Climate Change with Scott Amyx

Welcome to “Fridays with Scott” segment of the Climate Change program. In this multi-part series on clean, renewable energy, I will layout the demand for renewables, investment appetite for clean energy, economic forces to switch to renewables, a high-level framework for large-scale energy production and advancement in technologies that will help increase energy output while decreasing costs. Stay tuned next Friday as I discuss demand for renewable energy from industries and the EU. And to learn more, visit

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. Happy Valentine’s Day! Who doesn’t love polar bears, right? But what happens when dozens of hungry polar bears come to your town looking for food? About 50 Arctic polar bears have invaded the little town of Belushya Guba, located on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago stretching in the Arctic Ocean. The Russian officials in the region have declared a state of emergency. One local official commented, “I have been in Novaya Zemlya since 1983, but there have never been so many polar bears in this area.” Polar bears have entered homes and businesses. Some have chased local residents, taken over playgrounds and feasted on garbage. The local residents are scared to leave their homes or let their children go to school. So why are the polar bears invading this remote Arctic town when they should be hunting seals on sea ice? According to the World Wildlife Fund, it’s because of ongoing loss of their sea ice habitat resulting from climate change. According to a study in the journal Nature, the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Arctic sea ice is declining at a rate of nearly 13 percent per decade. The U.S. Geological Survey warned that two-thirds of the global population of polar bears could be wiped out by 2050 because of thinning sea ice. Polar bears are literally dying from starvation. Keep listening to this Climate Change series to find out how you can make a difference. Stay tuned next time to find out why we shouldn’t rejoice about bugs going extinct. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. Recent poll from the George Mason Center on Climate Change Communication in conjunction with Yale indicated that 72 percent of respondents said that climate change is personally important, which marks an all-time high since the poll began in 2008. 69 percent of Americans are worried about climate change and 65 percent believe that climate change is affecting the weather in the U.S. The lead researcher commented, “American have been subjected to an aggressive climate change disinformation campaign for decades. The fact that most American can see the effects of climate change with their own eyes is one of the reasons why more and more Americans are seeing the disinformation campaign for what it is, an effort to deceive us.” This, of course, has been the proactive lobbying by oil & gas special interests to discredit climate change science. Politicians who are the beneficiaries of generous campaign contributions have become the mouthpieces for the fossil fuel industry, as witnessed, by the recent White House nomination of former oil lobbyist David Bernhardt to run the Department of Interior in order to open up public U.S. lands to oil and gas drilling and mining. In another poll by the AP and the University of Chicago, they also found high percentages of Americans accept the science of climate change. However, the polls also show that many lack understanding on how serious the issue is or what it will take to reverse the trend. Many economists and policymakers support carbon tax but material change to climate change will not happen until we can channel capital to large-scale clean, renewable energy. When asked if respondents would be willing to pay an extra dollar a month on their utility bill to combat climate change, 57 percent agreed. But when asked to pay $10 a month, the support dropped to 28 percent. The willingness to pay and the sense of urgency among the general public is still lacking according to researchers. So how can we convey the seriousness and urgency for the public to take action? Stay tuned next time to find out why polar bears are terrorizing a Russian island town. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. Rising sea levels pose serious risk to institutional real estate investment. New York City, San Francisco and other major cities around the world represent a large share of total investment and carry a heavy weight in institutional real estate portfolios. Almost all are major coastal cities with their business districts are close to sea level. Coastal cities and their real estate markets face considerable risks from rising sea levels. Given significant portfolio allocations to these markets, institutional real estate portfolios have considerable exposure to climate change. According to a study by Four Twenty Seven, a research firm, looking at the total value of properties in the top 50 metropolitan areas in the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries Property Index or NPI, more than 24 percent of the NPI value is in metro areas whose central cities are among the 10 percent of cities most exposed to sea-level rise. This amounts to more $130 billions of real estate. 67 percent of the NPI’s value or $360 billions is in metro areas whose primary cities are among the 20 percent most exposed in the U.S. On a global scale, institutional investors such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies currently invests a combined $2.53 trillion in real estate. According to industry tracker Preqin, 499 institutional investors have $1 billion-plus commitments in real estate. But what happens as climate change destroys trillions of dollars in real estate and coastal cities? Who will lose out? All of us. It’s our retirement savings and investments that are managed by pensions funds, insurance and investment companies. We have the most to lose. Stay tuned next time to find out the results from a recent poll on Americans’ perception of the seriousness of climate change. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

Welcome to “Fridays with Scott” segment of the Climate Change program. So what is this Green New Deal that we’re hearing about? Well first it’s not new. The term Green New Deal first appeared in 2007 when Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times wrote: “If you have put a windmill in your yard or some solar panels on your roof, bless your heart. But we will only green the world when we change the very nature of the electricity grid -- moving it away from dirty coal or oil to clean, renewables. And that is a huge industrial project -- much bigger than anyone has told you. Finally, like the New Deal, if we undertake the green version, it has the potential to create a whole new clean power industry to spur our economy into the 21st century.” Friedman’s article was then taken up by the Green New Deal Group who wrote their report in 2008 and eventually the United Nations Environment Programme, Green Party and now certain Democrats such congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey are bringing it to mainstream. If we look at the latest report from the organization Data for Progress, authors Greg Carlock and Emily Mangan, here is their blueprint: Transform to a Low-Carbon Economy 100% clean and renewable electricity by 2035 Zero net emissions from energy by 2050 100% net-zero building energy standards by 2030 100% zero emission passenger vehicles by 2030 100% fossil-free transportation by 2050   Stay tuned next Friday as I go deeper into the how. And to learn more, visit

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. According to a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Antarctic glaciers have been melting at an accelerating pace, almost sixfold, over the past four decades due to warmer ocean water. The researchers predict even faster sea level rise in coming decades. The Antarctic lost 40 billion tons of melting ice from 1979 to 1989. That figure jumped to 252 billion tons lost per year beginning 2009. The bottom line is that Antarctica is losing a lot of ice and there are many vulnerable areas across the East and West Antarctic, with few signs of slowing as oceans grow warmer. The findings are the latest sign that the world could face catastrophic consequences if climate change continues. Scientists have already predicted that seas could rise nearly three feet globally by 2100 if the world does not decrease burning fossil fuels. Stay tuned next time to find out how climate change could affect your retirement funds. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. According to a new study in the journal Science, the oceans are heating up 40 percent faster on average than a UN panel estimated five years ago. The research indicates that ocean temperatures have broken records for several straight years. One of the important aspect about the oceans is that it’s absorbing 93 percent of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases we pump into the atmosphere. If the ocean wasn’t absorbing as much heat, the surface of the land would heat up much faster than it is now, endangering us from a rapid extinction. But that comes at the hefty price of killing the marine ecology, rising sea levels and creating more frequent, destructive hurricanes and floods. A fifth of all corals have already died in the past three years. If we do not take global action to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels, the researchers indicate that ocean warming alone would cause sea levels to rise by about a foot by 2100, and the ice caps would contribute more. That would cause profound damages from severe coastal flooding and storm surge. Stay tuned next time to find out how quickly Antarctica is losing ice. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change flash briefing. Did you or someone that you know experience last week’s harsh winter storm in the Midwest? The arctic cold outbreak last week will go down in history as the coldest, shattering all-time cold records. It created wind chills as cold as minus 60s below zero. But how you explain such a cold winter in a world that’s getting warmer? Normally the polar vortex or a deep mass of frigid air spins in the Arctic but sometimes the mass of cold air becomes weak and wobbles out of it polar home. When the vortex is disturbed, the cold air can spill out into regions populated by people in North America and Europe. There are many reasons that could affect polar winds such as weather patterns, storms or other disturbances but one major change is the dramatic warming events called sudden stratospheric warming which splits the polar apart and pushes the vortex to the south where people live. This weakening of the polar vortex and the subsequent spillover of frigid air has become more common over the last two decades. Scientists believe that Earth will experience more extreme weather as the effects of climate change play out. A study in the journal of Nature Communications last year indicated that the Arctic warming trend will lead to more frequent severe winter weather in the northeastern portion of the U.S. Stay tuned next time to find out about the latest research on rising ocean temperatures. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.

Welcome to “Fridays with Scott”. The bully who smashed my nose I just want to be able to leave the air vent open Watch out! It’s the Yellow Dust Dirty air affects us all The Clean Energy > Clean Planet challenge And to learn more, visit

This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing. The 2017 Hurricane Harvey is tied with Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cyclone on record, inflicting $125 billion in damage. One of those affected was Samuel Saldivar. He was trying to bring his elderly parents and his brother’s four grandchildren to safety from their flooded home when his van was tossed into the water by a strong current as they crossed a bridge. Samuel managed to escape through a window but his parents and the four grandchildren died in the submerged van.   As global temperatures increase, we will see more intense and frequent hurricanes. One idea to weaken hurricanes is to place offshore wind farms in the oceans to suck the energy out of hurricanes and to force them higher into the sky, resulting in less rainfall and less destruction when they make landfall, all the while generating clean energy. Today’s wind farms often switch turbines off during high winds, so current wind farms aren’t a good defense against hurricanes. But wind turbines scheduled to hit the market by 2020 may be strong enough to withstand hurricane winds. Stay tuned next time to find out why well-intended climate change policies are not slowing down global warming. And to learn more, visit https://ScottAmyx.com/.