[TheClimate.Vote] December 2, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*December 2 , 2019
*/

[UN Secretary to AP]
*U.N. chief warns of 'point of no return' on climate change*
MADRID -- U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sunday that the 
world's efforts to stop climate change have been "utterly inadequate" so 
far and there is a danger global warming could pass the "point of no 
return."

Speaking before the start Monday of a two-week international climate 
conference in Madrid, the U.N. chief said the impact of rising 
temperatures -- including more extreme weather -- is already being felt 
around the world, with dramatic consequences for humans and other species.

"The point of no return is no longer over the horizon," Guterres told 
reporters in the Spanish capital. "It is in sight and hurtling toward us."

Delegates from almost 200 countries will try to put the finishing 
touches on the rules governing the 2015 Paris climate accord at the Dec. 
2-13 meeting, including how to create functioning international 
emissions trading systems and compensate poor countries for losses they 
suffer from rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change.

Guterres cited mounting scientific evidence for the impact that man-made 
emissions of greenhouse gases are already having on the planet, 
including record temperatures and melting polar ice.

But he insisted that his message was "one of hope, not of despair. Our 
war against nature must stop and we know that that is possible."

Countries agreed in Paris four years ago to limit global warming to well 
below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), ideally 1.5C (2.7F) by the end 
of the century compared with pre-industrial times. Already, average 
temperatures have increased by about 1C, leaving little room for the 
more ambitious target to be met.

Guterres said growing demands from citizens, particularly young people, 
have shown there is widespread desire for climate action.

"What is still lacking is political will," he said. "Political will to 
put a price on carbon. Political will to stop subsidies on fossil fuels. 
Political will to stop building coal power plants from 2020 onwards. 
Political will to shift taxation from income to carbon. Taxing pollution 
instead of people."
- - -
Organizers expect around 29,000 visitors, including some 50 heads of 
state and government for Monday's opening, as well as scientists, 
seasoned negotiators and activists during the two-week meeting.

Some of the world's largest carbon emitters -- the United States, China 
and India -- will be represented by ministers or lower-level officials.

The U.S. administration of President Donald Trump, which has announced 
the intention to withdraw from the Paris agreement, is represented by 
Marcia Bernicat, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for 
Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. House 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leading a delegation of Democratic lawmakers to 
the talks.

More than 5,000 police officers are charged with keeping the summit 
safe, Spain's Interior Ministry said Sunday. Although authorities have 
stepped-up border controls and cybersecurity measures, authorities have 
kept the country's terror alert one level under the highest, where it 
has been ever since extremist attacks in Tunisia and France in mid-2015.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/01/climate-change-point-no-return-074610


[Irony at work]
*Environmental Organizers Aren't Just Fighting the Climate Crisis, 
They're Fighting to Unionize*
- - -
Behind every climate strike, airport sit-in, or pipeline shutdown is a 
group of hard-working individuals who've made it their life's mission to 
save the world. Some organizers are employed full-time by major 
environmental organizations; others may be contractors. Either way, they 
can attest that the work is never easy--and their employers don't always 
give them the compensation they rightly deserve.

In fact, as the climate crisis reaches heightened levels of urgency, 
many workers are trying to organize healthier workplaces to prevent the 
seemingly inevitable burn out that often accompanies the daily grind to 
solve climate change. Climate workers are turning to labor unions...
https://earther.gizmodo.com/environmental-organizers-arent-just-fighting-the-climat-1840053921



[Huffpo summary]
*What You Need To Know From The Recent Findings Of 7 Big Climate Reports*
It is, in a word, "bleak."
By Alexander C. Kaufman
The world is rapidly accelerating toward climate catastrophe, our 
financial institutions have their foot on the gas and pinning our hopes 
on Chinese leadership to desperately wrench the steering wheel away from 
the guardrail looks increasingly foolish.
- - -
Those are just a few findings contained in seven reports published in 
the past week examining the climate emergency ahead of next week's 
United Nations summit in Madrid.

The 25th Conference of the Parties was intended to be a forum for 
countries to up the ante from the 2015 Paris Agreement. They were 
supposed to come with new, more ambitious pledges to meet the targets 
and build on the momentum of the four years since the agreement was 
reached. Instead, the reports out since Nov. 20 illustrate the extent to 
which the world's most powerful institutions are still engaged in a game 
of lethal procrastination that threatens to speed up global ecological 
collapse and sow chaos throughout human civilization in the decades to 
come.

Here's a quick breakdown of what the reports found:
*1. Global temperatures are on pace to rise as much as 3.2 degrees 
Celsius by the end of the century -- more than double what scientists 
project to be a safe range that remotely resembles our world today. *
- - -
To keep warming within 1.5 degrees (about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the 
world will need to cut emission 7.6% every year from 2020 to 2030, the 
report published Monday found.

"The summary findings are bleak," the assessment stated.
- - -
*2. The top 10 fossil-fuel-producing countries are on track to extract 
120% more oil, gas and coal than would be consistent with 1.5 degrees of 
warming... *
- - -
*3. The world's biggest asset managers remain heavily invested in 
climate-polluting industries -- and do little if anything to convince 
those companies to change... *
- - -
*4. The insurance industry looks stunningly unprepared for the 
"extremely high" risks of climate change... *
- -
*5. New investments in wind, solar and other renewable energy projects 
dropped sharply in the developing world last year. Coal, meanwhile, hit 
a record high... *
- - -*
**6. China is building more new coal plants than exist in all of the 
European Union... *
- - -
*7. The vast majority of Americans want the federal government to do 
more to curb climate change and protect the environment... *
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-change-reports-paris-agreement_n_5ddeef03e4b0d50f329be7bc



[Comparisons noticed]
*5 ways Trump and his supporters are using the same strategies as 
science deniers*
November 27, 2019
Lee McIntyre - Research Fellow, Center for Philosophy and History of 
Science, Boston University
While watching the House impeachment hearings, I realized my two decades 
of research into why people ignore, reject or deny science had a 
political parallel.

 From anti-evolutionists to anti-vaccine advocates, known as 
"anti-vaxxers," climate change deniers to Flat Earthers, science deniers 
all follow a common pattern of faulty reasoning that allows them to 
reject what they don't want to believe - and accept what they favor - 
based on a misunderstanding of how science deals with evidence.

As I've been watching the hearings, I've noticed that a number of 
characteristics of this type of reasoning are now being embraced by 
President Donald Trump and his congressional supporters.

*Characteristic acts*
There are five common tactics used by science deniers.

In 1998, brothers Mark and Chris Hoofnagle (a lawyer and a physiologist) 
wrote an early blog post about science denialism. That was followed by 
further work by econometrician Pascal Diethelm and public health scholar 
Martin McKee and cognitive scientists John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky. 
All identified the following factors as characteristic acts of science 
deniers:

    *Believing in conspiracy theories;**
    **
    **Relying on cherry-picked evidence;**
    **
    **Relying on fake experts (and dismissal of actual experts);**
    **
    **Committing logical errors;**
    **
    **Setting impossible standards for what science should be able to
    deliver.*

These elements are present when those who deny the Earth is round or who 
believe vaccines cause autism insist that there is a governmental 
cover-up of the real evidence on their topics. They can be seen when Ted 
Cruz tries to discredit climate change with talk about the anomalous 
world weather pattern in 1998 due to El Niño. And they're evident when 
intelligent design theorists complain that evolution by natural 
selection still has not been proven.
*Alternative reality*
Trump and his defenders in Congress echo this pattern. Even though Trump 
has firsthand knowledge of some of the facts under dispute - whereas his 
supporters may not - all seem to have bought in fully to the idea that 
the actual political situation is not the one pictured in the mainstream 
consensus of facts and evidence, but instead is based on an alternative 
reality.

Here are the five ways Trump and his allies use the same strategies as 
science deniers:

*Conspiracy theories:* During his questioning of Ambassador Bill Taylor 
and other witnesses at the impeachment hearings, Republican counsel 
Steve Castor repeatedly pursued a debunked conspiracy theory involving 
an alleged plot in which the Ukrainian government - and not the Russians 
- interfered with the 2016 presidential election because they were out 
to get the president.

*Cherry-picking:* Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European 
Union, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that President 
Trump told him, "I want nothing from Ukraine. I want no quid pro quo." 
Trump and his supporters focused on this statement as evidence of his 
innocence, despite the fact that in other testimony by Sondland that 
day, he said, "Mr. Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for arranging 
a White House visit for President Zelensky…Mr. Giuliani was expressing 
the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew that 
these investigations were important to the president."

*Discrediting experts:* President Trump has repeatedly - and falsely - 
claimed that State Department and CIA employees such as Bill Taylor, 
George Kent, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman and others who have testified 
in the impeachment hearings are "Never Trumpers," a term for Republicans 
who do not support Trump - and who therefore have no credibility. His 
supporters have latched onto this tactic. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of 
Missouri said on Sept. 20, after the whistleblower complaint was made 
public: "It looks to me like another deep-state attack."

*Illogical reasoning:* Trump supporters have claimed that Ukrainian 
President Volodymyr Zelensky never complained that he felt pressured by 
Trump to do the investigations into the Bidens that Trump sought. Trump 
himself has described the July 25 conversation he had with Zelensky in 
which he asked for the investigations as "perfect." But news reports 
have shown that Zelensky did in fact feel pressured, and analysts have 
pointed out that Zelensky would risk losing crucial U.S. support were he 
to anger Trump by saying that he felt pressured.

*Double standard for opponents:* Trump claimed that written testimony 
from the whistleblower was unacceptable, despite the fact that he 
himself had only given written testimony in the Mueller investigation. 
Some of his supporters seem to agree and have tried to compel the 
whistleblower's in-person testimony.

*Partisan logic*
What might be behind the similarities between Trump defenders and 
science deniers?

Perhaps, like science denial, all fact denial is basically the same.

All ideology supports the reflex to believe what you want to believe.

Scholars have studied the role of identity in shaping belief and 
concluded that sometimes even empirical beliefs can be tribal, 
reflecting what the other people on your team want you to believe. 
Adherence to a belief is not always based on evidence.

The danger, of course, is that even as new facts come in, people won't 
change their minds. This is the direct opposite of good empirical reasoning.

It is the hallmark of science that beliefs should be based on evidence, 
and that people should be willing to change their beliefs based on new 
evidence. This means that people should be able to specify in advance 
what evidence, if it existed, would be sufficient to get them to change 
their minds.

But are Trump and his congressional supporters doing that?

Like science deniers, no amount of evidence seems sufficient to change 
their partisan beliefs that the phone call with Zelensky was proper and 
that Trump "did nothing wrong."

Even when the facts are overwhelming, congressional Republicans seem, 
like science deniers, willing to contort their beliefs and torture their 
logic, to stick to the party line because that is who they are.

As Sen. Lindsey Graham recently put it, "I don't care what anybody else 
says about the phone call … The phone call, I've made up my own mind, is 
fine."

In science, such behavior means that one is eventually read out of the 
profession - you're not fired, your tenure isn't revoked, but you're no 
longer taken seriously anymore.

In politics, it is not yet clear what the consequences might be.
https://theconversation.com/5-ways-trump-and-his-supporters-are-using-the-same-strategies-as-science-deniers-127076


***This Day in Climate History - December 2, 1970 - from D.R. Tucker*
The United States Environmental Protection Agency is established.
http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-history

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