These C.C.S. projects are subsidized by Section 45Q of the federal tax code, which now offers companies a tax credit for each metric ton of carbon dioxide injected into the ground. Those enhanced oil recovery subsidies would rise under the new law, from $35 to $60 per ton. The legislation also significantly broadens the number of facilities eligible for tax credits. And those facilities will be able to claim the tax credit through a tax refund. The 45Q program is nominally a program to fight climate change. But since nearly all carbon dioxide injections subsidized by 45Q are for enhanced oil recovery, the 45Q program is actually an oil production subsidy. (...)

These subsidies create a perverse incentive, because for companies to qualify for the subsidies, carbon dioxide must be produced, then captured and buried. This incentive handicaps technologies that reduce carbon dioxide production in the first place, tilting the playing field against promising innovations that avoid fossil fuels in the steel, fertilizer and cement industries while locking in long-term oil and gas use.

Industry campaigns for C.C.S. also have shifted their decades-long disinformation fight: Instead of spreading doubt about climate science, the industry now spreads false confidence about how we can continue to burn fossil fuels while efficiently cutting emissions. For example, Exxon Mobil advertises that it has “cumulatively captured more carbon dioxide than any other company — 120 million metric tons.”

What Exxon Mobil doesn’t say is that this carbon dioxide was already sequestered underground before it “captured” it while producing natural gas and then injected it back into the ground to produce more oil. These advertising campaigns lend support to government programs to directly subsidize C.C.S.

The Coming California Megastorm

Big changes are coming for the Colorado River soon—and they could get messy

A climate-induced reckoning is playing out on the Colorado River.

The 1,450-mile-long river provides water to over 40 million people and more than five million acres of agriculture across the western United States. But years of punishing drought have reduced its flows to unprecedented levels. In response, the seven states of the Colorado River basin are expected to announce a plan next week to trim between two to four million acre-feet of their water use in the coming year—about a quarter of the total that flows through the river annually these days.


Big changes are coming for the Colorado River soon—and they could get messy (msn.com)

The rapid warming of the Arctic, a definitive sign of climate change, is occurring even faster than previously described, researchers in Finland said Thursday.

Over the past four decades the region has been heating up four times faster than the global average, not the two to three times that has commonly been reported. And some parts of the region, notably the Barents Sea north of Norway and Russia, are warming up to seven times faster, they said.

One result of rapid Arctic warming is faster melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which adds to sea-level rise. But the impacts extend far beyond the Arctic, reaching down to influence weather like extreme rainfall and heat waves in North America and elsewhere. By altering the temperature difference between the North Pole and the Equator, the warming Arctic appears to have affected storm tracks and wind speed in North America. (...)

Four times since 1900, human civilization has suffered global catastrophes with extreme impacts: World War I (40 million killed), the 1918-19 influenza pandemic (40-50 million killed), World War II (40-50 million killed), and the COVID-19 pandemic (an economic impact in the trillions, and a 2020-21 death toll of 14.9 million, according to the World Health Organization).

These are the only events since the beginning of the 20^th century that meet the United Nations’s definition of global catastrophic risk (GCR): a catastrophe global in impact that kills over 10 million people or causes over $10 trillion (2022 USD) in damage. (...)

As the United States struggles to protect its citizens against the worsening effects of climate change, returning survivors to their homes after hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters has emerged as a particular failure. Money, it turns out, is not the problem. Instead, agencies are hamstrung by rules that often make little sense, even to the officials in charge.

The result is a growing class of displaced Americans, a version of domestic climate refugees, scattered across motel rooms and trailer parks, an expanding archipelago of loss.

If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here’s what’s in store *:

The lake’s flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.

Most alarming, the air surrounding Salt Lake City would occasionally turn poisonous. The lake bed contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it becomes exposed, wind storms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah’s population.

“We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic action,” said Joel Ferry, a Republican state lawmaker and rancher who lives on the north side of the lake.

As climate change continues to cause record-breaking drought, there are no easy solutions. Saving the Great Salt Lake would require letting more snowmelt from the mountains flow to the lake, which means less water for residents and farmers. That would threaten the region’s breakneck population growth and high-value agriculture — something state leaders seem reluctant to do. (...)

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