaked
last week. From a Reuters story, syndicated on BusinessInsider: The
response from the Energy Department could signal a rocky transition
for the president-elect's energy team and potential friction between
the new leadership and the staffers who remain in place. The memo sent
to the Energy Department on Tuesday and reviewed by Reuters last week
contains 74 questions including a request for a list of all department
employees and contractors who attended the annual global climate talks
hosted by the United Nations within the last five years. "Our career
workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs,
comprise the backbone of (the Energy Department) and the important
work our department does to benefit the American people," Eben
Burnham-Snyder, Energy Department spokesman said. "We are going to
respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of
our employees at our labs and across our department," he added. "We
will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the
transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the
transition team."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/12/rapid-rise-methane-emissions-10-years-surprises-scientists
http://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/8/697/2016/
Emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane have surged in the
past decade, threatening to thwart global attempts to combat climate
change. Scientists have been surprised by the surge, which began just
over 10 years ago in 2007 and then was boosted even further in 2014
and 2015. Concentrations of methane in the atmosphere over those two
years alone rose by more than 20 parts per billion, bringing the total
to 1,830ppb. This is a cause for alarm among global warming scientists
because emissions of the gas warm the planet by more than 20 times as
much as similar volumes of carbon dioxide. In the meantime, emissions
of carbon dioxide -- the main component of manmade greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere -- have been leveling off. The new research, published
in the peer-review journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests
that the world's attempts to control greenhouse gases have failed to
take account of the startling rises in methane. The authors of the
2016 Global Methane Budget report found that in the early years of
this century, concentrations of methane rose by only about 0.5ppb each
year, compared with 10ppb in 2014 and 2015. The scientists speculate
that agriculture may be the main source of the additional methane that
has been recorded. However, they cannot be sure of all the sources,
owing to a lack of monitoring. At least a third of methane comes from
the exploitation of fossil fuels, including fracking and oil drilling
and some coal mining, where methane is viewed as a waste gas and is
frequently allowed to escape or, in some cases, flared off, which is
less harmful. Unlike carbon dioxide emissions, however, which have
been tracked in various ways since the 1950s, emissions of methane are
poorly understood and could represent a threat that scientists have
still not accounted for.