[TheClimate.Vote] September 28, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/September 28, 2019/

[UN warning message 70 seconds]
*Countries must brace for bigger storms due to climate change: UN report*
Sep 25, 2019
CNA
Countries must brace for bigger and more powerful storms as a result of 
climate change. A UN report released on Sep 25 said storms will continue 
to be more destructive, even if global warming is capped at 2 degrees 
Celsius.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbAaVjvhxPI


[video talk - "We are at the tipping point"]
*Is Greta Thunberg the Catalyst that Tips Humanity to Understand Huge 
Climate Risks and Finally Act?*
Sep 27, 2019
Paul Beckwith
As I marched in today's Climate Strike for in Ottawa along with 
thousands of people I had time to reflect on what is really going on. 
Many years ago I figured out that inevitably humanity would reach a 
tipping point in its understanding of the huge risks that all life on 
Earth faces from accelerating climate system destabilization. I also 
said we would likely only recognize reaching a tipping point in the rear 
view mirror, after it occurred. Is it possible that Greta Thunberg is 
the catalyst for thrusting us beyond this tipping point of 
understanding? It certainly feels like it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqLS4sjtZb0

- - - -

[Greta has some new enemies ]
*How the Climate Kids Are Short-Circuiting Right-Wing Media*
Young people like Greta Thunberg are participating in the culture wars 
while also managing to float above the fray.
by Charlie Warzel - an Opinion writer at large.

The kids aren't just all right -- they're scrambling the brains of their 
political enemies.
Last Friday, millions of people, many of them children and teenagers, 
took to the streets during the Global Climate Strike, a protest inspired 
by Fridays for Future, the international youth effort started by the 
16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The protesters' call for 
broad action to combat global warming was powerful, as was the message 
sent by their numbers: Dynamic, frustrated young people are instilling 
in the climate movement a new urgency.
Online, the climate kids' impact can be measured in a different way -- 
by how they're short-circuiting the right-wing media ecosystem that's 
partly responsible for the spread of climate skepticism. Since Friday's 
strike, pro-Trump media and conservative cable news pundits have devoted 
significant resources to turning the children of the climate movement 
into Public Enemy No. 1.
Over the weekend, Alan Jones, an Australian broadcaster for Sky News, 
delivered a monologue calling the climate-striking youth "selfish, badly 
educated, virtue-signaling little turds." Mr. Jones finished by reading 
a letter arguing that children concerned about climate change should 
"wake up, grow up and shut up until you're sure of the facts before 
protesting." The rant echoed other criticisms of the protest from the 
right. "I wish I could inject that letter into my veins," a blogger for 
the conservative site RedState wrote.
Ms. Thunberg has been the primary target of this vitriol. On Saturday, 
the pro-Trump media figure Dinesh D'Souza likened Ms. Thunberg to models 
in Nazi propaganda. Videos of her speeches have been edited to replace 
her voice with Adolf Hitler's. On Fox News on Monday evening, the Daily 
Wire pundit Michael Knowles called Ms. Thunberg -- who is open about 
being on the autism spectrum -- "a mentally ill Swedish child who is 
being exploited by her parents." (Fox News issued an apology and called 
the comment "disgraceful.") ...
- - -
This doesn't mean their enemies aren't trying -- this week, a pro-Trump 
blog feebly attempted to tie Ms. Thunberg to the billionaire George 
Soros, who has been the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. 
Online, far-right trolls are mounting an effort to harass the young 
women of the climate movement. Some of the onslaught is believed to be 
inauthentic -- 5,000 tweets by suspected bots have mentioned Ms. 
Thunberg, according to BuzzFeed News. Similarly, toxic pro-Trump 
communities have zeroed in on teenage climate protesters. As of this 
writing, three of the top 25 posts from Reddit's The_Donald forum in the 
last week were direct attacks on Ms. Thunberg. And yet, the usual smears 
don't seem to stick...
- - -
Perhaps most important is their instinctive understanding of attention 
and how to wield it as both a weapon and a tool. They understand how to 
attract attention: Their protests feature meme-able signs to capture 
interest across social media. Their events -- from global strikes to 
sit-ins in the House speaker's hallway -- are tailored to garner media 
coverage. They also know how to spot enemies looking to divert attention 
and to ignore or dismiss them.
Simply put, they don't seem to care what adults, skeptics, deniers and 
crusty politicians think of them. And they waste very little of their 
time, energy and focus work-shopping their message or bulletproofing it 
against criticism. They simply pay their enemies no attention. They're 
participating in the culture wars while also managing to float above the 
fray.
None in the movement embody this like Ms. Thunberg, who suffers no fools 
in her unsparing and blunt statements to diplomats and members of 
Congress alike. Some of this may be the result of age, what Robinson 
Meyer at The Atlantic describes as the "unique moral position of being a 
teenager," in which "she can see the world through an 'adult' moral 
lens" but "unlike an actual adult, she bears almost no conscious blame 
for this dismal state."
She does not allow her message -- that the youth of the world have been 
betrayed by past generations' inaction on climate change -- to be 
co-opted by fawning lawmakers, and she dismisses their praise for her as 
a tragic role reversal that forces her to be the adult in a room of 
well-dressed children. And she seems keenly aware that her rivals' 
critiques are merely efforts to divert her attention. "It seems they 
will cross every possible line to avert the focus, since they are so 
desperate not to talk about the climate and ecological crisis," she 
wrote of her "haters" on Twitter on Wednesday.
The usual tactics of the right-wing media break down in the face of this 
type of resolve. While outrage campaigns intended to work the refs and 
appeal to fears of appearing partisan may work with lawmakers or 
companies in Silicon Valley, the youth climate movement appears wholly 
unmoved. While the levers for climate progress proposed by solutions 
like a Green New Deal are undoubtedly political, the broader movement's 
desire -- an inhabitable earth for all -- is far from partisan. The 
stakes, as the movement sees it, are too high to focus attention on the 
trolls. And the pressure, from conservative pundits and Breitbart 
contributors, doesn't just get dismissed, it goes unnoticed.
Faced with a political enemy that pays it no attention, the right is 
palpably frustrated. They argue that children have become, as a headline 
on an essay by Commentary's Noah Rothman put it, "Child Soldiers in the 
Culture wars," are insulated against criticism because of their age and 
innocence. "How do you respond to statements like that?" the Fox News 
host Tucker Carlson said recently of Ms. Thunberg's forthright speeches. 
"The truth is you can't respond. And of course, that's the point."
But as the past week shows, the right is perfectly willing to attack the 
children. Instead, the problem is that, as Mr. Carlson seems to realize, 
there's just not a very resonant counter message for a youth movement to 
protect the planet. Polling also suggests that there's an increasingly 
shrinking pool of conservative listeners for it, with a majority of 
Republicans under age 45 now identifying as concerned about climate 
change. And so it feels increasingly likely that, when it comes to 
climate, the right-wing media, which is skewed toward an aging 
Republican audience, may simply be obsolete.
In other words, it's not that the right can't attack the climate kids 
because of their age. Rather, it's that because of their age, the 
right's attacks feel especially feeble.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/opinion/climate-change-greta-thunberg.html

- - -
[counterattacking Greta]
*Attacks on Greta Thunberg Are About More Than Anti-Environmentalism*
By Mat Hope -September 15, 2019
"Freak yachting accidents do happen…"
That was how British businessman, Trump ally, and Brexit bankroller 
Arron Banks responded to the news that Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teen 
who inspired the school climate strikes movement, was sailing to America 
to attend the UN Climate Action Summit. His scorn was not unique.

Many people have already spilled thousands of words of commentary 
explaining how personal attacks on Greta -- often lobbed by old white 
men, sometimes mocking her Aspergers -- are unacceptable. But 
understanding where those attackers come from, ideologically and 
professionally, casts an important light on some of their dark statements.

That's because a large subsection of the commentariat driving the abuse 
of Greta is part of an established network of radical free-marketeer 
lobby groups -- a network that has firm ties to the fossil fuel industry 
and funders of climate science denial...
Greta first shot to prominence in Europe, and that's where the earliest 
mudslinging emerged.

Banks' tweet was one of the most high-profile. He is among the most 
prominent funders of Brexit, with long-standing ties to the UK 
Independence Party and its former leader Nigel Farage. UKIP's 
politician, Neil Hamilton, was one of the first to be called out for 
posting what was perceived by many as a bullying tweet directed at 
Greta, who is 16 years old...
- - -
It's perhaps unsurprising to find that many of the U.S. commentators 
verbally assaulting Greta also have ties to the Heartland Institute, 
given the organisation's Big Oil funding and long-history of promoting 
climate science denial.

The institute's website published a long blog post by one of its 'policy 
experts', Gregory Wrightstone, who attempted to refute many of 
Thunberg's arguments for climate action. "It is time for her to go back 
to school to learn what she doesn't know and to unlearn so much of what 
she has been taught," he concluded.

Read more of DeSmog's coverage of the global school strikes for climate

Many other critics of Greta in the U.S. are tied to another of 
Heartland's funders, the Koch family, owners of the U.S.'s largest 
private energy company.

Marc Morano, communications director of campaign group Committee for a 
Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and a regular speaker at Heartland 
Institute events, has a long history of spreading misinformation about 
climate change.

He was also one of the loudest critics of Greta's visit to the U.S., 
appearing on Ezra Levant's Rebel Media to describe the young activist as 
"bait" to entrap critics of climate policy. Levant was an intern at the 
Charles Koch Foundation and later worked for the Koch-funded Fraser 
Institute.

Morano's arguments were echoed on CFACT's website by Joe Bastardi, a 
meteorologist who worked for AccuWeather, a private forecasting company 
that in the 1990s was involved with the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) 
-- a now-defunct fossil fuel industry front group that strongly opposed 
global greenhouse gas reduction policies.

CFACT has received significant donations from oil companies including 
Exxon and Chevron, as well as oil billionaire Richard Scaife.

One of Greta's most prominent critics has been Steve Milloy, a 
self-styled "pioneer" fighting against "faulty scientific data used to 
advance special, and often hidden, agendas." Milloy is, among other 
things, an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

[map tracks of organized interconnected counter-attack 
https://www.desmog.uk/map/144 ]
The CEI's director of energy and environment, Myron Ebell, was part of 
of President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency transition team, 
and is infamous for making regular media appearances spreading 
oft-debunked misinformation on climate change.

CEI has raised millions of dollars in donations from the fossil fuel 
industry, including ExxonMobil, and the Koch family foundations....

The Koch network's influence isn't confined to the U.S. media. One of 
the most vicious attacks on the teenage climate activist has come from 
Brendan O'Neill, editor of the Koch-funded website Spiked. He wrote of 
Greta:

"This poor young woman increasingly looks and sounds like a cult member. 
The monotone voice. The look of apocalyptic dread in her eyes. The 
explicit talk of the coming great 'fire' that will punish us for our 
eco-sins. There is something chilling and positively pre-modern about Ms 
Thunberg."

O'Neill's comments were "proof" that O'Neill and many others who write 
on Spiked's platform had "run out of ideas", according to Guardian 
columnist Aditya Chakrabortty.

One such regular contributor is James Delingpole, who now predominantly 
writes for the alt-right website Breitbart. One of his latest articles 
describes Greta as the "Patron Saint of the Age of Stupid".

Delingpole's articles frequently cite the UK's premier climate 
misinformation outlet, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Like 
Breitbart, the Conservative Woman website, edited by GWPF-director Kathy 
Gyngell, also hosts multiple articles assailing Greta. Breitbart was 
formerly run by Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's former chief 
strategist...

Which brings us back to Arron Banks.

Bannon played a key role in the early days of the Brexit campaign 
spearheaded by Banks and Farage. Bannon was also a director of Cambridge 
Analytica, the political consultancy embroiled in a scandal over the use 
of big data during the Brexit referendum and which was involved with 
Banks and Farage's Leave.EU group.

The Brexit Party is at the forefront of efforts to lobby for the UK to 
leave the European Union with no deal on October 31. That eventuality 
would possibly open the door for mass deregulation of the UK's markets, 
a shredding of the UK's environmental protections, and a fire sale of 
national assets for favoured U.S. companies -- causes close to the 
hearts of all the groups behind the individuals attacking Greta...
https://www.desmog.uk/map/144
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/09/15/attacks-greta-thunberg-right-wing-free-market-network

- - - -

[The "reverse pied piper" - where children lead the rats out of town]
SEPTEMBER 25, 2019
*Reverse Pied Pipering Climacide*
by DAVID UNDERHILL
The following remarks were delivered on September 20, 2019 during the 
Rise for Climate at a downtown square in Mobile, Alabama, the city's 
part in the Global Climate Strike.

The Pied Piper played a hypnotic tune and led the children away. But 
that was long ago. Now the children are calling out and taking the lead, 
and we quasi-fossil adults are trying to catch up and follow along. 
That's as it should be. In the long spans of time we have only a few 
blinks left, but the young look into their murky future and see the 
shapes of ominous, menacing things awaiting them there. They did nothing 
to create these threats, but they are the ones who must grapple with 
them. This gives the children an urgent motive to act, and we must let 
them do it.

But we can offer some boosting droplets wrung from experience.

The apocalypse loomed as the year 1000 approached. Either the End would 
come or the Lord would return or both together. Neither happened. As the 
next millennium approached techno nerds panicked. They feared a mass 
computer coma in the switch of dates from 1999 to 2000. That didn't 
happen. And various cults have prepared their members for the Big 
Goodbye. They calculated the arrival of this event by vague signs in the 
skies and fanciful readings of religious texts. And they've been wrong 
every time.

This history could stoke doubt about the impending global climate 
crisis. The difference now is that the predictions of wreckage are drawn 
from current, observable data and from projections of that data into the 
near future. And those inclined to believe the ancient expectations of 
ruin should recall that most of those terminal visions involved floods 
and fires and suffocating fumes enveloping the helpless cursed – which 
is exactly what the best available science says we are facing.

Years ago this prospect was called global warming. But that phrase 
didn't convey all that would occur as greenhouse gasses built up in the 
atmosphere. Besides rising temperatures in most places, some would get 
colder. Both rain and drought would increase. Also storms and calms.

So the term climate change has become the common description. It more 
accurately conveys the complex phenomena underway. But it can be 
mistaken to suggest that the things happening now are just another 
episode in the constant flux of climate throughout all time. That's not 
true. The changes snaring us have no precedent in the geologic record 
for their speed and intensity.

This is societal suicide, and the proper name for how it comes about 
isn't global warming or climate change but climacide. The convulsing 
climate is not something just happening on its own. This is being done 
by somebody. Climacide.

Lately capitalists and capitalism have often been fingered as the chief 
culprits. This accusation can easily overlook the energy and innovation 
that capitalism has brought to the world, which has served very 
generously those positioned to take advantage of the benefits, while 
leaving many others behind.

But the very name of this system tells you the main value it 
serves--capital. And when capital is invested it demands a return on 
that investment in the form of profit. All of you trying to pay off 
student loans understand this. Somebody invested in you by providing a 
loan. Yet when you pay it back you owe not only the loan but interest 
too. Over years of paying interest, plus the loan itself, you might 
deliver to the lender once-and-a-half or twice what you originally 
borrowed. The same applies to your credit card, and your car note, and 
your home mortgage.

Multiply that by millions of other people doing the same thing, and you 
have a system that requires constant economic expansion. This is the 
only way of generating enough resources to pay back one-and-a-half times 
or double the amount borrowed on all the outstanding loans.

And our leaders certify this system by making it seem essential and 
inevitable. As governor Kay Ivey said about the proposed I-10 Mobile 
river toll bridge and highway across the bay on tall stilts: this 
project "is critical not only to Mobile and Baldwin counties but the 
entire Gulf Coast Region and would be important for the continued growth 
of all Alabama."

That is an entirely familiar and normal demand for perpetual growth on a 
finite planet, which is unsustainable and insane. This form of 
capitalism must end if climacide is to end.

Some alternatives are reformist, others would be abrupt and wrenching 
shifts of systems. Some have been outlined in detail by sober 
visionaries. For an example Google steady state economy and Herman Daly.

But no purely economic alteration of systems can fully address 
climacide. Also implicated is the compulsion to treat the world like a 
warehouse of resources for extraction and use. This attitude has 
produced abundance and luxury for those able to reap the rewards, 
although it has left the rest deprived. But it is also laying waste to 
the biosphere upon which all life depends.

Climacide will continue unless this warehouse attitude surrenders to one 
that restores humanity to its place as a creature among the multitudes 
sharing the planet, rather than the Supreme Being ruling and exploiting 
all else. Many of us elders are dinosaurs, unable and uninterested in 
adapting to this necessity. We and our clotted notions are bound for 
extinction.

The children will have to take our place and set the pace. We will be, 
at best, foot soldiers following the youngsters' vanguard.

In some versions of the Pied Piper tale the children marched off to 
their doom. In others they simply vanished. And in some they migrated to 
a more hopeful and promising place than the one they left.

The outcome isn't ordained. Fate is chosen. It would be an uplifting 
honor to follow the children in the reverse Pied Piper throng.
DAVID UNDERHILL lives in Mobile, Alabama. He can be reached at 
drunderhill at yahoo.com.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/25/reverse-pied-pipering-climacide/


[know where your information comes from]
*Accurate information is the foundation of a functioning democracy*
Climate Feedback is a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from 
fiction in climate change media coverage. Our goal is to help readers 
know which news to trust.

    "Is this article consistent with the latest thinking and knowledge
    in science?"
    "Would experts in this field endorse the main message of this article?"

    These are the types of questions our "feedbacks" are designed to
    answer. If the feedback is positive, you can generally assume the
    information you're reading is of high credibility. If it's negative,
    however, you may want to read with extra care and attention -- some
    of the information contained and conclusions reached are not
    consistent with science.

https://climatefeedback.org/



[a new type of denial is "deflection"]
*Michael Mann: exposes new form of climate denial*
Sep 5, 2019 YouTube video 9 mins
The Hill
Climate Scientist Michael Mann shares his thoughts on which contenders 
did the best and worst in the CNN climate townhalls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie8DPzuSHRs


[big media offshoot]
*Kathryn Murdoch Steps Out of the Family Shadow to Fight Climate Change*
You know her last name, and her father-in-law, Rupert, the conservative 
media mogul. Now, she hopes to remove partisan obstacles to climate 
progress that her family's empire helped build.
Image"I'm not saying I have all the answers -- I don't," said Kathryn 
Murdoch. "But what I know and what I feel very strongly is that sitting 
around not doing anything is the wrong answer."
- -
"There hasn't been a Republican answer on climate change," Ms. Murdoch 
said. "There's just been denial and walking away from the problem. There 
needs to be one."

"I'm not saying I have all the answers -- I don't," she said, "But what 
I know and what I feel very strongly is that sitting around not doing 
anything is the wrong answer."

To those who defend climate science and warn of the risks that global 
warming poses, her emergence and use of her fortune and network of 
powerful friends and her famous name -- which she describes as a 
"double-edged sword" -- is welcome. "Murdoch media are notorious amongst 
climate scientists for their constant stream of misinformation on 
climate change," said Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for 
Climate Impact Research. "I can see how a thinking person who marries 
into that family might feel an urge to counter at least a little bit of 
the damage they do."..
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/climate/kathryn-murdoch-climate-change-voting.html


*This Day in Climate History - September 28, 2007 - from D.R. Tucker*
President George W. Bush speaks at a "conference" on climate change in 
Washington. The speech and the "conference" are widely viewed as 
political efforts to obscure the Bush administration's overall lack of 
interest in taking serious steps to reduce carbon pollution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/world/americas/28iht-28climatesub.7674315.html
  http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2007/09/28/201917/bush-climate-speech-follows-luntz-playbook-technology-technology-technology-blah-blah-blah/
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

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