[✔️] December 14, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*December 14, 2021*/

/[  destabilized weather meets unstable politics - assorted ABC videos ]/
//*Sen. Rand Paul's aid request for tornado damage faces backlash*
The lawmaker has opposed federal disaster aid for other states.
December 13, 2021,
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is facing criticism for requesting federal aid 
for his home state despite his long track record of opposing aid for 
other regions recovering from disasters.

Kentucky was one of several Midwestern states rocked by tornadoes over 
the weekend. The storms decimated large portions of towns, and as many 
as 70 people are believed to have been killed in Western Kentucky...
- -
Paul, a Republican, shared a photo of a letter he sent to the Biden 
administration requesting "expeditious approval" of a request for 
federal aid made by Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. Requests like these by 
senators in states affected by a natural disaster are quite common, but 
Paul is facing blowback because he has opposed federal disaster relief 
for several affected regions throughout his Senate career.

Paul is a deficit hawk, who has battled against hikes to the federal 
deficit to fund all sorts of legislation. His opposition to aid for 
states impacted by disaster has often been based in his belief that 
disaster expenses should be offset by cuts elsewhere in the federal 
budget...
- -
Biden has already pledged to help Kentucky and other impacted states 
recover from the tragedy...
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-rand-pauls-aid-request-tornado-damage-faces/story?id=81730941



/[ oops, UN fails again -  video report ] /
*United Nations Security Council fails to adopt a resolution on climate 
& security | English News*
Dec 13, 2021
WION
In a big setback, United Nations Security Council failed to adopt first 
its kind resolution on climate and security. Russia vetoed the resolution..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blcYSjY-Px8



/[  positive news - 11 min video report ]/
*Artificial starch from CO2. Ground breaking new tech could reduce land 
and water use by 90%.*
Dec 12, 2021
Just Have a Think
The climate impacts of our global agriculture system have been very much 
in the news recently, especially when it comes to red meat. But one 
aspect of the industry that is much less conspicuous is the production 
of starch from crops like corn. Millions of tons of starch are used 
every year for a growing number of applications in many sectors, and the 
volumes are increasing every year. Now a Chinese research group has 
perfected a system to manufacture synthetic starch, potentially saving 
huge swathes of land and water use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2SsheLN1t8



/[  Dave Roberts leads a superb discussion on media tactics  ]/
*Discussing disinformation and media with Matt Sheffield*
How right-wing media polluted the information environment.
David Roberts
Matt Sheffield started his first conservative media website, bashing 
news anchor Dan Rather for liberal bias, way back in 2000, and in 
subsequent years became a key figure in right-wing media criticism.

But the rise of Trump left him disillusioned and he has since become a 
prominent critic of right-wing media. He now runs a site called Flux 
dedicated to accurate, inclusive journalism.
Last week, Matt and I got together on one of these live Twitter Spaces 
things — a glorified conference call, basically, to which people can 
tune in and ask questions — and had a wide-ranging conversation about 
the disinformation crisis, how it manifested in climate change, and what 
can be done about it.

The audio was archived, available exclusively to Flux and Volts 
subscribers. I hope you enjoy it..
https://www.volts.wtf/p/discussing-disinformation-and-media

- -

[ from the NYTimes ]
*A former right-wing media creator on how a ‘different reality’ became 
so prominent.*
Nov. 16, 2020 -By Adam Satariano
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/technology/a-former-right-wing-media-creator-on-how-a-different-reality-became-so-prominent.html

- -

/[ new website setup by former disinformationist ]/
*Together, we’re building the next generation of media*
MATTHEW SHEFFIELD February 24, 2021
Overcoming the deep-rooted cynicism that our media and political 
environments have created is going to be incredibly difficult. That’s 
why Flux is being built on a community-based model. We want to create 
great articles, videos, and podcasts, but we want to empower you as 
well. Conventional journalism continues to ignore women’s voices, racial 
and sexual minorities, lower-income citizens, and everyone who lives 
outside the Boston-to-DC corridor. We also strive continually to 
encourage critical thinking and to encourage everyone to fight for 
pluralism, the most important piece of a strong society.
https://flux.community/



/[  long report -- using email to deliver disinformation - clips from 
the NYTimes ] /
*Now in Your Inbox: Political Misinformation*
One of the most powerful communication tools available to politicians 
teems with unfounded claims and largely escapes notice.
Maggie Astor
By Maggie Astor
Dec. 13, 2021
A few weeks ago, Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, 
falsely claimed that the centerpiece of President Biden’s domestic 
agenda, a $1.75 trillion bill to battle climate change and extend the 
nation’s social safety net, would include Medicare for all.

It doesn’t, and never has. But few noticed Mr. Crenshaw’s lie because he 
didn’t say it on Facebook, or on Fox News. Instead, he sent the false 
message directly to the inboxes of his constituents and supporters in a 
fund-raising email.

Lawmakers’ statements on social media and cable news are now routinely 
fact-checked and scrutinized. But email — one of the most powerful 
communication tools available to politicians, reaching up to hundreds of 
thousands of people — teems with unfounded claims and largely escapes 
notice.

The New York Times signed up in August for the campaign lists of the 390 
senators and representatives running for re-election in 2022 whose 
websites offered that option, and read more than 2,500 emails from those 
campaigns to track how widely false and misleading statements were being 
used to help fill political coffers.

Both parties delivered heaps of hyperbole in their emails. One 
Republican, for instance, declared that Democrats wanted to establish a 
“one-party socialist state,” while a Democrat suggested that the party’s 
Jan. 6 inquiry was at imminent risk because the G.O.P. “could force the 
whole investigation to end early.”

But Republicans included misinformation far more often: in about 15 
percent of their messages, compared with about 2 percent for Democrats. 
In addition, multiple Republicans often spread the same unfounded 
claims, whereas Democrats rarely repeated one another’s.

At least eight Republican lawmakers sent fund-raising emails containing 
a brazen distortion of a potential settlement with migrants separated 
from their families during the Trump administration. One of them, 
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, falsely claimed that 
President Biden was “giving every illegal immigrant that comes into our 
country $450,000.”

Those claims were grounded in news that the Justice Department was 
negotiating payments to settle lawsuits filed on behalf of immigrant 
families whom the Trump administration had separated, some of whom have 
not been reunited. But the payments, which are not final and could end 
up being smaller, would be limited to that small fraction of migrants.

The relatively small number of false statements from Democrats were 
mostly about abortion. For instance, an email from Representative 
Carolyn Maloney of New York said the Mississippi law before the Supreme 
Court was “nearly identical to the one in Texas, banning abortions after 
6 weeks,” but Mississippi’s law bans abortion after 15 weeks and does 
not include the vigilante enforcement mechanism that is a defining 
characteristic of Texas’ law.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Maloney called the inaccuracy an “honest mistake” 
and said the campaign would check future emails more carefully.

Campaign representatives for Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Crenshaw did not 
respond to multiple requests for comment. The Republican House and 
Senate campaign committees also did not respond to a request for comment.

Politicians have exaggerated and dissembled since time immemorial, 
including in their email dispatches. But the volume, the baldness and 
the reach of the false claims have increased.

The emails reviewed by The Times illuminate how ubiquitous 
misinformation has become among Republicans, fueled in large part by 
former President Donald J. Trump. And the misinformation is not coming 
only, or even primarily, from the handful who get national attention for it.

The people behind campaign emails have “realized the more extreme the 
claim, the better the response,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican 
pollster. “The more that it elicits red-hot anger, the more likely 
people donate. And it just contributes to the perversion of our 
democratic process. It contributes to the incivility and indecency of 
political behavior.”

The messages also underscore how, for all the efforts to compel 
platforms like Facebook and Twitter to address falsehoods, many of the 
same claims are flowing through other powerful channels with little notice.

For fact checkers and other watchdogs, “it’s hard to know what it is 
that politicians are saying directly to individual supporters in their 
inboxes,” said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor in the School of 
Information Studies at Syracuse University.

“And politicians know that,” she said. “Politicians and the consulting 
firms behind them, they know that this kind of messaging is not 
monitored to the same extent, so they can be more carefree with what 
they’re saying.”

Email is a crucial tool in political fund-raising because it costs 
campaigns almost nothing and can be extremely effective: When campaigns 
invest in it, it routinely accounts for a majority of their online 
fund-raising. Supporters are bombarded — sometimes daily — with messages 
meant to make them angry, because strategists know anger motivates voters..

In many cases, candidates used anger-inducing misinformation directly in 
their requests for a donation. For instance, after his false claim about 
payments to immigrants, Mr. Kennedy — who began the email by declaring 
himself “mad as a murder hornet” — included a link labeled “RUSH $500 TO 
STOP ILLEGAL PAYMENTS!”

“I’m watching Joe Biden pay illegals to come into our country, and it’s 
all being paid for by raising YOUR taxes,” he wrote. “We can’t let Biden 
pass out hundreds of thousands of dollars to every Tom, Dick and Harry 
that wants to come into our country illegally.”

Several other Republicans, including Representative Vern Buchanan of 
Florida, also claimed that the payments would go to all undocumented 
immigrants. Others, including Senator Todd Young of Indiana, tucked the 
context inside emails with misleading subject lines such as “BREAKING: 
Biden wants to pay illegal immigrants $450,000 each for breaking our laws..”

Of 28 emails that included the $450,000 figure, only eight 
contextualized it accurately.

Campaign representatives for Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Young did not respond 
to requests for comment.

Another common line was that the Justice Department was targeting 
parents as “domestic terrorists” for challenging the teaching of 
critical race theory, an advanced academic framework that conservatives 
are using as shorthand for how some curriculums cover race and racism — 
or, alternatively, for challenging pandemic-related restrictions.

“Parents are simply protesting a radical curriculum in public schools, 
and Biden wants the parents labeled terrorists,” read an email from 
Representative Jake LaTurner of Kansas. “Will you consider donating now 
to help us fight back against this disgusting abuse of power?”

This misinformation — echoed in emails from Mr. Crenshaw, Mr. Kennedy, 
Mr. Young, Representative Jim Hagedorn of Minnesota and Representative 
Elise Stefanik of New York — emerged after Attorney General Merrick 
Garland sent a memorandum on Oct. 4 directing the F.B.I. to address 
threats against school personnel and school board members. (Some 
opponents of curriculums and pandemic protocols have sent death threats, 
vandalized homes and otherwise acted menacingly.) The memo explicitly 
distinguished between dissent and threats, and did not call anyone a 
domestic terrorist. The Republican narrative conflates it with a letter 
the National School Boards Association, an independent group, sent to 
the Justice Department a few days earlier.

Representatives for Ms. Stefanik and Mr. Hagedorn said the association 
had “coordinated” with the Biden administration on the letter, citing 
recent news reports. Those reports say the school boards association 
discussed the letter with the administration and, at the 
administration’s request, added details about the threats; they do not 
show the Justice Department endorsing the “terrorist” label or 
criminalizing nonviolent opposition to curriculums.

Campaign representatives for Mr. Crenshaw, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. LaTurner and 
Mr. Young did not respond to requests for comment.

Combating misinformation in emails is difficult both because of the 
private nature of the medium and because its targets are predisposed to 
believe it — though Emily Thorson, a political scientist at Syracuse, 
noted that the fact that the recipients were likely to already be 
staunch partisans reduced the chances of misinformation reaching people 
whose views would be changed by it.

Professor Thorson said what concerned her more was that — unlike much of 
the misinformation on social media — these claims came from people with 
authority and were being spread repetitively. That is how lies that the 
2020 election was rigged gained traction: not “because of random videos 
on Facebook but because it was a coherent message echoed by a lot of 
elites,” she said. “Those are the ones that we need to be most worried 
about.”

Mr. Luntz, the Republican pollster, runs frequent focus groups with 
voters and said they tended to accept misinformation uncritically.

“It may be a fund-raising pitch, but very often people look at it as a 
campaign pitch,” he said. “They think of it as context, they think of it 
as information — they don’t necessarily see this as fund-raising, even 
though that’s what it is. And so misleading them in an attempt to divide 
them from their money is pure evil, because you’re taking advantage of 
people who just don’t know the difference.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/politics/email-political-misinformation.html



/[ another review - video 30 min ]/
*DON'T LOOK UP MOVIE REVIEW 2021 | Double Toasted*
Dec 9, 2021
Double Toasted
DON'T LOOK UP MOVIE REVIEW 2021 | Double Toasted - Today at Double 
Toasted we have our Don’t Look Up review. In this funny video, we take a 
look at the Don’t Look Up trailer before going in-depth into our Don’t 
Look Up movie review. We discuss all the performances, along with 
showing you the Don’t Look Up Ariana grande scene, and discussing her 
performance. We also touch on the Don’t Look Up ending scene and the 
Don’t Look Up credits which you should stick around for. What did you 
think about Don’t Look Up? Let us know in the comment section below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlPPTTVtra8



/[   Nick Breeze interviews ] /
*Prof. Peter Wadhams | Can we remove billions of tonnes of CO2? And 
methane?*
Dec 8, 2021
Nick Breeze ClimateGenn
In this ClimateGenn episode, I am speaking to professor Peter Wadhams 
from the University of Cambridge about his recent research for a book he 
is writing on the viability of greenhouse gas removal from the atmosphere..

Some of these are also referred to as negative emissions technologies, 
or ‘nets’  and are widely included in national emissions reduction plans 
despite none being proven at scale today.

We discuss the viability of various proposed techniques including tree 
planting, bioenergy capture and storage as well as direct air capture 
and ocean proposals including farming kelp and the use of diatoms for 
large-scale sequestration.

In the last segment we discuss the risks posed by Arctic methane 
releases and two proposed techniques for dealing with a potential 
methane emergency, whereby multiple   billions of tonnes of the potent 
greenhouse gas are released at once.

These are controversial proposals despite policymakers assuming they 
will work in the future. The danger of these suppositions is compounded 
by the fact that many research projects are embryonic and underfunded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMTElDc6fg0

/
/

/
/

/[  Thwaits glacier is well studied, but new discoveries move the 
predictions ] /
*Ice shelf holding back keystone Antarctic glacier within years of failure*
Breakup of the Thwaites eastern shelf will ramp up sea level rise
13 DEC 2021 - PAUL VOOSEN
An alarming crackup has begun at the foot of Antarctica’s vulnerable 
Thwaites Glacier, whose meltwater is already responsible for about 4% of 
global sea level rise. An ice sheet the size of Florida, Thwaites ends 
its slide into the ocean as a floating ledge of ice 45 kilometers wide. 
But now, this ice shelf, riven by newly detected fissures on its surface 
and underside, is likely to break apart in the next 5 years or so, 
scientists reported today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The most dramatic sign of impending failure is a set of diagonal 
fractures that nearly span the entire shelf. Last month, satellites 
spotted accelerating movement of ice along the fractures, says Erin 
Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University, Corvallis, who is 
part of a multiyear expedition studying the glacier. The shelf is a bit 
like a windshield with a series of slowly opening cracks, she says. 
“You’re like, I should get a new windshield. And one day, bang—there are 
a million other cracks there.”...
- -
The newest wrinkle is the growth of the diagonal fractures, which 
stretch more than 40 kilometers from the grounding line all the way to 
the offshore mountain. Although the ice directly behind the mountain 
still seems stuck, GPS stations placed during the first field season 
show slippage along the fracture zone is allowing other ice to maneuver 
around the mountain, which is likely to speed up the crack up. “It’s got 
enough freedom now that it can reroute itself around,” Pettit says.

With several seasons left in the ITGC campaign, researchers will be able 
to watch as the shelf disintegrates—and they’ll have to retrieve their 
instruments before the ice cracks, with several fissures only 3 
kilometers away from their former campsite. The ice shelf failure will 
be a warning that Thwaites, and the rest of the West Antarctic Ice 
Sheet, could begin to see significant losses within decades, especially 
if carbon emissions don’t start to come down, Pettit says. “We’ll start 
to see some of that before I leave this Earth.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/ice-shelf-holding-back-keystone-antarctic-glacier-within-years-failure

- -

  [  AGU presentation ]
*C34A-07 - Collapse of Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf by intersecting 
fractures. (Invited)*
Wednesday, 15 December 2021
[graphics] - 
https://agu.confex.com/data/abstract/agu/fm21/2/6/Paper_978762_abstract_922569_0.png
*Abstract*

    The Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (TEIS) buttresses one third of
    Thwaites Glacier. Removal of TEIS has the potential to increase the
    contribution of Thwaites Glacier to sea level rise by up to 25\%.
    Recent research shows that the ice shelf is losing its grip on a
    submarine shoal that acts as a pinning point and the shear margin
    that separates TEIS from the Thwaites Glacier Tongue has extended,
    further weakening the TEIS connection to the pinning point. A
    sequence of Sentinel-1 radar imagery shows that parallel wing and
    comb cracks have recently formed rifts at high angles to the main
    shear margin and are propagating into the central part of the ice
    shelf at rates as high as 2km per year. We use satellite data,
    ground-penetrating radar, and GPS measurements to suggest that final
    collapse of Thwaites Glacier’s last remaining ice shelf may be
    initiated by intersection of rifts with hidden basal crevasse zones
    within as little as 5 years.

    The central part of TEIS has no obvious surface crevasses and smooth
    surface topography, except for the surface expression of a
    pronounced basal channel aligned parallel to ice flow. Despite this
    smooth surface, ground-penetrating radar shows a weak zone of thin
    ice and complex basal topography, including numerous basal
    crevasses, that is not in local hydrostatic equilibrium. This local
    disequilibrium suggests the presence of elevated vertical shear
    stresses that further weaken this critical part of the ice shelf.
    GPS stake network observations show no measurable regional strain in
    the horizontal plane because large-scale flow is being accommodated
    by the lateral shear margin.

    In the near future, the propagating rifts are likely to intersect
    this weak zone, triggering rifting along the basal crevasses and,
    subsequently, along the basal channel and a into secondary set of
    basal crevasses on the eastern side of the basal channel. This
    ``zigzag’’ rift sequence would disconnect the main flow from the
    influence of the pinning point (and compressive arches) and will
    ultimately lead to a complete disintegration of the ice shelf.*
    *

*Plain-language Summary*

    The Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf is the floating terminus of the
    Thwaites Glacier, one of the fastest changing glaciers in Antarctica
    and contributing as much as 4\% of global sea level rise today. This
    floating ice shelf is stabilized offshore by a marine shoal and acts
    as a dam to slow the flow of ice off the continent into the ocean.
    If this floating ice shelf breaks apart, the Thwaites Glacier will
    accelerate and its contribution to sea level rise will increase by
    as much as 25\%. Over the last several years, satellite radar
    imagery shows many new fractures opening up. Similar to a growing
    crack in the windshield of a car, a slowly growing crack means the
    windshield is weak and a small bump to the car might cause the
    windshield to suddenly break apart into hundreds of panes of glass.
    We have mapped out weaker and stronger areas of the ice shelf and
    suggest a “zig-zag” pathway the fractures might take through the
    ice, ultimately leading to break up of the shelf in as little as 5
    years, which result in more ice flowing off the continent.

https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm21/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/978762

/
/

//
/[The news archive - looking back at older information measurements ]/
*On this day in the history of global warming December 14, 2006*

Frank Luntz--the author of an infamous 1990s memo encouraging 
Republicans to place rhetorical emphasis on alleged uncertainties in 
climate science--appears on the Fox News Channel and declares that 
according to his own polling, Americans want action on climate change.

http://youtu.be/PXoB3xCSgi8

/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/ 


/Archive of Daily Global Warming News 
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html> 
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote

/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe 
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request> 
to news digest./

   Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only.  It does not carry 
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers.  A 
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and 
sender. This is a hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial 
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote 
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, 
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at 
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for 
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct 
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List 
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to 
this mailing list.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20211214/b5a02e70/attachment.htm>