[GWSG] Dark money hearing; marine CDR firms; heat health costs; Europe heating fastest; TX saved by solar

[Tilley, Al]

1. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is now chair of the Budget Committee and has held ten hearings on the climate crisis. Last week he focused on the dark money financing the fossil fuel industry’s programs to mislead the American people since the 1950s. Republican responded that Democrats took dark money too, and more than Republicans (for which they provided no evidence); Senator Merkley invited them to join him in supporting the Disclose Act to expose dark money wherever it is being used. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/21/senate-budget-committee-dark-money-climate-action

2. In the National Academy of Sciences geoengineering workshop I was given the names of several projects removing carbon from seawater. Ebb is attracting the largest investments to date. It is especially low in cost, converting carbon to bicarbonate and releasing slightly alkaline water back to the ocean, where it reduces acidity locally and attracts and fixes more carbon from the atmosphere. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ebb-carbon-raises-20-million-114500598.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
Heimdal electrolyzes seawater to collect carbon in the form of carbonic acid, which is used to produce stable bicarbonate and carbonate to sink to the ocean floor. They have been through the test process and hope to have a large model installation running this year. https://carbonherald.com/worlds-first-co2-removal-plant-from-ocean-launched-by-heimdal/
Caltech’s Captura develops CO2 from seawater through electrolysis and releases the purified water back to the ocean’s surface, where it will attract more carbon from the atmosphere. What happens to the captured CO2 is still not decided. https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/4/23711098/ocean-carbon-removal-california-captura-climate-change
Carboniferous proposes to sink waste from land crops in anoxic water where the carbon it embodies will persist without decay for many centuries. https://www.carboniferous.co/ The project is a cousin of kelp permaculture, which raises kelp on frames and floats it over deep water, where the kelp is detached and sinks to hold its embodied carbon for thousands of years. https://regeneration.org/nexus/seaforestation There were other marine carbon dioxide removal projects mentioned in the workshop which escaped my notes.
SeaChange has a lot of good company. We are moving in the right direction by many paths.

3. This summer extreme heat will cost the US $1 billion in health care costs. The estimate is a projection based on analysis of health records in Virginia. The cost is expected to continue or increase in coming years. Costs will be greatest in the poorest communities, the least able to provide relief. Undiagnosed harm and people who should seek medical aid but do not are not represented in the study.   https://grist.org/health/extreme-heat-will-cost-the-us-1-billion-in-health-care-costs-this-summer-alone/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily

4. Europe is heating at over twice the global average, faster than any other continent. 16,000 weather-related fatalities were reported last year, mostly from heat waves. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-europe-fast-continents-climate.html

5. Texas is under a heat dome and expects to suffer a record-breaking heat wave for some time to come. Coal and gas plants are failing, but the state’s solar power, which has doubled since 2022, is being aided by wind power and conservation pleas in saving the state from rolling blackouts. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/28/texas-heatwave-power-grid-solar-energy

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