[TheClimate.Vote] May 24, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Sun May 24 09:35:02 EDT 2020

/*May 24, 2020*/

[Opinion and action]
*Facebook Is Taking Down Posts That Cause Imminent Harm -- But Not Posts 
That Cause Inevitable Harm*
The social media platform is siding with scientists to stop the spread 
of harmful misinformation about the pandemic. If it can do it now, why 
wasn't it doing it all along?
In January 2020, Facebook executives began paying attention to a new 
coronavirus spreading across the globe. The virus was deadly and highly 
contagious, and when the World Health Organization shared guidance about 
it, the company's leadership dropped their typically hands-off approach 
to misinformation.

"We decided we would remove content that directly contradicted [the WHO] 
and could contribute to risk of imminent physical harm," Monika Bickert, 
Facebook's head of global policy management, told BuzzFeed News...
- -
When making policy decisions on things like the coronavirus, Facebook 
looks mostly to immunologists, doctors, and the medical establishment, 
another ex-Facebook employee told BuzzFeed News. "Facebook would be 
looking for -- what is the medical consensus, not what is the political 
consensus," he said.

In this case, that meant conflict.

And it could get worse for Facebook as President Donald Trump takes 
actions that oppose the health establishment's guidance. Earlier this 
week, Trump said he was taking hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug 
that the Food and Drug Administration had previously warned against 
taking outside of a hospital setting. (A study released Friday found the 
drug was tied to an increased risk of death among patients taking it.)

Asked about the possibility of removing something Trump said, Bickert 
didn't rule it out. "We have removed content from high-profile 
individuals, including the president of Brazil and the president of 
Madagascar, where statements that they've made have contradicted health 
guidance," she said. "Nobody is exempted from this policy."

"Public health is squishy by definition," Kenneth Bernard, an 
epidemiologist who's served in the WHO and set up the NSC's health 
security office, told BuzzFeed News. "We don't have enough information 
and we're dealing with biological organisms that have a variety of 
responses. Different opinions can exist."

Still, Bernard said Facebook is doing what's necessary, even if it's 
messy. "I think that it's irresponsible to allow information under 'free 
speech' to go out if it's actually going to directly cause harm," he 
said. "This is not an easy problem. I think Facebook is trying. They 
don't have a lot to go on."
more at - 
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/facebook-coronavirus-misinformation-takedowns

[waste not worry]
*Good news: Americans can freak out about coronavirus and climate change 
at the same time*
By Shannon Osaka on May 20, 2020
"Cognitive psychologists talk about a 'finite pool of worry,'" said Ed 
Maibach, a professor at George Mason University who studies climate 
communication, and one of the authors of the report. "The hypothesis is 
that people can only worry about so many things at any one time." 
Researchers expected that their respondents -- whose brains were filled 
with concerns about COVID-19 -- would have other things on their minds.

There was a sharp drop in concern about climate change following the 
2008 financial crisis, which led some experts to speculate that 
Americans simply didn't have enough bandwidth to stress over a crashing 
economy and an overheated planet. That also coincided with "the climate 
denial industry going into hyperdrive," Maibach said. Fossil fuel 
companies and conservative groups at the time were spending millions of 
dollars attempting to discredit and hamstring mainstream climate science.

But according to the study, the global pandemic and lockdown are not 
turning Americans away from the looming problem of climate change. The 
latest figures add to a trend of increasing belief in global warming 
since 2015, which some have attributed to changing demographics and 
impossible-to-ignore consequences of climate change in everyday life -- 
like record temperatures and record-shattering heat waves around the 
world. Maibach said that more than half of Americans see climate change 
as a threat to the health of their communities, an increase of 15 
percentage points over the past five or six years.

"It's one thing to understand that climate change is real, and it's 
threatening polar bears," said Maibach. "It's an entirely different 
thing to understand that climate change is real, and it's threatening me 
and my children."
https://grist.org/climate/good-news-americans-can-freak-out-about-coronavirus-and-climate-change-at-the-same-time/

[physics opinion]
*World can likely capture and store enough carbon dioxide to meet 
climate targets*
by Imperial College London
- -
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) would be used alongside other 
interventions such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, and 
electrification of the transportation sector.

The IPCC used models to create around 1,200 technology scenarios whereby 
climate change targets are met using a mix of these interventions, most 
of which require the use of CCS.

Now a new analysis from Imperial College London, published today in 
Energy & Environmental Science, suggests that no more than 2,700 
Gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide (CO2) would be sufficient to meet the 
IPCC's global warming targets. This is far less than leading estimates 
by academic and industry groups of what is available, which suggest 
there is more than 10,000 Gt of CO2 storage space globally.

It also found that that the current rate of growth in the installed 
capacity of CCS is on track to meet some of the targets identified in 
IPCC reports, but that research and commercial efforts should focus on 
maintaining this growth while identifying enough underground space to 
store this much CO2.

CCS involves trapping CO2 at its emission source, such as fossil-fuel 
power stations, and storing it underground to keep it from entering the 
atmosphere. Together with other climate change mitigation strategies, 
CCS could help the world reach the climate change mitigation goals set 
out by the IPCC.
https://phys.org/news/2020-05-world-capture-carbon-dioxide-climate.html

[opinion]
*The continuous whipsawing of climate change policy*
The continuous conflict over climate policy is whipsawing U.S. 
environmental policy. Neither side prevails. Policy radically changes 
based on the administration in power. This is a stalemate on an issue 
that  67 percent of adults believe the U.S. government is not doing 
enough to address.
- -
When different administrations ignore the absence of legislative 
authority and rely exclusively on executive power or judicial overreach 
to issue major policy decisions, those decisions can be easily 
overturned by the next administration. Such actions are not governing; 
they are whipsawing policy.

Our nation needs to return to a constitutional process in which each 
branch of government recognizes the limits of its constitutional 
authority. Our Constitution clearly places all legislative power in 
Congress. Only Congress can develop the balance between the environment 
and our economy that the American people seek. Until Congress acts, the 
actions of courts and agencies merely allow us to imagine that we have a 
national climate policy. Unfortunately, this illusion only lasts until 
the next administration.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/498698-the-continuous-whipsawing-of-climate-change-policy

[dance, I say, dance]
*HOT 10 Climate Songs*
MAY 21, 2020
As global temperatures have climbed, so have mentions of climate change 
in popular songs. Here are 10 that led the way.
By Kendra Pierre-Louis
- -
SMASH MOUTH
'ALL STAR' (1999)
- -
MOS DEF
'NEW WORLD WATER' (1999)
- -
MELISSA ETHERIDGE
'I NEED TO WAKE UP' (2006)
- -
THOM YORKE
'AND IT RAINED ALL NIGHT' (2006)
- -
PITBULL featuring SENSATO
'GLOBAL WARMING' (2012)
- -
MACY GRAY
'ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS' (2015)
- -
ANOHNI
'4 DEGREES' (2016)
- -
ONEREPUBLIC
'TRUTH TO POWER' (2017)
- -
CHILDISH GAMBINO
'FEELS LIKE SUMMER' (2018)
- -
BILLIE EILISH
'ALL THE GOOD GIRLS GO TO HELL' (2019)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/21/climate/songs-about-climate-change.html

- - -

[Yours Truly playlist offering 134 music videos]
*Collected Music for Global Warming Anthropocene and changing climate - 
playlist*
135 videos 538 views Last updated on Jan 13, 2020
Public
Search for an Anthem for Global Warming - offering this collection of 
musical anthems and political and cultural song about our changing 
future.  This is the Anthropocene - the era where humans have left their 
mark on the world.   We have a huge mess now, and worse problems for our 
future.   We have dire science, and now we are on a path of tremendous 
self-discovery, why are we so willing to tolerate such self harm?   We 
now bring relentless attention to adapting to our mess and figuring out 
how to mitigate harm.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU5dY2n3AbGHCgJ9OiDxG5hjY9QYAkQ55

[after 43 min lots of discussion of global warming ramifications]
*Mark Blyth - A Brief History of How We Got Here and Why*
Jul 16, 2019
McMaster Humanities
This lecture is part of the McMaster Department of Philosophy's Summer 
School in Capitalism, democratic solidarity, and Institutional design
https://www.solidaritydesign2019.com

This lecture sets out a brief history of two versions of capitalist 
software. The first drove the capitalist hardware during the period 
known as the Great Compression--1945 to 1980. The second did the same 
for the period many refer to as the era of neoliberalism--1980 to 2008. 
This lecture describes the bug in the system that crashed the first 
version of the capitalist software and the subsequent design of the 
neoliberal software. It also describes the bug that led to the 2008 
Great Recession, landing us in the current transitional period that we 
might describe as the era of neonationalism or Global Trumpism. A key 
idea is that the emergence of contemporary populist politics, both 
left-wing and right-wing Trumpist variants, are attempts to rewrite the 
software of capitalism once again.
https://youtu.be/tJoe_daP0DE

[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - May 24, 2006 *

"An Inconvenient Truth" is released in the United States. 
BoxOfficeGuru.com's Gitesh Pandya notes:

"Setting the limited release box office on fire was the global warming 
documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth' which opened in only four theaters 
but grossed a hefty $367,311. That gave the Al Gore pic a stunning 
average of $91,827 per location over four days. Distributed by Paramount 
Vantage, the new incarnation of Paramount Classics, Truth collected 
$281,330 over the Friday-to-Sunday portion averaging a scorching 
$70,332. Total since Wednesday stands at $490,860. Opening this weekend 
on multiple screens at a pair of theaters in both New York and Los 
Angeles, Truth will add about 60 more playdates on Friday and expand 
throughout June hoping to become the dominant doc of the summer."

(Al Gore and director Davis Guggenheim would appear on the June 2, 2006 
edition of "EcoTalk" on Air America to discuss the film.)
http://youtu.be/8ZUoYGAI5i0
http://www.boxofficeguru.com/052906.htm
http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/ecotalkblog/2006/06/al_gore_about_a.html
http://blogsofbainbridge.typepad.com/ecotalkblog/2006/06/davis_guggenhei.html

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