[✔️] December 30, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*December 30, 2021*/

/[  NYTimes reports from Chile ] /
*Chile Rewrites Its Constitution, Confronting Climate Change Head On*
Chile has lots of lithium, which is essential to the world’s transition 
to green energy. But anger over powerful mining interests, a water 
crisis and inequality has driven Chile to rethink how it defines itself....
- -
Their work will not only shape how this country of 19 million is 
governed. It will also determine the future of a soft, lustrous metal, 
lithium, lurking in the salt waters beneath this vast ethereal desert 
beside the Andes Mountains.

Lithium is an essential component of batteries. And as the global 
economy seeks alternatives to fossil fuels to slow down climate change, 
lithium demand — and prices — are soaring...
- -
Dr. Dorador is vying to be the convention’s president. She wants the 
constitution to recognize that “humans are part of nature.” She bristles 
when asked if lithium extraction is necessary to pivot away from fossil 
fuel extraction. Of course the world should stop burning oil and gas, 
she says, but not by ignoring yet unknown ecological costs. “Someone 
buys an electric car and feels very good because they’re saving the 
planet,” she says. “At the same time an entire ecosystem is damaged. 
It’s a big paradox.”

Indeed the questions facing this Convention aren’t Chile’s alone. The 
world faces the same reckoning as it confronts climate change and 
biodiversity loss, amid widening social inequities: Does the search for 
climate fixes require re-examining humanity’s relationship to nature itself?

“We have to face some very complex 21st century problems,” said Maisa 
Rojas, a climate scientist at the University of Chile. “Our institutions 
are, in many respects, not ready.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/climate/chile-constitution-climate-change.html

/
/

/[ small regional magazine makes a perfect summary on why there is still 
denial  ]/
*Why Climate Change Denial Still Exists in the United States*
DEC 27, 2021 HUDSON VALLEY STYLE MAGAZINE
At first glance, it’s hard to understand why climate change denial still 
exists in the United States despite solid scientific evidence showing 
that the phenomenon is both real and man-made. While many of us like to 
point the finger at politicians, special interest groups and big oil 
companies are also to blame for keeping citizens in the dark about 
climate change and its harmful effects on our environment. These three 
groups are often referred to as climate change deniers because they 
refuse to believe or agree with scientific facts, even when they have 
money on the line....

*The Fossil Fuel Industry*
If you don’t know how lobbyists and special interest groups affect 
politics, it’s time to brush up on your knowledge. In politics, a 
lobbyist is a person who tries to influence legislators 
(Congressmen/women, Senators and their aides) or members of regulatory 
agencies to advance or defeat legislation. In other words, a lobbyist 
advocate for policy changes at all levels of government—local through 
federal. Lobbying helps ensure laws go into effect that favor certain 
businesses, industries, or interests. On one hand, lobbyists help 
organizations express their opinions about important issues before 
public officials have made any decisions about them.
*
**The Power of Big Money*
A lot of politicians and lobbyists are funded by big oil, a lobbying 
group formed from oil companies. Companies like Exxon, Shell, BP, and 
Chevron make hundreds of millions every year by extracting oil from our 
country—and they don’t want to stop. They can afford to pay big money to 
keep their operations going.
*
**Politicians Have Sworn Oaths to Lobbyists*
Politicians have an ethical obligation to follow through on their 
campaign promises. And, thanks to money from lobbyists, many politicians 
have conflicting interests that cloud their judgment—which means they 
may put what they think is best for their reelection chances ahead of 
what’s actually good for the People.
*
**Our Media Is Dictated by Advertisers*
The problem with our media is that there is a direct correlation between 
how much big oil and fossil fuel lobbies spend on advertising, and how 
much said fossil fuel companies are featured on the mainstream news. If 
we want to change these statistics, we have to cut down on our fossil 
fuel usage. Every time you turn your car on or flick your lights on, 
you’re pouring money into corporate coffers. When you think about it, 
watching TV actually causes more harm than good if you’re fueling 
climate change denial. Big Oil money wallets like Koch Family Foundation 
are secretly funding the climate change denial machine, according to 
Greenpeace. 100% of mainstream media companies take money from Big Oil 
in one form or another.

*Americans Don’t Vote on Issues*
Why do climate change deniers still exist? To some extent, it’s because 
climate change has not been a serious issue for most voters. Not enough 
has been said about why politicians should fear discussing climate 
issues. Here’s one good reason: About 90 percent of congressional 
campaign contributions come from economic sectors that benefit from 
polluting and emitting greenhouse gases.

*Voting Isn’t as Effective as Lobbying*
Because climate change deniers are incredibly well-funded, corporations 
and governments will continue to ignore them. As a result, climate 
change denial is unlikely to disappear anytime soon, especially given 
that most people still don’t understand how it’s affecting our planet.

*We Live in an Information Desert*
Americans are among some of the most ill-informed people in regards to 
global warming, and it’s not hard to see why. Climate change is a 
multi-faceted issue, but thanks to big oil lobbyists and other special 
interest groups who fund climate change denial campaigns, there isn’t 
nearly enough media coverage on it. In short, we live in an information 
desert when it comes to climate change.

*Conclusion*
It’s true that many corporate and lobby groups have taken measures to 
foster climate change denial in order to protect their profits. However, 
there is a danger to ignoring global warming—an increased risk of 
catastrophic natural disasters. Although some argue that these events 
might be beneficial for the industry—like rising sea levels may turn 
uninhabitable areas into prime real estate for new construction—it’s not 
a risk worth taking. The decision is clear: We need decisive action on 
climate change before it’s too late.

https://hudsonvalleystylemagazine.com/why-climate-change-denial-still-exists-in-the-united-states/

*//*



/[  Clips from an article that's responding to the movie ]/
*Critics of “Don’t Look Up” Are Missing the Entire Point*
It’s not about Americans being dumb sheep, but about how billionaires 
manipulate us into trusting them, how the reckless pursuit of profit can 
have catastrophic consequences, and the need to come together to fight 
those who prevent us from solving our problems.

Nathan J. Robinson - 26 December 2021 ...
- -
The crucial turning point in the plot is when the president decides the 
comet is too valuable for future GDP to destroy, and thus Silicon Valley 
needs to be allowed to try something experimental. This is not a 
simplistic, everyone-knows-this-already-how-obvious-can-you-be point. 
The same kind of thinking guides some of the worst public policy 
prescriptions on climate. In mainstream newspapers, and from the mouths 
of mainstream economists, you can hear that we don’t need to do much 
because letting climate change rip will be better for the GDP than 
trying to stop it. The reviewers who think the film’s messages are 
Obvious seem to have missed that the “tech solution” to the comet is a 
clear commentary on geoengineering, the cheap-but-incredibly-risky 
approach to climate favored by those who don’t want anything to be done 
that would substantially hurt the bottom lines of fossil fuel companies. 
(The first, ultimately abandoned approach to dealing with the comet, 
based on massive government investment, is the comet equivalent of a 
Green New Deal.)1

Don’t Look Up actually shows us an America that was perfectly prepared 
to come together to stop the comet, and where people are angry when they 
find out that their lives are being put at risk in order to protect the 
future profits of cell phone manufacturers. But they are distracted by a 
media that won’t do its job, and misled by demagogues who say that they 
should trust the “cool rich” more than “them.” At the end, however, 
those who perish are able to take some solace from the fact that they 
did everything they could. They do not die screaming in terror, nor have 
they lost faith in each other.2 It is a similar moral to Albert Camus’ 
“Myth of Sisyphus”: the near-certainty of failure should not lead to 
resignation, but to even more determination. To end your life 
contentedly and without regrets, you need to know that you tried, 
regardless of the outcome. This is not a film that is telling Americans 
they will die because of how much they suck. Instead, it says that we 
could solve our problems. It does depict a successful plan for stopping 
the comet that nearly works. But that plan is derailed by those who 
would gladly gamble with other people’s lives if it meant they 
themselves might get richer. The question it asks us is: will we stop 
these people? It is an exhortation and a warning, not a work of 
misanthropy or nihilism.

The film’s depiction of its tech billionaire is impressive. He is 
clearly based on Elon Musk, but also has a weird touch of Joe Biden in 
him. He is, as the Intercept’s Jon Schwarz put it, “bizarre and 
frightening… a kind of omnipotent baby, soft and vulnerable and mushy 
and completely unaware that anyone else is real.” Importantly for the 
film’s message, though, the billionaire sounds half the time like he 
might be a genius and half the time like he’s probably an idiot. You can 
see very easily how people could be misled into thinking that he knows 
what he is doing, because he seems like he knows everything even though 
he also appears to know nothing. He’s deeply unsettling but also 
effective at inspiring confidence, and can silence critics with his 
seemingly endless knowledge. I have long been fascinated by the strange 
way that Elon Musk manages to convince people of his genius despite also 
frequently sounding like a complete fool, and the film shows well how 
people can come to place trust in a guru entrepreneur that we assume 
must be far smarter than ourselves, even if half the time he appears to 
be speaking nonsense. In the film, it is only when it is too late that 
people discover they should have trusted their gut all along, that the 
man assuring them he had it all under control in fact had nothing under 
control at all.

I am glad the film had its billionaire and president escape the 
apocalypse. My first thought about the comet as a stand-in for climate 
change was that it would miss a crucial aspect of the climate crisis, 
which is that it is not like a planet-destroying asteroid, because some 
people will suffer far more than others. A great many people will be 
pretty much fine, at least in the near term, while countless others will 
experience the horrific effects. But Don’t Look Up does show how the 
super-rich see their first priority as escaping the fate they have 
inflicted on the rest of us. They will devise “solutions” to existential 
problems that put all the risk on other people while protecting their 
own assets.3

This is not a point that is widely enough understood, and clearly McKay 
did not make it “heavy-handedly,” since reviewers have not really 
noticed it. In fact, there are a number of interesting and important 
observations in the film that are easy to overlook but useful to 
understand for dealing with the crises of our own time. Consider the way 
DiCaprio is co-opted. He is well-intentioned and wants to solve the 
problem, but for much of the film he is not courageous enough to 
confront the powerful directly, and he rationalizes weakening his 
stances on the grounds that it gets him “access.” The daytime TV host 
played by Cate Blanchett is also seen to have made queasy compromises: 
she is revealed to have three master’s degrees, yet she plays an idiot 
on TV (shades of former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson, a Stanford and 
Oxford alum who pretended on-air not to know what words like “czar” and 
“ignoramus” meant).

Other bits of satire or insightful observations go by quickly and can be 
missed. The scientists fail in the media not just because they are 
bumped for celebrity news, but because they never figure out how to 
communicate with people without either boring them or starting a riot. 
Spurious “national security” justifications are used to bring legal 
claims against rogue government whistleblowers. There is the Hollywood 
actor who tries to “depoliticize” the comet debate by saying he believes 
in looking “both up and down,” and laments how partisan the debate has 
become. The coldness with which the president abandons her devoted son 
at the critical moment shows how those who lick the boots of the rich 
will find that, no matter how loyal they are, they will be heartlessly 
abandoned the moment they become an inconvenience.

I have not commented on the quality of Don’t Look Up as a film. But as I 
said, I think that’s somewhat beside the point. I’m not interested in 
even making that evaluation, because I see this as a parable making an 
important point and I’d like to discuss the point, not give a star 
rating to the parable. We can imagine, in the world of the film, those 
concerned about the comet making a film that satirized the lack of 
national action to stop the comet. And in the world of the film, 
reviewers simply respond by calling it “heavy-handed,” the director’s 
“worst film yet,” saying it “misses its targets,” that its humor is too 
“broad.” Instead of discussing the issues the film raises, they discuss 
whether the film is good or bad and whether it is successful in the way 
that it approaches the issues. I don’t really care about any of that. I 
am far less interested in whether Streep’s president is completely 
plausible than in having a conversation about the various barriers 
standing in the way of serious climate action, a serious pandemic 
response, and a rational approach to every public policy issue that has 
consequences for human lives. A central point made by Don’t Look Up is 
that when things are matters of life and death, we need to treat them as 
such. Giving such a film a thumbs-up or thumbs-down and assessing the 
quality of its humor shows that one has missed the point entirely. Let 
us not have a discussion about Don’t Look Up itself. Let us have a 
discussion about how we can avoid the very real tendencies that the film 
illuminates.

In fact, the terrifying thing about Don’t Look Up is that if there was 
an approaching deadly comet full of material that could juice corporate 
profits, I could imagine it would be difficult for the United States to 
gets its act together to destroy it, if by doing so it would hurt 
corporate profits and require significant sacrifice from the rich. I 
genuinely think you would have very mainstream economists saying that it 
would be “irrational” to destroy this much “economic value,” if Elon 
Musk promised he could destroy the comet and save the mineral wealth...
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/12/critics-of-dont-look-up-are-missing-the-entire-point?s=04



/[  Warning, embedded advertising , otherwise a strong, informed 
documentary - 15 min video https://youtu.be/X6C493n3SCM ]/
*Exxon Mobil: The Most Evil Business in the World*
Dec 29, 2021
Jake Tran
✨ Follow us on TikTok: https://jake.yt/tiktok
✉ Be the first to watch new videos with email notifications: 
http://bit.ly/jt-inbox
📸 Follow me on IG: @jaketran.io // http://bit.ly/jt-ig
/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6C493n3SCM
/

/
/


/[  John Cook delivers an inoculation in basic logic  ]/
*The Science of Cranky Uncle Part 3: Fighting Misinformation with 
Critical Thinking*
Dec 29, 2021
John Cook
Part 3 of the Science of Cranky Uncle looks at how to use critical 
thinking to deconstruct misinformation and identify any misleading 
reasoning fallacies. This is based on research published in 
Environmental Research Letters - the URL for the paper is 
http://sks.to/criticalclimate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cbnWIDNYas



/[  Another small radio station broadcasts  an opinion -- audio and 
transcript ] /
*No votes without dealing with global warming*
WAMC Northeast Public Radio | By Stephen Gottlieb
Published December 28, 2021
Some don’t want to hear bad news about global warming and climate 
change, but the good news is that we can make government take care of it 
by making clear that our votes depend on strong environmental action. 
“Sí, se puede,” yes, we can, Obama’s rallying cry, applies to protecting 
the environment that sustains us and our families.

Let’s start with some good news. There’s a new malaria vaccine. And 
vaccine makers have become so adept that several anti-Covid vaccines 
competed in record time. But the bad news is that more healthy people on 
this planet will aggravate global warming, killing many more in horrible 
deaths from starvation, de-hydration and fire, on a scale beyond any 
Biblical plagues. No vaccines will protect us from fire, drought and 
lack of food. If more people survive, grow up and have children of their 
own, we’ll have to act much faster to protect a livable environment. 
Improvement of medicine and public health are wonderful only if we pay 
the price to take care of our earthly home before it finds still more 
painful ways of paying us back for abusing our planet.

Insurance – Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare – won’t save you. We have 
to wise up. Freedom to make your own private choices won’t save you. 
Either we insist that government do its job or we all burn, starve, 
dehydrate and thirst together. Whoopee. Our medical accomplishments are 
useless unless we solve the bigger problem.

Meanwhile we argue about how much we can get away with without acting to 
stop the world from continuing to warm.

The good news is that we can deal with this by putting global warming at 
the top of our requirements when we vote, both in the primaries and the 
general elections – and make sure our elected representatives know what 
we’re going to do. But the bad news is that without strong action by us, 
the earth will get its revenge, and annihilate us all. Formerly 
habitable places are already uninhabitable. Even if we uproot ourselves 
and move to temporarily habitable areas, the changing climate will keep 
us moving until there’s nowhere left to go. That’s already happened to 
some people and several other species.

The good news is that we could overcome the nay-sayers, and stop global 
warming here and abroad. But the bad news is that people aren’t paying 
attention – fights over racial or religious superiority push 
environmental catastrophe out of focus. Issues of respect could be 
satisfied cheaply by praising each other, but the world wants blood. Too 
many focus on reinstalling an ousted president who scorns at 
environmental threats. And the Senate logjam has blocked, delayed and 
shrunk productive policy. The European Union and United Nations seem 
scarcely better. If the politics is bleak, can our future be bright?

Perhaps another country, like China, could solve the problem. China 
seems aware of the threat but keeps building new coal plants. And there 
seems little reason to expect China to treat Americans kindly in the 
process.

A ghoulish possibility is that environmental issues could lead to World 
War III – it could start as war over forests and rain forests which many 
rely on to manage CO2 in the atmosphere, or war over refugee migration – 
a source of war almost since the beginning of time. By flattening 
factories, oil rigs and killing millions, World War could reduce 
production of greenhouse gasses and global warming – but might well make 
the earth uninhabitable anyway.

Life won’t be pretty unless we learn to respect our earthly environment, 
and make strong environmental action determine our votes. The good news 
is that we can. “Sí, se puede,” yes, we can. We just have to let our 
politicians know that we demand action.

Happy New Year to all.
— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on.

Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court 
and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan 
Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New 
York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to 
the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
https://www.wamc.org/commentary-opinion/2021-12-28/no-votes-without-dealing-with-global-warming




/[   Yawn, TV tries to catch up -  videos have lots of advertisements - 
no more wine grapes ] /
This week on 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl reports that climate change is 
altering some of the world's prime wine-growing regions. Extreme weather 
episodes are upending the practices and economics of winemaking - and in 
some cases, changing the taste of the wine itself - in Old World and New 
World vineyards alike.

It is the broadcast's latest report to detail the impact of a warming 
planet. From flooded cities to parched rivers, melting glaciers to 
scorched forests, 60 Minutes continues to cover all the ways a changing 
climate is transforming life on Earth. Here, a look back at some of them....
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-60-minutes-2021-12-26/




[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming December  30, 2014*
Dcember 30, 2014:
The Washington Post reports:

    "The methane that leaks from 40,000 gas wells near this desert
    trading post may be colorless and odorless, but it’s not invisible.
    It can be seen from space.

    "Satellites that sweep over energy-rich northern New Mexico can spot
    the gas as it escapes from drilling rigs, compressors and miles of
    pipeline snaking across the badlands. In the air it forms a giant
    plume: a permanent, Delaware-sized methane cloud, so vast that
    scientists questioned their own data when they first studied it
    three years ago. 'We couldn’t be sure that the signal was real,'
    said NASA researcher Christian Frankenberg.

    "The country’s biggest methane “hot spot,” verified by NASA and
    University of Michigan scientists in October, is only the most
    dramatic example of what scientists describe as a $2 billion leak
    problem: the loss of methane from energy production sites across the
    country. When oil, gas or coal are taken from the ground, a little
    methane — the main ingredient in natural gas — often escapes along
    with it, drifting into the atmosphere, where it contributes to the
    warming of the Earth.

    "Methane accounts for about 9 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas
    emissions, and the biggest single source of it — nearly 30 percent —
    is the oil and gas industry, government figures show. All told, oil
    and gas producers lose 8 million metric tons of methane a year,
    enough to provide power to every household in the District of
    Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.

    "As early as next month, the Obama administration will announce new
    measures to shrink New Mexico’s methane cloud while cracking down
    nationally on a phenomenon that officials say erodes tax revenue and
    contributes to climate change. The details are not publicly known,
    but already a fight is shaping up between the White House and
    industry supporters in Congress over how intrusive the restrictions
    will be.

    "Republican leaders who will take control of the Senate next month
    have vowed to block measures that they say could throttle domestic
    energy production at a time when plummeting oil prices are cutting
    deeply into company profits. Industry officials say they have a
    strong financial incentive to curb leaks, and companies are moving
    rapidly to upgrade their equipment.

    "But environmentalists say relatively modest government restrictions
    on gas leaks could reap substantial rewards for taxpayers and the
    planet. Because methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas — with up
    to 80 times as much heat-trapping potency per pound as carbon
    dioxide over the short term — the leaks must be controlled if the
    United States is to have any chance of meeting its goals for cutting
    the emissions responsible for climate change, said David Doniger,
    who heads the climate policy program at the Natural Resources
    Defense Council, an environmental group.

    "'This is the most significant, most cost-effective thing the
    administration can do to tackle climate change pollution that it
    hasn’t already committed to do,' Doniger said."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/delaware-sized-gas-plume-over-west-illustrates-the-cost-of-leaking-methane/2014/12/29/d34c3e6e-8d1f-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html 



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