[TheClimate.Vote] July 7, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Tue Jul 7 10:49:28 EDT 2020

/*July 7, 2020*/

[Reuters video]*
****U.S. court orders shutdown of Dakota Access pipeline*
Reuters
A U.S. District Court ordered the shutdown of the Dakota Access oil 
pipeline, in a big win for the Native American tribes who have fought 
the line's route across a crucial water supply.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa0MRiz-Pl4

[get ready to vote]
*Biden's Big Climate Decision: Will He Embrace His Task Force's Goals?*
The former vice president's allies and some of the Democratic Party's 
leading progressives have quietly started to forge common ground to 
shape a climate plan before Election Day...
- -
These days, the average cost of new wind or solar power is cheaper than 
the costs to keep running most coal-fired plants, according to an 
analysis last year by two energy research groups. And renewable energy 
generation in the United States has now surpassed coal, according to the 
federal Energy Information Agency.

Yet in places like Pennsylvania, a state Mr. Trump won by less than one 
percentage point in 2016, the natural gas industry is responsible for 
thousands of high-paying union jobs. So when Mr. Biden, during a pointed 
exchange with Mr. Sanders on the debate stage in March, declared "no new 
fracking," some allies were alarmed, including former Gov. Edward G. 
Rendell, who said he called the campaign to voice concern.

Mr. Biden has proposed ending new fracking leases on federal lands, but 
not a national ban, something his campaign quickly clarified.

Andrew Baumann, a Democratic strategist and pollster, said that there 
were limits to how far Mr. Biden could push on climate matters without 
encountering political risk -- but that he was "pretty far away from that."

"It is possible to go too far," he said. "But the amount that is there 
to go bolder before you reach that level is really a lot bigger than 
people think."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/politics/joe-biden-climate-change.html

[look to the North at sunset]
*Rare night clouds may be warning sign of climate crisis*
Noctilucent clouds, on the edge of the atmosphere, are increasingly seen 
outside of polar regions...
- -
Noctilucent clouds form in the mesosphere, the rarefied upper atmosphere 
with little moisture and intensely low temperatures. The scant water 
vapour there can freeze on to specks of smoke from meteors burning up in 
the atmosphere, creating the crystals that form noctilucent clouds. The 
mesosphere is coldest in summer, allowing the crystals to form...
- -
Much of the moisture needed to form the clouds comes from methane, a 
potent greenhouse gas that produces water vapour when it breaks down in 
the upper atmosphere. And as methane pollution has increased, so 
noctilucent clouds have grown more common and more widespread.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jul/06/rare-night-clouds-may-be-warning-sign-of-climate-crisis

[misinformation battleground]
*Climate Denial Spreads on Facebook as Scientists Face Restrictions*
The company recently overruled its scientific fact-checking group, which 
had flagged information as misleading
By Scott Waldman, E&E News on July 6, 2020
A climate scientist says Facebook is restricting her ability to share 
research and fact-check posts containing climate misinformation.

Those constraints are occuring as groups that reject climate science 
increasingly use the platform to promote misleading theories about 
global warming.

The groups are using Facebook to mischaracterize mainstream research by 
claiming that reduced consumption of fossil fuels won't help address 
climate change. Some say the planet and people are benefitting from the 
rising volume of carbon dioxide that's being released into the atmosphere...
Facebook is an effective way to expand their reach to larger audiences, 
say members of the groups, which have traditionally been tied to 
conservative media outlets. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of people 
have been exposed to misleading and false claims about rising 
temperatures, according to an E&E News analysis.

Now, Facebook appears to be weakening a firewall it has built to 
fact-check such climate denialism. The company recently overruled a 
fact-check from a group of climate scientists, in a move that concerns 
researchers about a potentially new precedent by the platform that 
permits inaccurate claims to be promoted if they're labeled as opinions.

At the same time, Facebook has placed restrictions on one of the 
country's most visible climate scientists, Katharine Hayhoe, of Texas 
Tech University and a lead author of the Fourth National Climate 
Assessment. She has been blocked from promoting videos related to 
climate research, a move that has limited her efforts to refute false 
claims.

Facebook has previously identified Hayhoe's educational climate videos 
as "political." As a result, they are categorized by the platform as a 
social issue that requires Hayhoe to register them by in part providing 
personal information that she fears could expose her to personal attacks.

Hayhoe said Facebook is a valuable platform for reaching people outside 
of partisan boundaries. She said it's where she is connected to friends 
and family, former college roommates, and other people who might be 
skeptical about climate change...
It's a way to share science with them that doesn't feel like a political 
attack, she said. Placing her work on the same level as groups that seek 
to confuse the public about climate science gives climate denial 
organizations equal footing that's unwarranted, she said.

"What I share on Facebook is explicitly for the purpose of people 
feeling comfortable sharing it with their family, information on 
positive hopeful solutions, information on unexpected messengers from 
faith groups, the military, conservative spokespeople," Hayhoe said. 
"Facebook is a place where people are connected across tribal lines in a 
way they aren't connected from other platforms."

A sampling of recent posts from groups that reject climate science 
reveal their use of misleading claims to reach tens of thousands of 
followers, who often reshare the content with their own contacts.
They include groups that have received funding from the fossil fuel 
industry as well as foundations that oppose environmental regulations. 
Some of them have worked to confuse the public about the scientific 
consensus around climate change.

The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow is one of these groups. It has 
used Facebook to claim that burning more fossil fuels will help ocean life.
Scientists long ago determined that human-caused climate change was 
harming sea life by acidifying the ocean, which absorbs about a quarter 
of the CO2 pollution and 90% of excess heat caused by global warming.

In one post, the group wrote "our Oceans, all of them, are benefitting 
enormously by the increase in carbon dioxide which man's 
industrialization has produced. The global warming scaremongers have 
falsely preached that additional carbon dioxide could lower the pH of 
the oceans to where they become acidic, killing off ocean life."

The Heartland Institute, which has received funding from fossil fuels 
companies and foundations opposed to regulations, also made questionable 
claims.

"If you believe that sea level rise is a massive problem, you've bought 
into the corporate media's alarmist narrative," the group claimed, 
linking to a video making a series of false climate claims that are in 
opposition to the world's major science agencies. Sea-level rise has 
accelerated in the last century and could rise by 3 feet or more in some 
regions within the next 80 years, scientists say.

'A MILLION DEAD'
Heartland has taken advantage of Facebook's permissible system, spending 
almost $20,000 in recent years to promote dozens of posts that 
inaccurately describe the Green New Deal and promote coal-fired power 
plants. In one post, Heartland attempts to diminish people's role in 
causing global warming.
"Manmade climate crisis promoters reject inconvenient evidence of 
natural climate change. They're the real deniers," it said.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, which has a number of former 
employees working in senior positions across the Trump administration, 
recently posted that banning fossil fuels wouldn't stop climate change. 
In another post, the group claimed that Democratic climate policies 
carry mortal risks.

"Had the Green New Deal been enacted 20 years ago, we might have been 
looking at a million dead from COVID due to mass transit use," the group 
wrote.

E&E News previously reported that Facebook intervened to reverse a 
fact-check that prevented a group--which claims that human-caused carbon 
dioxide is beneficial--from advertising on the site. By labeling the 
false claim as "opinion," Facebook permitted the group, named the CO2 
Coalition, to resume promoting misinformation (Climatewire, June 23).

The claim in question, posted last year, was taken from an editorial in 
the conservative Washington Examiner in which two members of the CO2 
Coalition argued that climate models were overblown. The assertion was 
not supported by consensus, peer-reviewed climate science.
In response, a group of scientists with Climate Feedback--a part of 
Facebook's approved fact-checking network--evaluated the post and found 
that it relied on "cherry-picked" evidence and was misleading. It was 
marked as "false."

But weeks later that label was quietly removed. Officials with the CO2 
Coalition said they were helped by a "conservative contact" at Facebook 
whose intervention resulted in getting the decision reversed.

Facebook is now in a position where it has to explain why it allowed its 
fact-check to be rolled back, said Brendan Nyhan, a political science 
professor at Dartmouth College who has studied the effectiveness of 
fact-checking.

Among the questions the decision raises is whether the reversal signals 
a broad change of policy or a unique episode, he said. Nyhan also said 
the company needs to ascertain whether the reversal created a loophole 
in its fact-checking initiative.

"Facebook needs to articulate clear standards for its fact-checking and 
define and justify any exceptions to those policies," Nyhan said. "If 
fact-checkers are not the ones making determinations about content on 
the platform, the public and Facebook users have the right to know."

Facebook's explanation for its fact-check of the CO2 Coalition is 
disputed by groups on both sides.

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said Science Feedback made the decision to 
roll back the fact-check. He said opinion pieces are not subject to the 
same level of scrutiny as scientific posts. He said Science Feedback, 
not Facebook, made the decision to reverse the "false" label.

"Opinion is separate and apart; there is an opinion rating but it is 
separate and apart from false or true, or partly false or partly true," 
Stone said.

Both the CO2 Coalition and Science Feedback said Facebook made the 
decision to pull back the fact-check because it was an opinion piece.

"The Facebook team informed us that it should not be subject to a fact 
check and we should remove the rating," said Scott Johnson of the 
Science Feedback network, which includes Climate Feedback, in an email.

On Wednesday, a coalition of environmental and political groups wrote a 
letter to Facebook's oversight board asking the company to crack down on 
climate denial and to close the opinion loophole that allows climate 
misinformation to be posted on the platform (Climatewire, July 1).

Facebook's rollback of an accurate fact-check came several years after 
it imposed restrictions on Hayhoe, a lead author of the Fourth National 
Climate Assessment who has a verified Facebook page with about 40,000 
followers.

She has used the platform to educate the public about climate science 
for more than a decade. Two years after Trump's election, Facebook 
developed restrictions on her ability to promote her posts and videos 
about climate change, even though some of them have been peer-reviewed 
by NOAA.

It started in 2018, Hayhoe said, when she was abruptly blocked from 
promoting a video in which she explained the climate benefits of clean 
energy on her Facebook page. A few weeks later, she was blocked from 
promoting a video that explained climate science for a general audience. 
The company told her that she had to be a "registered political 
organization."

The rules changed again after 2018.

Facebook revised its policy and considers climate change to be in the 
"environmental politics" advertising category. Users who want to pay to 
promote their pages, so they are seen by larger audiences, are no longer 
required to register as a political organization. But they must register 
using their legal name, social security number, and other information 
from their passport or driver's license.

That could expose scientists, especially women, to harassment, said 
Hayhoe, who has been threatened online. One critic recently sent her 
pornographic videos.

Hayhoe has declined to comply with Facebook's requirements for promoting 
her posts. She says the platform created inappropriate burdens for 
scientists who want to share objective information about climate change.

"These are the facts," she said. "These videos have been peer-reviewed, 
and I still can't boost them on Facebook."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-denial-spreads-on-facebook-as-scientists-face-restrictions/

[to younger generations: the shifting bell curve and apologies]
*It's All Hunky-Dory, but…*
06 July 2020
James Hansen and Makiko Sato
https://mcusercontent.com/0ebaeb14fdbf5dc65289113c1/images/ae789b95-208d-4cc8-a462-45b80023b656.png
Well-meaning souls, rightfully concerned about the effect of 
"gloom-and-doom" talk on young people, say that everything is 
hunky-dory, climate change impacts are exaggerated (they often are) and 
climate change is not a serious threat (unfortunately, it is).

Let's look at reality, real data for the real world.  The bell curves 
refer to summer average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, 
relative to what they were in the base period, 1951-1980.  The bell 
curve shows the frequency of occurrence of local temperature anomalies 
in units of the standard deviation, which is the magnitude of typical 
year-to-year fluctuations.  The natural, year-to-year, variability leads 
to a symmetric bell curve about the average during the base period.

The bell curve also defines the likelihood (probability) of a season 
being perceived as relatively cool, normal or hot.  One of us, in the 
1980s, colored dice with two sides blue, two white and two red, to 
represent those chances.  The dice are now loaded, really loaded.  The 
past decade has summer temperatures that yield only one side of a die 
being part blue and part white.  Four sides of the die are now red (hot) 
and one side is deep red for extreme heat, more than three standard 
deviations warmer than in 1951-1980.  Dark red (22%) is creeping onto 
another side (one side is 1/6, which is about 16.7%).

The shift depends on where you live and the season.  We updated graphs 
in our longer "Regional Climate Change and National Responsibilities."  
The subtropics in summer and the tropics all year are becoming 
uncomfortably hot, and will become unlivable if we stay on our present 
fossil fuel emissions course.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2020/20200706_ShiftingBellCurvesUpdated.pdf
Old people should not apologize for revealing such facts.  They should 
apologize for letting political leaders accept bribes to stay the fossil 
fuel course.  Young people deserve more responsible leadership.

There is no reason to panic.  It all can be hunky-dory, if we use common 
sense.  Don't let politicians milk your anxiety about the future to fund 
their ideology, a sure-fire path to more fruitless ideological warfare.

A focus on personal emissions, or even national emissions, has little 
effect.  The underlying requirement is a steadily rising carbon fee, 
readily accepted by the public if the funds are distributed uniformly to 
all.

International technological cooperation will be required.  We are all 
together in the same boat.
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/
https://mailchi.mp/caa/its-all-hunky-dory-but?e=c4e20a3850

[See this video - thanks to Dr Renee Lertzman: "this short beautiful 
film on these themes of personal and collective grief, body and earth"]
*BECOMING OCEAN*
When climate-change journalist Eiren Caffall was diagnosed with chronic 
kidney disease, she realized that, like the planet, she was slowly 
drowning. But instead of allowing the nearly invisible effects of her 
condition to overwhelm or paralyze her, Caffall uses her illness to look 
at the crisis of climate change in a way that makes "…problems we so 
often push away because of… their apparent distance from daily life, 
suddenly become intimate and human-scale." (Naomi Klein, Author: This 
Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate)
Dir: Scott K. Foley
Written: Eiren Caffall
https://vimeo.com/234066329

[fire returns to the desert]
*Arizona reels as three of the biggest wildfires in its history ravage 
state*
Extreme weather has contributed to the vast blazes – with the pandemic 
complicating the emergency response
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/02/arizona-wildfires#img-1
For residents of Tucson in southern Arizona, the Santa Catalina 
Mountains in the Coronado national forest are known as a hub for hiking, 
mountain biking and other outdoor recreation.

But on 5 June lightning ignited a wildfire that has grown to engulf over 
118,000 acres. The fires are still only 58% contained. Called the 
Bighorn fire, it is the eighth-biggest in state history, and it has 
transformed the Catalinas into a hub for the study of the impacts of 
climate change. Nasa satellite photos show large scar marks left by the 
fire.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/02/arizona-wildfires

[Important talk on misinformation and propaganda]
*Prof Phil Howard & Nicola Aitken in conversation: "Lie machines: 
misinformation from in a Post-Covid*
July 6, 2020
Oxford Martin School
In the age of Covid-19, the lie machine is working to undermine trust in 
institutions like the World Health Organization, pushing a narrative 
that scientists and experts should not be trusted. And this has worrying 
implications for global health.

Join us online as Professor Phil Howard, author of *Lie Machines: How to 
Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News 
Operations, and Political Operatives* and Nicola Aitken, Policy Manger 
at Full Fact, discuss the implications, power and effectiveness of these 
lie machines and how we can utilise them or shut them down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_gHc3mQUZo

[destabilization video talks- pt 1 of 2]
*High Risk of Simultaneous Crop Failures in North America, Europe, and 
Asia From Stuck Jet Streams*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyJEBKwkljE
[part 2 of 2]
*Cascading Simultaneous Crop Failures a HUGE Risk from Unfortunate Jet 
Stream Resonances with Earth*
Jul 5, 2020
Paul Beckwith
The latest science on jet stream changes shows that resonances with the 
Earth (from topography; land-ocean temperature contrasts) are a very 
high risk to cause simultaneous crop failures in North America, Europe, 
and Asia which would spike food prices and cause immediate geopolitical 
conflict and mayhem. Not only that, but near Greenland we can expect 
more occurrences of blocking, and the first half of 2020 we have 
experienced a persistent block over Siberia giving unprecedented long 
duration heat anomalies blowing away anything that we have seen before. 
Blocking can also occur in the Southern Hemisphere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyJEBKwkljE

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - July 7, 2005 *
Rick Piltz, who resigned from the US Climate Change Science Program 
earlier in the year over the Bush Administration's aggravated assault on 
climate science, appears on Air America's "The Al Franken Show" to 
discuss the administration's hostility to science.

    Richard Pauli - 11 years ago
    This is valuable piece of history.  Piltz was one of the first to
    stand up to the Bush admin censoring and influencing science reports
    on global warming  He exposed the political influence on science
    that still harms us today.

    Richard Pauli - 2 years ago
    Piltz died in 2014 - one of the original climate change martyrs - he
    has made some solid history, important to notice.

http://youtu.be/AhJAF6nODCU

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