[TheClimate.Vote] January 13, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*January 13, 2020*/

[Trump family tweets suspected]
*Police contradict claims spread online exaggerating arson's role in 
Australian bushfires*
Donald Trump Jr was among those who retweeted misleading figures 
published by News Corp
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/08/police-contradict-claims-spread-online-exaggerating-arsons-role-in-australian-bushfires
- - -
[Information battles according to DeSmogBlog.com]
*These Climate Science Deniers are Spreading Misinformation about the 
Australian Bushfires*
Thursday, January 9, 2020
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/01/09/these-climate-science-deniers-are-spreading-misinformation-about-australian-bushfires
- - -
[Australian blog]
*It's climate change on top of drought, heat and wind, not arson, that's 
behind Australia's fires*
https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2020/01/its-climate-change-on-top-of-drought.html
- -
[BBC Video report]
https://twitter.com/i/status/1215034651489820673
- - -
[AFP is ]
*Australia bushfires spark 'unprecedented' climate disinformation*
Esther Chan
AFP Published Friday, January 10, 2020
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- Australia's bushfire emergency has sparked an 
online disinformation campaign "unprecedented" in the country's history, 
researchers told AFP Friday, with bots deployed to shift blame for the 
blazes away from climate change.

The fires have claimed at least 26 lives and destroyed more than 2,000 
homes across Australia.

And they have also prompted misleading online claims about the extent of 
the blazes and a concerted campaign to blame the crisis on arson, rather 
than climate change, drought or record high temperatures...
One hashtag in particular, #arsonemergency, has gained traction rapidly 
and conservative-leaning newspapers, websites and politicians across the 
globe have promoted the theory arson is largely to blame.

Timothy Graham, a digital media expert at the Queensland University of 
Technology, told AFP his research showed half of the Twitter users 
deploying the hashtag displayed bot- and troll-like behaviour.

Those accounts were created very recently, often without profile 
pictures. Twitter handles were sequences of numbers or characters, 
sometimes a meaningless combination of both.

Their tweets focused on one subject, in this case #arsonemergency; their 
tweets were often repetitive, and some of the accounts interacted solely 
with each other.

"Our findings show a concerted effort aimed to misinform the public 
about the cause of the bushfires," Graham said.

"The campaign is nothing on the scale of what we have been seeing in 
other countries, such as the 2016 U.S. election, but this amount of 
disinformation in Australia is unprecedented."

Of the 300 Twitter accounts and 1,200-plus tweets Graham and his team 
examined, half of the users were assessed to be genuine individuals and 
they tended to hold conservative views.

'God Bless Australia'

False claims that 180 people have been charged with arson in relation to 
the bushfires appeared to give the theory credence and have been shared 
widely on social media, including by Donald Trump Jr, son of the US 
president.

"Truly Disgusting that people would do this! God Bless Australia. More 
than 180 alleged arsonists have been arrested since the start of the 
bushfire season," Trump's son falsely tweeted.

The claim appears to have sprung from a New South Wales police 
announcement of legal action against 183 people for bushfire-related 
offences.

In fact, only 24 of those people were charged over alleged 
deliberately-lit bushfires, many more were accused of unsafely 
discarding cigarettes or breaking bans on the use of equipment like 
barbecues or angle grinders during periods of high fire risk.

Authorities in fire-hit Australian states have denied arson is linked to 
some of the most serious blazes.

"There is currently no intelligence to indicate that the fires in East 
Gippsland and the North East have been caused by arson or any other 
suspicious behaviour," a Victoria Police spokesperson told AFP.

Statistics from previous bushfires show some are suspected of being 
started by arson, but it is one among several causes -- like lightning 
strikes, embers blowing from other fires, or accidents.

Scientists believe that this year's bushfire season has been more severe 
because of a prolonged drought, and climatic conditions in the Indian 
Ocean and Antarctica that have brought hot, dry, windy weather to Australia.

Many of these factors have been linked to climate change or made more 
pronounced because of carbon emissions that have raised global temperatures.

"This is a global campaign with the purpose to discredit scientific 
evidence of climate change, it's much bigger than the bushfires in 
Australia," said Graham.

"These are accounts that appear to make a coordinated effort to push the 
idea that climate change is not real because it is something they want 
to discredit."

The "bushfire emergency gave them the opportunity to jump on board and 
drag Australia onto the world stage of global disinformation."
[AFP is a global news agency delivering fast, accurate, in-depth 
coverage of the events shaping our world from conflicts to politics, 
economics, sports, entertainment and the latest breakthroughs in health, 
science and technology.]
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/australia-bushfires-spark-unprecedented-climate-disinformation-1.4761421
- - -
[Bots and trolls more than techno-imps]
*Bots and trolls spread false arson claims in Australian fires 
'disinformation campaign'*
Online posts exaggerating the role of arson are being used to undermine 
the link between bushfires and climate change
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/08/twitter-bots-trolls-australian-bushfires-social-media-disinformation-campaign-false-claims
- - -
[Is this a Culture War?]
*'This is war': actor Yael Stone gives up US green card and will now 
live in Australia to fight climate change*
Orange is the New Black star says the air travel needed for a life in 
two continents is 'environmentally unjust'...

In a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday and Instagram on Sunday, the 
actor and star of Netflix's Orange is the New Black said she came to the 
decision to give up her green card "after a long, considered process".

"We've come to understand that it's unethical for us to set up a life in 
two countries, knowing what we know," Stone said in the video, calling 
such frequent travelling "environmentally unjust"...

"I'm sitting in a dark room wondering what the hell is happening. Our 
country is on fire … and our prime minister has done absolutely nothing. 
Cold, calculated nothing. We don't have leaders, we have cowards," she 
said...

Stone said giving up her green card was a way that she could put "skin 
in the game".

"This is war, and we've only got 10 years. So let's make these 
sacrifices. Let's make these changes. Let's put some skin in the game 
and say yeah, I care, and this is what I'm going to do about it. This is 
just the beginning from me," she said.

"It's corporate wide, it's government wide, it's systematic changes that 
must happen, and they must happen yesterday. It's time to act."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/07/this-is-war-actor-yael-stone-gives-up-us-green-card-and-will-now-live-in-australia-to-fight-climate-change


[Opinion - NYTime$ - Paul Krugman]
*Australia Shows Us the Road to Hell*
The political reaction is scarier than the fires.
- - -
The climate crisis, in other words, would eventually become the moral 
equivalent of war -- an emergency transcending the usual political divides.

But if a nation in flames isn't enough to produce a consensus for action 
-- if it isn't even enough to produce some moderation in the 
anti-environmentalist position -- what will? The Australia experience 
suggests that climate denial will persist come hell or high water -- 
that is, through devastating heat waves and catastrophic storm surges alike.

You might be tempted to dismiss Australia as a special case, but the 
same deepening partisan division has long been underway in the United 
States. As late as the 1990s, Democrats and Republicans were almost 
equally likely to say that the effects of global warming had already 
begun. Since then, however, partisan views have diverged, with Democrats 
increasingly likely to see climate change happening (as indeed it is), 
while Republicans increasingly see and hear no climate evil.

Does this divergence reflect changing party composition? After all, 
highly educated voters have been moving toward the Democrats, 
less-educated voters toward the Republicans. So is it a matter of how 
well informed each party's base is?

Probably not. There's substantial evidence that conservatives who are 
highly educated and well informed about politics are more likely than 
other conservatives to say things that aren't true, probably because 
they are more likely to know what the conservative political elite wants 
them to believe. In particular, conservatives with high scientific 
literacy and numeracy are especially likely to be climate deniers.

But if climate denial and opposition to action are immovable even in the 
face of obvious catastrophe, what hope is there for avoiding the 
apocalypse? Let's be honest with ourselves: Things are looking pretty 
grim. However, giving up is not an option. What's the path forward?
- - -
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/australia-fires.html



[Here's a graphic]
*Oil Majors, Climate Lobbying and Social Media*
image https://twitter.com/planetofdub/status/1215922987913949184/photo/1
- -
[Thunberg calls on Siemens to nix Australia coal mine project]
Greta Thunberg
@GretaThunberg
It seems that @SiemensDE  have the power to stop, delay or at least 
interrupt the building of the huge Adani coal mine in Australia.
On Monday they will announce their decision. Please help pushing them to 
make the only right decision. #StopAdani
https://www.dw.com/en/thunberg-calls-on-siemens-to-nix-australia-coal-mine-project/a-51966937
- - -
[business ethics]
*Siemens will decide on Australian mine role on Monday*
As bushfires rage in Australia, the country's coal sector is in the 
firing line over its high carbon emissions. So too is Siemens over its 
role in a huge mine project that has courted much controversy.

*"We need to make sure we do not overlook indirect participation of 
problematic environmental projects"*

See videos:
Siemens Boss Meets with activists,
Siemens to decide on mine involvement
Australia: Battling the inferno with a garden hose
https://www.dw.com/en/siemens-will-decide-on-australian-mine-role-on-monday/a-51957381 




[video on Arctic sea ice loss]
*Complete Arctic Summer Sea-Ice Loss Equivalent to 25 Years of Global 
Warming: Part 2 of 2*
Paul Beckwith - Jan 12, 2020
In this video I continue to explain the latest cutting edge science from 
late 2019 on how a Blue-Ocean State (zero Arctic sea ice) in summer 
would heat the overall planet 0.71 W/m2 if cloud behaviour stays similar 
to now. If clouds behave differently, one extreme case would have heat 
forcing of 2.24 W/m2 with completely clear skies; the other extreme case 
would be 0.37 W/m2 if the Arctic skies were all overcast (over 95% cloud 
coverage; similar thickness (optical depth) to now. The middle case 
(most likely?!) with 0.71 W/m2 is equivalent to 1 trillion tons of CO2 
or 25 years of warming. i.e. global food shortages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stABcqV2CCE



[Best summary of looming political risk]
*Trump announces rule changes to exempt big projects from environmental 
review*
Fadel Allassan - Jan 9, 2020
President Trump on Thursday announced that his administration is vastly 
narrowing the scope of a 50-year-old law governing environmental reviews 
of large infrastructure and energy projects.

*Why it matters: *The proposed changes to the National Environmental 
Policy Act (NEPA) will make the process to review big-ticket fossil-fuel 
projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline easier and faster, while also 
excluding consideration of climate change.

It is the first major change to the Nixon-era law in more than three 
decades, per the New York Times.

*The big picture: *The move is the latest in dozens of regulatory 
rollbacks the Trump administration has pursued since 2017, many of them 
focusing on environmental issues.

Trump campaigned on undoing the Obama administration's aggressive 
environmental and climate agenda, though in many cases Trump has gone 
even further than simply rolling back regulations -- such as Thursday's 
move.*Details: *The change will streamline the process for acquiring 
approval for the projects -- limiting agencies to a two-year timeline 
for conducting their comprehensive environmental reviews.

It would limit the range of which projects call for a government review 
by creating a category for non-major projects, which would not require 
review. Projects that do not have major federal funding or involvement 
would no longer require assessment.

Agencies will be able to ignore "cumulative" consequences of major 
infrastructure projects -- which courts have interpreted as weighing a 
project's impact on climate change.

Instead of seeking approval for projects from the relevant agencies 
individually, the government would be required to issue one decision on 
any given project.

*What he's saying: *Trump said projects are "tied up and bogged down by 
an outrageously slow and burdensome federal approval process," referring 
to it as "big government at its absolute worst."

*The other side:* Environmental groups and Democratic politicians 
condemned the move. Richard Revesz, a professor of environmental and 
regulatory law at NYU School of Law, said the rule change could 
ultimately -- and ironically -- prolong reviews even more because 
critics will sue, tying up the projects in court.

What we're watching: To what degree companies building projects that 
undergo NEPA reviews will seek to do more comprehensive reviews than the 
law requires to defend against likely lawsuits, per Axios' Amy Harder.
https://www.axios.com/trump-environmental-review-rule-change-09ff8602-4ba2-4fc1-854a-cefa87375637.html


[Artist expression]
*An artist set out to paint climate change. She ended up on a journey 
through grief*
BY JULIA ROSEN - JAN. 11, 2020 3 AM
PORTLAND, Ore.
It had been a long day and Daniela Molnar's mind was wandering when she 
saw the shape. The shape of what was already lost; the shape of 
something new that had just come into being.

Little did she know, it was a shape that would expose a profound feeling 
of grief within her -- and then help her process it.

In literal terms, the shape was made up of missing chunks of the Eliot 
Glacier on Mt. Hood that had melted away because of climate change, 
exposing land that hadn't seen sunlight in hundreds of years. It 
flickered onto a projector screen during a lecture by a hydrologist that 
Molnar had started to tune out.
- - -
For her, the larger questions are: Can we reimagine a way to be human 
that doesn't cause so much suffering for others? And how do we make 
space for the hard conversations, individually and collectively?

This, Randall said, is what it ultimately means to grieve climate 
change. The world is transforming, and we must all reimagine ourselves 
in it.

It won't all be bad, Molnar said. "In my more hopeful moments, I 
understand climate change as an opportunity."

Perhaps the prospect of environmental upheaval will prompt humanity to 
repair its relationship with nature -- to experience a cultural shift 
that will allow us to grapple with the challenges before us, she said.

Molnar intends to keep working while she mulls these questions.

Her paintings have been praised by audiences and in art circles. She's 
shown them in New York, Portland and Boise.
https://www.latimes.com/la-sci-col1-climate-change-art-2019-story.html


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  - January 13, 2012 *
Brad Plumer of the Washington Post notes:

    "When it comes to climate change, fossil fuels nab most of the
    headlines. But a new study suggests the world should also pay closer
    attention to smaller steps to curb soot and methane. In fact, those
    measures could make all the difference in whether the world makes or
    misses its climate targets...Now, in terms of warming the planet,
    carbon dioxide -- the byproduct of burning coal, oil, and natural
    gas -- is still the most important man-made driver. But methane and
    black carbon (soot) also play a large, if less-appreciated role.
    Soot particles, for instance, absorb radiation from the sun and can
    hasten the melting of snow and ice cover when they fall to the
    ground. Some scientists think that soot is accelerating ice melt in
    the Arctic. What's more, because methane and soot cycle out of the
    air fairly rapidly (soot can wash out in a matter of days), clamping
    down on these pollutants would have an immediate impact."

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/buying-some-time-on-climate-change-with-methane-and-soot/2012/01/13/gIQAQoDrwP_blog.html


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