[✔️] December 16, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*December 16, 2021*/

/[  Weather Channel ]/
*Widespread, Damaging, Unusual December Storm to Spawn Derecho, 
Tornadoes in the Plains, Midwest*
https://weather.com/safety/tornado/news/2021-12-15-severe-weather-forecast-damaging-winds-tornadoes-midwest

- -

/[ wildfire watch ]/
*Very strong winds spread fires in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas*
https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/12/15/very-strong-winds-spread-fires-in-texas-oklahoma-and-kansas/



/[ Opinion NYT slams us with global headline news  ]/
*POSTCARDS FROM A WORLD **ON FIRE*
Cities swallowed by dust.
Human history drowned by the sea.
Economies devastated, lives ruined.
These 193 stories show the reality of climate change. In every country 
in the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/opinion/climate-change-effects-countries.html



/[  Science briefing AGU press conference on Arctic and NOAA research - /
*Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather 
patterns, mainly caused by human activities, especially the burning of 
fossil fuels.*
#AGU21 Press conference: NOAA Arctic Report Card 2021
Dec 14, 2021
AGU
Now in its 16th year, NOAA’s 2021 Arctic Report Card catalogs the 
numerous ways that climate change continues to transform and disrupt the 
polar region, with impacts on weather, climate, fisheries, indigenous 
communities and national security. Arctic environmental change does not 
stay in the Arctic: it impacts weather, climate and ocean resources far 
beyond the region. The rapid changes in the Arctic, many of which are 
occurring faster than anticipated, heighten the importance of improved 
observations to inform decisions and forecast future change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQBKoQ5vZqg [starts about 4 min in ]


/[ "All In" with Chris Hayes --  beware "Critical Energy Theory" video ] /
*‘Critical energy theory’: Right wing declares war on ‘woke’ climate policy*
The right wing thinks they have found success with their critical race 
theory fear-mongering, so now they're trying to copy-paste that strategy 
onto a new target: “critical energy theory.”
Dec. 8, 2021 -Right Wing declares ware on "Wokeness" of climate policy
https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-critical-energy-theory-right-wing-declares-war-on-woke-climate-policy-128253509763


/[  A few other stories ] /
*9 Environmental Crimes That Would Make Great Movies*
Don't Look Up shows you can make a compelling climate change movie. 
Here's some more fodder for Hollywood to keep the ball rolling.
Molly Taft  - Dec 15, 2021
*The new dark comedy Don’t Look Up* shakes up the idea of what makes a 
good climate movie. Rather than focusing purely on weird science or Al 
Gore, it tells a great story by highlighting the criminal inaction on 
climate change. (Well, technically it’s about a comet headed for Earth, 
but it’s a clear stand-in for our real-world crisis.)
- -
While Don’t Look Up is pure fiction, there’s no shortage of real-world 
examples of climate fuckery to highlight on the silver screen. In the 
spirit of giving Hollywood some story fodder to keep the momentum going, 
we’ve compiled a list of environmental crimes and criminals (in both the 
letter of the law and court of public opinion) that would be great 
fodder for the next blockbuster. Have at it, movie producers!
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905
*2  The Steven Donziger Case*
If screenwriters are looking for some easy material, the case of Steven 
Donziger basically writes itself. Donziger led a case against Chevron on 
behalf of 30,000 Indigenous people and farmers in the Amazon for 
widespread pollution of local water and environment. What’s more, he won 
the Ecuadorian court battle in a dramatic fashion: it was the biggest 
environmental human rights judgment in history.
Since the ruling, Chevron has refused to pay the ordered fine. Instead, 
it used the U.S. court system in unprecedented and troubling ways to 
come after Donziger, using a network of hand-picked and 
industry-friendly attorneys and judges. 
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905/slides/2
*3   Deepwater Horizon (Better This Time)*
There was already a (pretty well-received) movie released in 2016 about 
the Deepwater Horizon disaster itself, starring Mark Wahlberg as a 
worker aboard the Transocean drilling rig that suffered a catastrophic 
explosion on April 20, 2010.
However, that movie only covers the blow-by-blow of the day of the 
explosion on the rig, relegating the aftermath—how only two people were 
prosecuted, and how the 87-day blowout spilled 210 million gallons of 
oil into the Gulf of Mexico—to a quick postscript. The film also doesn’t 
touch the safety shortcuts BP took that federal officials later found 
contributed to the disaster, nor how the company eventually paid only a 
fraction of the settlement for the damage it caused thanks to tax 
writeoffs. There’s room for a lot more dramatic storytelling for one of 
the biggest environmental disasters in U.S. history.
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905/slides/3
*4  Scott Pruitt and His Fancy Lotions*
Former Environmental Protection Agency chief and big coal fanboy Scott 
Pruitt served barely a year and a half in the Trump administration, but 
his time there was marked by outrageous moves that ripped apart the 
government’s ability to protect the environment and handed polluters 
dozens of primo free passes. The end of his tenure featured some of the 
most unforgettably bizarre political scandals in a presidency that 
featured some notably weird shit, including a few particularly... gross?
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905/slides/4
*5  A Koch Brothers Biopic*
Dark money has played a crucial role in perpetuating climate denial, and 
there’s perhaps no more powerful dark money influence on climate 
policies than the Koch family, most notably brothers Charles and David. 
The brothers started out as managers at their family’s oil refining 
business and went on to become billionaires. Their corrosive influence 
on the climate discourse includes being some of the most important 
funders of denial through their contributions to conservative groups 
like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Americans for 
Prosperity.
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905/slides/5
*6  Exxon’s PR Wizard*
Herbert Schmertz was the head of Exxon’s PR operations from the early 
1970s to the late 1980s, as the company was moving through the energy 
crisis of that era—and overlapping to when Exxon was beginning to do its 
own scientific work around climate change. What makes Schmertz, who died 
in 2018, such a good candidate for a movie is how he ruthlessly deployed 
new tactics to keep Big Oil in business...
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905/slides/6
*7   The Colonial Pipeline Hack*
This year’s hack of one of the biggest pipelines in the U.S. has all the 
makings of a great cyber-comedy/thriller. (Yes, this is a new genre we 
just made up.) The hack shut down the pipeline for six days and sparked 
a gasoline shortage along the East Coast. It carried out by a hacker or 
hackers who demanded a ransom in bitcoin. And the pipeline’s security 
system was so easy to breach, one expert described it as readily 
hackable by someone “working at an eighth-grade level.” The fact that 
the hack happened to a company that was in the middle of cleaning up the 
largest gasoline spill in decades only adds dramatic (and absurd) icing 
to the cake.
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905/slides/7
*8   The Massey Energy Mine Explosion*
In April 2010, just days before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, an 
explosion at a coal mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners. The disaster 
was partially as a result of high methane levels in the unventilated 
mine. In the years after the explosion, a state investigation said the 
owner of the mine, Massey Energy, squarely to blame, alleging that the 
company “operated its mines in a profoundly reckless manner, and 29 coal 
miners paid with their lives for the corporate risk taking.”...
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905/slides/8
https://gizmodo.com/9-environmental-crimes-that-would-make-great-movies-1848186905



[The news archive - looking back on an old PR campaign]
*On this day in the history of global warming December 16, 2014 *
** In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank observes:

    "For years, the fossil-fuel industries have been telling us that
    global warming is a hoax based on junk science.

    "But now these industries are floating an intriguing new argument:
    They’re admitting that human use of coal, oil and gas is causing
    carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise — but they’re saying this
    is a good thing. We need more CO2 in our lives, not less...

    "This was some creative thinking, and it took a page from the gun
    lobby, which argues that the way to curb firearm violence is for
    more people to be armed."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-new-climate-denialism-carbon-dioxide-is-good-for-you/2014/12/15/beaafc72-8499-11e4-b9b7-b8632ae73d25_story.html 

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