[✔️] December 13, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*December 13, 2021*/

/[  Satellite images of extensive tornado damage ]/
*Photos: Before and after satellite images reveal the extent of 
tornadoes' destruction**
**December 12, 2021*/
/https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2021/12/12/1063449899/tornado-damage-before-and-after-images/
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/[ Clips from NYT review of 'the first good movie about climate change'  ] /
*A Comedy Nails the Media Apocalypse*
With “Don’t Look Up,” Adam McKay makes a star-studded allegorical satire 
that shows the news media whistling past the climate-change graveyard.
By Ben Smith - - Dec. 12, 2021
After the president, a former nude model, tries to cover up a major 
discovery, two astronomers leak the news to a New York newspaper known 
for its Gothic banner, which the new film “Don’t Look Up” calls The New 
York Herald: A comet is going to destroy the earth in six months.

The journalists are sober and passionate as they get down to work in a 
glass conference room. They publish the blockbuster, then send the pair 
of scientists off to an influential morning news program, “The Daily 
Rip” — think “Morning Joe,” with a dash of “Live With Kelly and Ryan” — 
to promote the news. And that’s when things start to go awry. “Keep it 
light, fun,” one producer tells the scientists, who are played by 
Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio. As soon as they sit down, the 
Joe Scarborough proxy, played by an irresistible Tyler Perry, leans in 
to ask what’s really on his mind: Is there life on other planets?

After putting up with the morning-show-style banter for much of the 
segment, Jennifer Lawrence’s character has had enough. “Maybe the 
destruction of the entire planet isn’t supposed to be fun,” she yells. 
“Maybe it’s supposed to be terrifying and unsettling and you should stay 
up all night, every night, crying.”

The clip of her losing it on the air earns wide attention — as a meme 
that gets likes and laughs on social media. Her boyfriend, a reporter 
for a sardonic news site called Autopsy, moves fast to make the most of 
her outburst under a two-sentence headline that’s its own kind of 
internet cliché: “You Know the Crazy Chick Who Thinks We’re All Going to 
Die? I Actually Slept With Her.”...
Back at The Herald, a social media specialist delivers a slick 
PowerPoint presentation to show that the story isn’t driving much 
traffic. The news cycle moves on.

I’m a little hesitant to praise a political movie, because Hollywood’s 
political statements tend to be vapid. Talk is cheap, and an impassioned 
outburst at an awards show is free. True spontaneous passion is usually 
reserved for, say, defending the method acting involved in the show 
“Succession.” What makes “Don’t Look Up” interesting is that its writer 
and director, Adam McKay, is putting his money, and his career, where 
his mouth is...
- -
“Don’t Look Up” has a raft of stars — the president is played by Meryl 
Streep — and the familiar arc of big-budget disaster flicks like 
“Armageddon” or “The Day After Tomorrow.” But while all of Mr. McKay’s 
films have been attuned to the intertwined roles of media and politics, 
this is his first movie since “Anchorman” to put the news media squarely 
in its sights...
The new opus shows Mr. McKay as “one of America’s most incisive media 
critics, even if he’s not necessarily recognized that way,” said David 
Sirota, a co-producer of the film, who is better known as a combative 
journalist who advised Senator Bernie Sanders during his 2020 
presidential campaign and now runs The Daily Poster, an investigative 
news site.

Mr. McKay said he tried five different ideas that would allow him to 
make a movie about the climate crisis, but nothing worked. “How do you 
tell this story, the biggest story in 66 million years, without 
exaggeration, since the Chicxulub comet, bigger than the Black Plague, 
bigger than Krakatoa?” he said in an interview, describing the question 
that kept him up at night.
He hit on the solution while talking one night in January 2019 with Mr. 
Sirota, who was venting about the news media’s passive reaction to 
climate change, saying it was as though a meteor was headed for earth 
and no one seemed to get it. Soon, the two were texting plot points back 
and forth.
“Don’t Look Up” is populated by politicians and Silicon Valley madmen 
denying reality for their own reasons, behaving in ways that are 
recognizably self-interested and deluded. But the real villain is a news 
media that is forever chasing after a distracted audience and, as a 
result, simply … cannot … focus...
- -
When the two scientists emphasize the reality of the coming apocalypse 
during their appearance on “The Daily Rip,” the host played by Mr. Perry 
is singularly focused on one thing: whether the meteor will take out his 
ex-wife’s house in Florida. The other host, played by Cate Blanchett as 
a charming, hyper-educated, amoral stand-in for Mika Brzezinski, is more 
interested in the DiCaprio character’s nerdy sex appeal...
- -
Good journalism is always a balance between telling people what they 
want to hear and what they need to know. Mr. McKay’s contention is that 
decades of a hyperactive media market, and years of Facebook, Twitter, 
Instagram and TikTok, have thrown things out of whack...
- -
We don’t live, exactly, in the world of an Adam McKay satire. My 
colleague Dennis Overbye wrote last week that when he brought word of a 
dangerous asteroid to a New York Times news meeting in 1998, the 
reaction was “purposeful pandemonium,” not denial. And “Morning Joe” 
gets more criticism for doom-saying about American democracy than for 
frivolity.

When it comes to the climate story, the media’s failings are undeniable, 
and there is still a wide gap between the urgency and the attention it 
commands. However, the journalism on the topic has grown more urgent in 
tone and more widely seen over the last few years. It’s harder-edged, 
more numerate and more closely connected to the floods, fires and 
December tornadoes that have upended millions of people’s lives.

But great satire amplifies obvious truths, and there’s no doubt that 
“Don’t Look Up” contains those moments of recognition. David Roberts, 
the author of the clean energy newsletter Volts, called it “the first 
good movie about climate change.”

The global failure to slow carbon emissions, like the failure to control 
the Covid-19 pandemic, is partly a story about hard science. But it’s 
more about society’s ability or inability to take action, and the news 
media had played a large role in that willful turning away from a 
difficult truth. “Don’t Look Up” ends — spoiler alert! — badly for 
humanity, but before it does, a Fox News-style host whistles manically 
past the grave. We’ll be moving on, he tells his viewers as the world is 
ending, to “the story that everyone is talking about tonight — topless 
urgent care centers.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/12/business/media/dont-look-up-news-media.html

- -

[ compared to the greatest, realistic nuclear war satire ]
*“DON’T LOOK UP” IS AS FUNNY AND TERRIFYING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AS “DR. 
STRANGELOVE” WAS ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR*
Adam McKay’s new movie may be the first film in 57 years to equal the 
comedy and horror of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece.
Jon Schwarz
December 12 2021
*IF YOU’RE WONDERING* whether we’ll do anything about global warming 
before it destroys civilization, think about this ominous fact: It 
occupies barely any space in popular culture.

This contrasts with the gusher of movies and books in the 1960s, ’70s, 
and ’80s about nuclear war. Anyone old will remember “The Day After,” 
“War Games,” “The Planet of the Apes,” “99 Luftballons,” and many, many 
more in which nuclear terror was the central subject or background.

All of this helped generate a worldwide anti-nuclear movement, which in 
turn generated a larger audience for anti-nuclear culture, which in turn 
strengthened the movement — all in a virtuous circle. In other words, we 
avoided atomic Armageddon in part because we spent lots of time 
imagining it and so were motivated not to experience it in reality. But 
with global warming, there are few indications that we’re imagining it 
at all. We’re blithely stumbling forward in a fog, with little 
comprehension of the catastrophe we’re stumbling toward.-
Like most comedies, “Don’t Look Up” is probably best seen in theaters. 
But be prepared: As in “Dr. Strangelove,” the depth of comedy of “Don’t 
Look Up” is matched by a subtle, profound grief. The end of the movie is 
unbearably poignant; in particular, Lawrence delivers one line that is 
clearly the filmmakers explaining why they made this, even if it turns 
out to be completely futile. There may be a few movies that will make 
you laugh more and some that make you cry more, but if you add the 
laughing and crying together, it’s hard to think of anything that puts 
more emotional points on the board.

The good news, if there is any, is that when the lights come up at the 
end, you’ll realize that in reality we’re only half an hour into this 
story. We can still save ourselves if we want to. And part of that will 
have to be much more human creativity like this, in service of 
understanding the horrifying destination toward which we’re heading.
https://theintercept.com/2021/12/12/dont-look-up-review-adam-mckay-dr-strangelove/



/[  Opinion, can we attribute all confusion and despair to Madison 
Avenue?  ]/
*Why Isn't Washington Merry?*
Dec 7, 2021
ELIZABETH DREW
With yet another new viral strain threatening the recovery, US President 
Joe Biden's honeymoon period is long over, as evidenced by his falling 
approval ratings. But, in fact, morale is declining on both sides of the 
aisle as politicians navigate the no man's land between ineffectiveness 
and extremism....
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-politics-declining-morale-by-elizabeth-drew-2021-12



/ [  Video discussion -- "Change management and entrepreneurial theory  
- beware the fallacy of evil people"  ] /
*Author Tom Rosenstiel Discusses New Political Climate Thriller: The 
Days To Come*
Nick Breeze - ClimateGenn
Dec 12. 2021
In this ClimateGenn episode, I am speaking with author Tom Rosenstiel 
about his new political thriller, _The Days To Come_.

Tom has switched hats from journalist to fiction writer, possessing a 
depth of insight into how both disciplines interact with the public and 
our experience of reality?
The Days To Come is a thriller with a climate change theme that touches 
on many of the complex factors that can either accelerate or undermine 
our progress in tackling the climate crisis.

In this interview, we discuss how the book intersects with contemporary 
reality and also how fiction and journalism contribute to shaping the 
narrative we internalize that helps us envision the future.
Visit: https://genn.cc to view the series or https://patreon.com/genncc 
to support my work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR-cmqBjQc0



/[ Activist answers -- book blurb ]/
*The Pivot*
*Addressing Global Problems Through Local Action*
Steve Hamm
Columbia Business School Publishing
November 2021 -- ISBN: 9780231200905 -- 304 pages

Can societies already reeling from climate change, income inequality, 
and structural racism change for the better? Does the shock of the 
pandemic offer an opportunity to pivot to a more sustainable way of life?

Early in the crisis, a global volunteer collaboration called Pivot 
Projects was formed to rethink how the world works. Some members are 
experts in the sciences and the humanities; others are environmental 
activists or regular people who see themselves as world citizens. In The 
Pivot, the journalist Steve Hamm—who embedded in the enterprise from the 
start—explores their efforts and shows how their approach provides a 
model for achieving systemic change. Chronicling the group’s progress 
along an uncharted path, he shows how people with a variety of skills 
and personalities collaborate to get things done.

Through their work, Hamm examines some of today’s most important 
technologies and concepts, such as systems thinking and modeling, 
complexity theory, artificial intelligence, and new thinking about 
resilience. The book features vivid, informal profiles of a number of 
the group’s members and brings to life the excitement and energy of 
dynamic, smart people trying to change the world.

Part journal of a plague year and part call to action, The Pivot tells 
the remarkable story of a collaborative experiment seeking to make the 
world more sustainable and resilient.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-pivot/9780231200905



/[   Political lobbying manages to skips over discussion ] /
*Mapped: The Network of Powerful Agribusiness Groups Lobbying to Water 
Down the EU’s Sustainable Farming Targets*
Agrochemical and pesticide giants like Bayer and BASF are pushing for 
weaker action on harmful chemicals and climate goals.
By Daniela De Lorenzo and Rachel Sherringtonon -- Dec 9, 202
- -
Leading industry associations and agrochemical companies have used their 
lobbying might to push back against core European measures aiming to 
lead the transition to a more sustainable way of farming. These 
companies are connected through their various trade group memberships, 
and have deployed many tools — from networking events to lawsuits — in 
order to counter Europe’s push to phase-out pesticides and reduce 
fertilizer use...
- -
“Clearly industry has been very smart at organizing confusion around 
both concepts of science and innovation for their own interests. From a 
societal point of view, the real important question to be asked is: for 
what purposes do we want to use science and innovation?” said Cingotti. 
“The moment you start approaching these concepts this way, then you 
allow bringing in the defining challenges of humanity – such as health 
and environment protection in a changing climate and eroding 
biodiversity – and you realise that precaution might actually be an 
important driver to tomorrow’s scientific approaches to innovation.”

DeSmog reached out to all companies and trade groups analyzed in this 
research for comment.
https://www.desmog.com/2021/12/09/network-agribusiness-chemicals-pesticides-lobbying-eu-sustainable-climate-farming/



/[ The news archive - looking back - really?  only 5 votes? ]/
*On this day in the history of global warming December 13, 2000*
Having lost the Presidential election by only five votes, Vice President 
Al Gore delivers a gracious concession speech, noting: "As for the 
battle that ends tonight, I do believe as my father once said, that no 
matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shape 
the soul and let the glory out."

http://youtu.be/U4BZcH8bqRk


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