[TheClimate.Vote] January 18, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*January 18, 2021*/

[Reuters]
*Biden may cancel Keystone XL pipeline permit as soon as his first day 
in office: source*
By Reuters Staff - JANUARY 17, 2021
(Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is planning to cancel the 
permit for the $9 billion Keystone XL pipeline project as one of his 
first acts in office, and perhaps as soon as his first day, according to 
a source familiar with his thinking.
- -
The words "Rescind Keystone XL pipeline permit" appear on a list of 
executive actions likely scheduled for the first day of Biden's 
presidency, according to an earlier report bit.ly/3nP4993 by the 
Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC)...
more at - 
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-keystone/biden-to-cancel-keystone-xl-pipeline-permit-on-first-day-in-office-cbc-idUSKBN29N00A



[Activism report - Katharine Hayhoe and other Moms]
*Science Moms On Climate Change — Now It’s Personal!*
January 17, 2021 by Steve Hanley
Science Moms is an amalgamation of 6 female climate scientists 
spearheaded by Katharine Hayhoe who have one thing in common. They are 
all mothers concerned about bequeathing a sustainable planet to their 
kids. Their objective is to educate other mothers and encourage them to 
work together to promote a progressive climate agenda locally, 
nationally, and internationally.

Working with Potential Energy, a nonprofit marketing firm, Science Moms 
is planning a $10 million outreach campaign to encourage more mothers to 
work for a sustainable planet. In Katharine Hayhoe’s words, their 
message to women is “Channel your fear into action. Talk to your friends 
and family. Advocate for change in your town, your church, your school, 
your state.” The group’s work is funded in part by a grant from 
MacKenzie Scott, the former spouse of Jeff Bezos, who has recently begun 
an extraordinary $5 billion philanthropy program.

Potential Energy’s motto is that existential problems call for 
extraordinary creativity. Its mission is to “bring together America’s 
leading creative, analytic and media agencies to shift the narrative on 
climate change. Together, we are using the power of marketing to develop 
new narratives, engage new audiences, and build demand for a better, 
cleaner, more prosperous world.”

*Katharine Hayhoe And Friends*
CleanTechnica readers are familiar with the work of Katharine Hayhoe, 
who has created the widely acclaimed video entitled Global Wierding. But 
most of you will be less familiar with the 5 women who have joined her 
to form Science Moms. They are:

    --Dr. Melissa Burt, a research scientist in the Department of
    Atmospheric Science at Colorado University with a focus on arctic
    clouds, radiation, and sea ice, as well as the Assistant Dean for
    Diversity and Inclusion in the Walter Scott, Jr. College of
    Engineering at Colorado State University.

    -- Dr. Emily Fischer, an Associate Professor in the Department of
    Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU). She is also
    an affiliate faculty member of the CSU School of Global
    Environmental Sustainability.

    -- Dr. Ruth DeFries, a professor of ecology and sustainable
    development at Columbia University in New York.

    -- Dr. Tracey Holloway, who serves as the Team Lead for the NASA
    Health and Air Quality Applied Sciences Team that focuses on air
    quality management and public health.

    -- Dr. Joellen Russell, chair of the Integrative Science and
    Professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of
    Geosciences. She currently serves as chair of the NOAA Science
    Advisory Board’s Climate Working Group.

The Science Moms website features an assortment of facts about global 
heating and resources to help people understand the issues in personal 
way. It includes links to books that teach kids about the Earth’s 
climate and has a form that makes it simple for people to contact their 
elected officials. In an interview with the Washington Post, Hayhoe 
says, “One of the most powerful ways for us to connect over climate 
change is … this fundamental value that we share. We all want to ensure 
a better and safer future for our child.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/17/science-moms-on-climate-change-now-its-personal/
- -
[here it is]
*Science Moms is a nonpartisan group of climate scientists and mothers.*

We founded Science Moms to help mothers who are concerned about their 
childrens’ planet, but aren’t confident in their knowledge about climate 
change or how they can help. Together, we aim to demystify climate 
science and motivate urgent action to protect our children’s futures.

As scientists, we have collectively spent decades studying our earth and 
what human activity is doing to it. We are steeped in this reality every 
day and know that to solve this problem, it will take all of us moms 
joining forces to demand change from our leaders. Moms, united, can give 
our children the safe and prosperous future they deserve.
https://sciencemoms.com/
- -
[for example]
https://sciencemoms.com/the-facts/



[early skirmishes of information wars]

*Oil Industry’s Public Climate Denial Campaign Dates Back to at Least 
1980, Nearly a Decade Earlier Than Previously Thought*
Read time: 6 mins
By Nick Cunningham - January 15, 2021

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the leading oil and gas industry 
trade group, publicly pushed misleading information on climate change as 
early as 1980 – much earlier than previously thought – according to 
newly discovered archival documents.

API “was promulgating false and misleading information about climate 
change in 1980, nearly a decade earlier than previously known,” wrote 
Benjamin Franta, a JD/PhD candidate at Stanford University’s Law School 
and Department of History, in a new peer-reviewed paper published this 
month in Environmental Politics.

An organized campaign of climate disinformation is generally thought to 
have begun around 1989 with the formation of the Global Climate 
Coalition, an industry front group aimed at protecting fossil fuel 
interests, before it coalesced into a more active campaign of climate 
denial in the 1990s, which included attacking climate scientists, 
muddying the waters on climate science, and promoting climate deniers. 
API was one of the coalition’s leading members, along with Exxon (later 
ExxonMobil).

But Franta points to a policy booklet published by API in 1980 as 
evidence that the lobby group not only knew then about the negative 
impact fossil fuel combustion had on the climate, but actively sought to 
obscure that fact to the public.

“This contradicts the idea that the industry was a good-faith player at 
that time, and only later turned to disinformation efforts,” Franta told 
DeSmog of his findings, which he stumbled across when doing archival 
research.

In API’s booklet, “Two Energy Futures: A National Choice for the 80s,” 
the industry acknowledged that carbon dioxide was a “pollutant,” but 
cast doubt on the role of CO2 in global warming by misrepresenting what 
prominent scientists said at the time.

For instance, API pointed to popular astronomer Carl Sagan who wrote 
about global warming in science journals and in his 1980 book “Cosmos.” 
“Other scientists are more sanguine about the presence of carbon dioxide 
in the atmosphere. Some scientists, including Dr. Carl Sagan, Cornell 
University astronomer, see a cooling phenomenon as counteracting the 
greenhouse effect,” API wrote.

But suggesting that Sagan was “sanguine” about CO2 is false. Sagan 
explored the albedo effect from land use change – he proposed that 
deforested areas increase the planet’s albedo, which meant that 
disturbed land would reflect more sunlight because of its lighter color, 
thus potentially causing a cooling effect. Ultimately, though, Sagan 
warned that the dangers of warming from fossil fuels was much more 
significant than any cooling effect from an increased albedo. 
Misrepresenting some of Sagan’s work on albedo, API jumped to the 
conclusion that warming from fossil fuels was nothing to worry about.

After dismissing the dangers of fossil fuels, API went on to promote the 
expansion of fossil fuel production in its booklet, citing the 1980 
World Coal Study. The coal study, although published by the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was funded by the industry 
and set out to promote the expansion of coal in order to produce 
synthetic fuels.

API pointed to the coal study to argue that expanding coal would have 
“no significant damage to the environment.”

The lobby group further claimed that doubling coal production would be 
“consistent” with the conclusions of the 1979 World Climate Conference. 
But, that conference – the first major international climate conference 
attended by top scientists from a variety of fields – recommended no 
such thing. Far from endorsing coal, it warned of the dangers of 
“man-made changes in climate.” In a keynote address, Robert White, the 
conference chairman, said that “the growing dependence of the world on 
coal may create the most serious threat to the world's climate.”

After the publication of the MIT study in 1980, the director of the 
study lobbied President Jimmy Carter’s administration. That same year, 
the Carter administration adopted a goal of doubling coal production by 
1990 – a policy goal that was also adopted by the G7 in 1980. “So, it 
does look like that study was very influential, in shaping the entire 
energy future of the world, really,” Franta told DeSmog.

API, however, wasn’t just mischaracterizing what outside experts were 
saying about climate change at the time – it also publicly contradicted 
its own knowledge on the issue. According to Franta’s paper, the 
industry trade group’s own internal task-force knew at the time that 
production trends for fossil fuels put the world on track for several 
degrees of warming, which could potentially be catastrophic.

Six months before API published its “Two Energy Futures” booklet, 
Stanford engineer John Laurmann told API’s climate change task force 
that 2.5-degrees Celsius of warming could “bring world economic growth 
to a halt,” and that 5-degrees would have “globally catastrophic 
effects.” Avoiding such outcomes would require prompt action, Laurmann 
said. Despite this information, API made no mention of this in the 
booklet, and instead argued that a massive expansion of coal production 
would not harm the environment.

The American Petroleum Institute did not respond to a request for comment.

Franta’s report into what API knew about the connection between fossil 
fuels and climate change – and when it knew it – adds to a growing 
understanding about the industry’s decades-long effort to discredit the 
science on climate change.

In 2015, InsideClimate News revealed that ExxonMobil knew about climate 
change in the late 1970s – decades earlier than previously thought, and 
yet, starting in 1989, it went on to actively mislead the public about 
that fact for more than a decade. InsideClimate News also showed that 
API’s task force was aware of climate change and discussed various 
responses during the task force’s existence between 1979 and 1983.

Over the past five years, additional reporting by news outlets, 
including DeSmog, has added more detail to this history. But until now, 
it was generally thought that the public disinformation campaign began 
around 1989. The newly uncovered API booklet moves this history back 
nearly 10 years.

The booklet shows “the earliest public disinformation about climate 
change from the petroleum industry that we know of now,” said Franta.

“Big Oil now has another decade of lost time to answer for – and 
arguably to pay for,” climate science historian Geoffrey Supran, a 
research associate at Harvard University, wrote in a statement to 
DeSmog. He added that this new paper shows that “despite all we already 
know about fossil fuel interests' history of misleading Americans about 
climate change, we're still just scratching the surface. There are more 
documents out there – more skeletons in the closet, waiting to be found.”

https://www.desmogblog.com/2021/01/15/api-american-petroleum-institute-oil-industry-public-climate-denial-campaign-1980



[warming becomes heating]
*Global Average Temperatures in 2020 Reached a RECORD HIGH of 1.55 C 
above PreIndustrial in 1750.*
Jan 16, 2021
Paul Beckwith
The numbers are out, and they are not pretty. Global average temperature 
in 2020 was 1.25C above the turn-of-the-previous-century average 
(1880-1910), thus set a new record for the warmest year.

Relative to the year 1750, you need to add 0.3C for the baseline shift, 
so 2020 was actually 1.55C warmer than 1750, which is termed the real 
pre-industrial, and the Paris climate agreement in 2015 had numerous 
countries promise to strive to work together to keep this global average 
rise, relative to preindustrial (1750) below 2C, with aspirations to 
stay below 1.5C.

Thus, 2020 blew past the 1.5C number, hitting 1.55C.

What is amazing about this is that is happened in the year of the 
coronavirus industrial shutdowns, in which global greenhouse gas 
emissions from burning fossil fuels decreased by about 7%.

Also, 2020 was a weak La Niña year. The effect of this ENSO (El Niño 
Southern Oscillation) La Niña depressed global temperatures by an 
estimated 0.1C (my estimate). This, if 2020 was ENSO neutral, the global 
average temperature would have hit 1.65C. Even worse, if 2020 had been a 
strong El Niño year, add 0.2C to that temperature (by my estimate). This 
would have resulted in global average temperature hitting 1.85C higher 
than 2050, by my best estimate. This will happen, no doubt, in a few 
short years when we have another powerful El Niño similar to that in 
2015-2016 which caused us to have the record setting temperature year 
that was just broken in 2020.

Climate warming is spiralling out of control. We urgently must deploy my 
so called three-legged barstool solution triage:

    1) Slash fossil fuel emissions.
    2) Remove CO2 and methane from the atmosphere/ocean system (CDR).
    3) Deploy Solar Radiation Management (SRM) technologies to cool the
    Earth.

We could quickly do these emergency things by using the 700 to 900 
billion $US military budget and defence industry scientists and 
engineers to work on these last ditch solutions to stabilize climate. 
Without this, our global food supply will be crushed like a bug within 
the next 5 to 10 years, causing global strife.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0lgTAEUYyA



[Video - click CC for translation]
*Permafrost melts due to climate change. Are we doomed? / Documentary*
Oct 20, 2020
*Bad Planet Документальные фильмы*
SUBSCRIBE, don't miss new movies: https://bit.ly/3cCCWRv
Bad Planet Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bad.planet/
I wanted to document the effects of climate change and the melting of 
permafrost in the warmest place on Earth - in the Russian Arctic. I went 
on a trip along the Kolyma River to talk to the locals and find out how 
their lives have changed in recent years. And most importantly, how the 
nature around them has changed. And I made amazing and frightening 
discoveries.

The film was shot with the support of Greenpeace Russia
More information on climate change on the website: https://act.gp/2FzPPBd
Request a Green New Deal for Russia: https://act.gp/3jZKsdo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkMX_hYdo-w



[Book review *_The New Climate War_* Michael E. Mann Public Affairs, $29]
*‘The New Climate War’ exposes tactics of climate change ‘inactivists’*
Climate scientist Michael Mann argues outright denialism has morphed 
into inactivism
By Carolyn Gramling -

Sometime around the fifth century B.C., the Chinese general and military 
strategist Sun Tzu wrote in his highly quotable treatise The Art of War, 
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result 
of a hundred battles.”

In The New Climate War, climate scientist Michael Mann channels Sun Tzu 
to demystify the myriad tactics of “the enemy” — in this case, “the 
fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats and oil-funded governments” 
and other forces standing in the way of large-scale action to combat 
climate change. “Any plan for victory requires recognizing and defeating 
the tactics now being used by inactivists as they continue to wage war,” 
he writes.

Mann is a veteran of the climate wars of the 1990s and early 2000s, when 
the scientific evidence that the climate is changing due to human 
emissions of greenhouse gases was under attack. Now, with the effects of 
climate change all around us (SN: 12/21/20), we are in a new phase of 
those wars, he argues. Outright denial has morphed into “deception, 
distraction and delay.”

Such tactics, he says, are direct descendants of earlier public 
relations battles over whether producers or consumers must bear ultimate 
responsibility for, say, smoking-related deaths. When it comes to the 
climate, Mann warns, an overemphasis on individual actions could eclipse 
efforts to achieve the real prize: industrial-scale emissions reductions.

He pulls no punches, calling out sources of “friendly fire” from climate 
advocates who he says divide the climate community and play into the 
“enemy’s” hands. These advocates include climate purists who lambaste 
scientists for flying or eating meat; science communicators who push 
fatalistic visions of catastrophic futures; and idealistic technocrats 
who advocate for risky, pie-in-the-sky geoengineering ideas. All, Mann 
says, distract from what we can do in the here and now: regulate 
emissions and invest in renewable energy.

The New Climate War’s main focus is to combat psychological warfare, and 
on this front, the book is fascinating and often entertaining. It’s an 
engrossing mix of footnoted history, acerbic political commentary and 
personal anecdotes. As far as what readers can do to assist in the 
battle, Mann advocates four strategies: Disregard the doomsayers; get 
inspired by youth activists like Greta Thunberg; focus on educating the 
people who will listen; and don’t be fooled into thinking it’s too late 
to take action to change the political system.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-climate-war-book-exposes-tactics-climate-change-inactivists


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 18, 2015 *
The New York Times reports:

"Before dawn one morning in October, a handful of Americans gathered at 
a lonely pier on Samso, a small Danish island about four hours from 
Copenhagen. Bundled in layers of fleece and wool, the Americans, mostly 
from islands off the Maine coast, had come to get a closer look at a 
wind farm — 10 mighty turbines spinning in the Kattegat strait — that 
has helped make Samso a symbol for a greener future, one powered 
entirely by renewable energy.

"Among them was Marian Chioffi, the bookkeeper at the electric company 
in Monhegan, Me., whose population of about 60 swells to include 
hundreds of residents and thousands of tourists in the summer. They — 
along with generations of artists like Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent and 
Jamie Wyeth — have been drawn by the island’s lost-in-time charm and 
picturesque setting in the Gulf of Maine.

"Monhegan faces challenges as stark as its beauty. Foremost among them — 
and the spur for the journey to Denmark — is dependence on expensive, 
dirty fuels for heating and electricity. Even with the recent fall in 
oil prices, Monhegan residents pay among the highest power rates in the 
nation — almost six times the national average — and the electric 
company, locally owned and operated, struggles to keep the lights on.

"Twenty years ago, Samso faced similar problems. Its farming and fishing 
industries were in decline, and its electricity and heating costs, 
mostly from diesel and coal, were rising. Its young people were leaving 
the island to attend high school and choosing not to return.

"But in 1997, the island began a long-term transformation. It won a 
government-sponsored contest to create a model community for renewable 
energy and, through a combination of wind and solar (for electricity) 
and geothermal and plant-based energy (for heating), the island reached 
green energy independence in 2005. That means Samso actually generates 
more power from renewable sources than it consumes over all. Attached by 
a power cable to the mainland 11 miles away, the island sells its excess 
electricity to the national utility, bringing income to the hundreds of 
residents who own shares in the island’s wind farms, both on land and at 
sea.

"Samso has attracted global attention for its accomplishments. Soren 
Hermansen, 55, and his wife, Malene Lunden, 49, worked for years to 
develop the program on the island and now have created an institute, the 
Samso Energy Academy, to spread their story and methods to international 
visitors.

"The Maine islanders, along with students from the College of the 
Atlantic in Bar Harbor, had traveled to Samso to attend the academy and 
hear the Danes’ advice. If all went well, each islander would go home 
with a team of students dedicated to solving an energy problem using 
ideas borrowed from Samso.

"Beyond that, the planners hoped, new Maine island projects could become 
templates for broader adoption of renewable energy. Because of their 
particular geography, islands often lack the resources and 
infrastructures to meet their own needs. Fuel, like other necessities, 
is often imported — sometimes with great difficulty — and electric 
grids, when they even exist, are often underdeveloped or out of date, 
all of which leads to higher prices and less reliable service. With 
residents open to cheaper and better alternatives, islands are becoming 
seedbeds of innovation, living labs in which to test and refine 
technologies and approaches that are too new or expensive to establish 
on a mainland. And their small size makes the systems easier to manage 
and analyze."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/business/energy-environment/green-energy-inspiration-from-samso-denmark.html?ref=business 

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