[TheClimate.Vote] January 27, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*January 27, 2021*/

[year 2020]
*Fire Year 2020 Overview*
Nov 20, 2020
National Interagency Fire Center
A brief summary of #FireYear2020 provided by the National Interagency 
Fire Center.
https://youtu.be/aVOAbQkjczw


[Keeping oil in the ground 44 second video]
*Skip Pruss on Fossil Fuel Stranded Assets*
Jan 26, 2021
greenmanbucket
Stanley "Skip" Pruss is former Chief Energy Advisor to newly appointed 
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQe3Sm9QBEA



[Press release]
*COP26 calls for groups to bring climate summit to life*
Applications have opened today to help shape the COP26 venue in Glasgow 
ahead of the crucial climate change talks later this year.
Published 21 January 2021

-Call for groups to bring climate action to life in an interactive setting
Chance to engage with key audiences and make a real change in the fight 
against climate change
Two-week showcase opportunity when world leaders gather in Glasgow
Applications have opened today to help shape the COP26 venue in Glasgow 
ahead of the crucial climate change talks later this year.

Businesses, civil society, academia, trade unions, indigenous groups, 
and young people have the opportunity to bring climate action to life 
through fun and lively events, displays and workshops in the areas where 
many of the world’s leaders will be meeting in November.

This is likely to include demonstrations of virtual reality technology; 
showcasing innovation helping to tackle global climate change; 
opportunities for local voices from around the world through culture and 
arts; and youth groups provided a platform to show the impact they are 
making.

With demand expected to be high for this unique opportunity, 
organisations are being encouraged to work together with collaborative 
proposals wherever possible with a focus on profiling the voices of 
those most impacted and on the front line of climate change.

COP26 President Alok Sharma said:

COP26 will be the largest summit the UK has ever hosted and this is an 
exciting opportunity for all of society to be involved.

I would encourage those who are interested, to join with us to inspire 
climate action around the world.

This is part of a wider call for action from individuals, organisations 
and businesses to get involved in committing to and inspiring others to 
act on climate change in the run-up to COP26 through the Together for 
Our Planet campaign.

Background
Further guidance and a link to the online form can be found here. A 
downloadable PDF guidance pack can also be found here.

The Expression of Interest process closes at 17:00 GMT on Friday 5 March 
2021.

The Expression of Interest process includes a range of opportunities for 
businesses and organisations to get involved within the UK Government 
managed spaces at COP26. This includes the UK Pavilion within the Blue 
Zone and the Green Zone.

The Blue Zone is a UN-managed space which hosts the negotiations. The 
space brings together delegations from 197 countries, alongside observer 
organisations to share their stories at panel discussions, side events, 
exhibits, and cultural events.

The Green Zone is managed by the UK Government, and is a platform for 
the general public, youth groups, civil society, academia, artists, 
business and others to have their voices heard through events, 
exhibitions, workshops and talks that promote dialogue, awareness, 
education and commitments.

More information on the Together for Our Planet campaign here.

Eligibility
Criteria for organisations and businesses participating in the 
UK-Government spaces of COP26 are as follows. More information can be 
found here.

Large businesses with over 250 employees to sign up to Science Based 
Targets and/or the Race to Zero.

SMEs, cities, regions and local governments signing up to the Race to 
Zero. By joining this campaign, organisations show they are committed to 
a clean future, and allows us to show in one place the collective global 
momentum to net zero.

Civil society organisations (such as NGOs, activists and faith based 
organisations), schools, universities & colleges, and individuals do not 
require specific commitments.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cop26-calls-for-groups-to-bring-climate-summit-to-life



[Just think... 10 min video]
*India's Solar Canals. Lateral thinking at its finest!*
Jan 24, 2021
Just Have a Think
Solar Power is set to be the dominant transformative form of power on 
the mighty subcontinent of India as it moves away from its dependence on 
coal and towards a more sustainable future. But land is at a heavy 
premium there, so the engineers put their thinking caps on and came up 
with a solution so effective it has solved more problems than even they 
anticipated!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix9LNZIbTpc



[Yale offers 12 books]
*REVIEW12 new books explore fresh approaches to act on climate 
changeAuthors explore scientific, economic, and political avenues for 
climate action given 'new possibilities' in 2021.*
By Michael Svoboda, Ph.D. | Friday, January 22, 2021
Book collage

Despite a journey to this moment even more treacherous than expected, 
Americans now have a fresh opportunity to act, decisively, on climate 
change.

The authors of the many new books released in just the past few months 
(or scheduled to be published soon) seem to have anticipated this 
pivotal moment.

Their number includes a scientist, an entrepreneur, and a journalist, 
each of whom has published among the first calls to action on climate 
change: Michael Mann, Bill Gates, and Elizabeth Kolbert.

But all the authors recognize that our repeated failures to seize 
previous opportunities says something about our market economy, our 
mindsets, and our political institutions. Thus the solutions offered in 
these new titles are as often political as they are scientific and 
technical, and psychological as often as they are environmental.

Americans succeeded in making a critical change: a climate denier no 
longer presides over the United States. With the 12 titles listed below, 
Americans can now consider new possibilities – at all levels – made 
possible by that first change.

As always, the descriptions of the 12 titles listed below are adapted 
from copy provided by the publishers.

*The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet*, by Michael E. 
Mann (Public Affairs 2021, 368 pages, $29.00) (Editor’s note: A separate 
book review on this title will be posted soon at this site.)

In The New Climate War, renowned climate scientist Michael Mann shows 
how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect 
blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change. But all is 
not lost. In his new book, Mann outlines a plan for forcing our 
governments and corporations to wake up and make real change, by 
allowing renewable energy to compete fairly against fossil fuels, by 
debunking the false narratives and arguments that have worked their way 
into the climate debate, and by combatting climate doomism. The societal 
tipping point necessary to win the new climate war won’t happen without 
the active participation of citizens everywhere aiding in the collective 
push forward.

*How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the 
Breakthroughs We Need*, by Bill Gates (Penguin Random House 2021, 272 
pages, $26.95)

In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, 
practical – and accessible – plan for how the world can get to zero 
greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Drawing 
on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas 
into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already 
helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be 
made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are 
needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. As Bill Gates 
makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, 
but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within 
our reach.

*Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future*, by Elizabeth Kolbert 
(Penguin Random House 2021, 256 pages, $28.00)

In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new 
world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are 
trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny 
pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon 
emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to 
develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and 
physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the 
stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, 
says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. By 
turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an 
utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

*There Is No Planet B,* Updated Edition, by Mike Berners-Lee (Cambridge 
University Press 2021, 321 pages, $12.95 paperback)

Hunger, climate change, biodiversity, antibiotics, plastics, pandemics – 
the list of concerns seems endless. But what is most pressing, and what 
should we do first? Do we all need to become vegetarian? How can we fly 
in a low-carbon world? How can we take control of technology? And, given 
the global nature of these challenges, what can any of us do as 
individuals? Mike Berners-Lee has crunched the numbers and plotted a 
course of action that is full of hope, practical, and enjoyable. He 
offers a big-picture perspective on the environmental and economic 
challenges of our day. This updated edition has new material on 
protests, pandemics, wildfires, investments, carbon targets and of 
course, on the key question: given all this, what can I do?

*How to Prepare for Climate Change: A Practical Guide to Surviving the 
Chaos*, by David Pogue (Simon & Schuster 2021, 624 pages, $24.00 paperback)

In How to Prepare for Climate Change, bestselling self-help author and 
beloved CBS Sunday Morning science and technology correspondent David 
Pogue offers sensible, deeply researched advice for how we should start 
to ready ourselves for the years ahead. Pogue walks readers through what 
to grow, what to eat, how to build, how to insure, where to invest, how 
to prepare your children and pets, and even where to consider relocating 
when the time comes. He also provides wise tips for managing your 
anxiety. Timely and enlightening, How to Prepare for Climate Change is 
an indispensable guide for anyone who read The Uninhabitable Earth or 
The Sixth Extinction and wants to know how to make smart choices for the 
upheaval ahead.

*The Story of CO2: Big Ideas for a Small Molecule*, by Geoffrey A. Ozin 
and Mireille F. Ghoussoub (University of Toronto Press 2020, 280 pages, 
$34.95)

The climate crisis requires that we drastically reduce carbon dioxide 
emissions across all sectors of society. The Story of CO2 contributes to 
this challenge by highlighting the cutting-edge science and emerging 
technologies that can transform carbon dioxide into a myriad of products 
such as feedstock chemicals, polymers, pharmaceuticals, and fuels. This 
approach allows us to reconsider CO2 as a resource, and to add “carbon 
capture and use” to our other tools in the fight against catastrophic 
climate change. The Story of CO2 seeks to inspire readers with the 
latest carbon utilization technologies and explain how they fit within 
the broader context of carbon mitigation strategies in the shift towards 
a sustainable energy economy.

*To Know the World: A New Vision for Environmental Learning*, by Mitchel 
Thomashow (The MIT Press 2020, 288 pages, $30.00 paperback)

How can we respond to the current planetary ecological emergency? In To 
Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we reinvigorate how we 
think about our residency on Earth. Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, 
pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to 
navigate the Anthropocene’s rapid pace of change without further 
separating psyche from biosphere; how to achieve constructive 
connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should 
take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and 
global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as 
explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why 
environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.

*Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now,* by 
Vincent Ialenti (The MIT Press 2020, 208 pages, $25.00)

We live on a planet careening toward an environmental collapse that will 
be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to 
grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of 
climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial 
timescales of Earth’s life span. In this book, political economist 
Vincent Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our 
current moment of human-caused environmental transformation, and the 
deflation of expertise – today’s popular mockery and institutional 
erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening 
the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a 
wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet’s 
emergency. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to 
survive the Anthropocene.

*The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP 
at Fifty*, by Maria Ivanova (The MIT Press 20201, 384 pages, $30.00 
paperback)

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) was founded in 1972 as 
a nimble, fast, and flexible entity at the core of the UN system – a 
subsidiary body rather than a specialized agency. In this book, Maria 
Ivanova offers a detailed account of UNEP’s origin and history and a 
vision for its future. Ivanova counters the common criticism that UNEP 
was deficient by design, arguing that UNEP has in fact delivered on much 
(though not all) of its mandate. UNEP’s fiftieth anniversary, Ivanova 
argues, presents an opportunity for reinvention. She envisions a future 
UNEP that is the go-to institution for information on the state of the 
planet, a normative vision of global environmental governance, and 
support for domestic environmental agendas.

*How Are We Going to Explain This? Our Future on a Hot Earth*, by Jelmer 
Mommers (Simon & Schuster 2020, 224 pages, $16.95 paperback)

If climate change is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced, then 
why are we doing so little about it? Journalist Jelmer Mommers knows 
most people prefer not to talk or even think about climate change, and 
that is exactly why he wrote this book. Denial and despair are not the 
only possible responses to the current crisis. Drawing on the latest 
science, Mommers describes how we got here, what possible future awaits 
us, and how you can help make a difference. Five years in the making, 
How Are We Going to Explain This was an instant bestseller in the 
Netherlands. This updated translation, which includes responses to the 
COVID-19 pandemic, brings Mommers’ unique blend of realism and hope to 
the wider world.

*The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking*, by 
Roman Krznaric (The Experiment 2020, 288 pages, $25.95)

“Are we being good ancestors?” asked Jonas Salk, who developed the polio 
vaccine in 1953 but refused to patent it – forgoing profit so that more 
lives could be saved. Salk’s generosity to future generations should 
inspire us. But when philosopher Roman Krznaric examines society today, 
he sees just the opposite: Our short term mindsets have “colonized the 
future.” In The Good Ancestor, Krznaric reveals six practical ways we 
can retrain our brains to think of the long view, including Deep-Time 
Humility (recognizing our lives as a cosmic eyeblink) and Cathedral 
Thinking (starting projects that will take more than one lifetime). He 
aims to inspire more “time rebels” like Greta Thunberg – to shift our 
allegiance from this generation to all humanity.

*Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We Think Is Critical to Solving the 
Environmental Crisis*, by Elin Kelsey (Greystone Books 2020, 240 pages, 
$22.95 paperback)

We are at an inflection point: today, more people than ever before 
recognize that climate change and biodiversity loss are urgent and 
existential threats. Yet constant reports of climate doom are fueling an 
epidemic of eco-anxiety. Hope Matters boldly breaks through the 
narrative of doom and gloom that has overtaken conversations about our 
future to show why hope, not fear, is our most powerful tool for 
tackling the planetary crisis. Award-winning author, scholar, and 
educator Elin Kelsey describes effective campaigns to support ocean 
conservation and species resilience, and rewilding. And she shows how we 
can build on these positive trends and harness all our emotions about 
the changing environment into effective personal and political action.

We encourage readers to suggest titles for future bookshelves by 
contacting the bookshelf editor. We welcome review copies but suggest 
first contacting the editor prior to sending PDFs or print copies.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/01/12-new-books-explore-fresh-approaches-to-act-on-climate-change/



[Michael Mann about his book]
*Climate scientist Michael Mann: Deniers are shifting tactics*
Maxine Joselow, E&E News reporter - January 25, 2021
- -
*In the book, you write that the fossil fuel industry wants people to 
think that individual actions will solve climate change. Why is that?*

Well, when I was growing up in the early 1970s, there was a very 
effective advertisement that showed a Native American with a tear 
rolling down his cheek. He was crying because of bottles and cans 
littering the road. And a voice-over said, "People cause pollution. Only 
people can stop it."

_"The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet." _

The ad had a fundamental impact on me and a whole generation. We felt 
empowered to go clean up those bottles and cans. But it turned out we'd 
all been had. It was actually a [public relations] stunt hatched on 
Madison Avenue by [Coca-Cola Co.] and the beverage industry in an effort 
to convince us that bottle legislation wasn't necessary — we just needed 
to be better individuals and clean up after ourselves.

The fossil fuel industry has run with that playbook big time. For 
example, in the early 2000s, [BP PLC] gave us the concept of the 
individual carbon footprint and the first carbon footprint calculator. 
It was a classic deflection campaign to divert attention away from 
systemic solutions and toward individuals. And just like the beverage 
industry doesn't want bottle bills, the fossil fuel industry doesn't 
want regulations.

*You're not saying that individual actions and lifestyle changes don't 
matter, right?*

Right. Let me be clear — and I'm clear in the book — that we should all 
do things in our everyday lives to minimize our own carbon footprints. 
Many of those things make us healthier, save us money, make us feel 
better and set a good example for others. What we can't allow is for us 
to think those things are a substitute for the needed systemic actions.

You know, even some of our most trusted news sources have fallen for 
this framing. A lot of the articles that The New York Times has run 
about climate solutions in the past few years have been about your diet 
or your travel. And I don't think there's any malicious intent on the 
part of the Times. But even well-intentioned people, institutions and 
media organizations have fallen prey to this tactic.

*You also write that people should disregard "doomsayers" who argue that 
it's too late to act on climate change. Who are the "doomsayers"?*

There are some people who are convinced that we're going to see runaway 
global warming that's going to render all life extinct in a decade. They 
have argued that we'll all be extinct in 10 years, and we should really 
just try to live our lives and accept our fate.

The fossil fuel interests and those doing their bidding have actually 
promoted that message. They like that message because it potentially 
leads us down the path of inaction. If you feel there's nothing you can 
do anymore about the problem, then why do anything?

*Is that message consistent with the scientific consensus on climate 
change?*

No. It all goes back to this erroneous argument that we're committed to 
this massive release of methane from the Arctic that will lead to 
runaway warming. There is no credible scientific evidence whatsoever for 
that.

There is evidence that methane is being released by melting permafrost 
and it's increasing the warming in the Arctic. That process is 
represented in climate models. But there's no evidence for any sort of 
runaway warming scenario, and yet that bad science underlies pretty much 
all of these doomsday narratives.

*Have you received any pushback on the book since it came out?*

A little bit online. You know, the book is about how bad actors try to 
create divisiveness online. So it would be ironic if that didn't happen. 
[Laughs]

Some of the people who are criticized in the book have complained. And 
some colleagues have expressed honest disagreement with some of my 
points. But the reviews have been mostly positive. And I don't think 
anyone can claim that my views aren't grounded in facts or that they're 
not offered in good faith.

*What is it like dealing with trolls and critics on Twitter?*

I would be sort of insulted if they weren't a little bit upset by 
something. I would feel like I hadn't been successful. [Laughs]

You know, when I went to graduate school for theoretical physics, I 
never imagined that I'd be at the center of one of the most fractious 
debates we've ever had as a society. But I consider myself privileged to 
be in this position of public advocacy.

And I've been at this for a couple of decades — ever since I published 
the first study presenting the "hockey stick" curve back in the late 
1990s. So I've grown a thick skin. I'm like a rhino at this point. The 
animal, not a "Republican in name only." [Laughs]

*When you published the "hockey stick" paper in the '90s, you were 
subjected to harassment and death threats. Is that still the case?*

A lot of those attacks were aimed at discrediting me before I really had 
a chance to establish myself. And ultimately, I think they failed. In 
fact, they sort of backfired. I wouldn't be nearly as prominent a voice 
in this conversation today if it weren't for the platform that my 
detractors helped provide by making me into sort of a public figure.

In terms of the death threats and the efforts to have me fired, most of 
that stuff is behind me now. As I said, the new climate war is much less 
about trying to discredit the science and the scientists — and much more 
about these insidious tactics that we all have to be on the lookout for.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Twitter: @maxinejoselowEmail: mjoselow at eenews.net
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063723201



[Auto magazine JALOPNIK opinion]
*Big Oil Knows How This Is Going To Go*
Erik Shilling
Jan 26, 2021
The “supermajor” oil companies collectively known as Big Oil are having 
a time of it, in large part because of the pandemic, obviously, but also 
because we are swiftly moving towards a post Peak Oil era. Big Oil knows 
this, and it’s doing what it can to get in on what’s next.

Take Royal Dutch Shell, one of the seven so-called “supermajor” oil 
companies that comprise Big Oil, who got pretty shook this summer after 
it had to write down $22 billion following cratering of demand. And 
while at the time that was largely attributed to the pandemic, Shell and 
other oil and gas companies have also been trying to diversify.

This has meant investments in the electric supply chain, the latest 
being Shell’s purchase of Ubitricity, which operates the biggest car 
charging network in Great Britain.

 From the Financial Times Monday:

Shell said on Monday it would buy 100 per cent of the company for an 
undisclosed amount. Ubitricity, founded in Germany, is a leading 
European provider of on-street charging for electric vehicles.

The company, which integrates electric car charging into street 
infrastructure such as lamp posts, has more than 2,700 charge points in 
the UK, giving it a market share of 13 per cent.

Shell said the acquisition would help it expand into on-street charging. 
It already has more than 1,000 fast and ultrafast charging points at 430 
Shell retail stations and a greater number including those owned by 
partners and affiliates at forecourts and motorway service stations.

Subject to regulatory approval, the deal is expected to close later this 
year.

Twenty-seven hundred charge points are not that many, and 13 percent of 
the market is also not that much since “the market” for EVs in Great 
Britain is a single-digit percentage compared to internal combustion 
cars, but when big multinational corporations move their money that’s 
always the truest indication where they think the future is going.

One of the biggest oil companies in the world thinks this electric thing 
has legs, or at least enough to hedge its bets a little. See you at the 
Shell station in 2050, plugging in our vintage Teslas.
https://jalopnik.com/big-oil-knows-how-this-is-going-to-go-1846129084


[musical interlude]
*Climate Change Is Worsening. So the Weather Station Is Singing About It.*
The 36-year-old Canadian musician Tamara Lindeman’s piercing new album, 
“Ignorance,” explores the emotional impacts of a global problem.
By Lindsay Zoladz
Jan. 25, 2021
Some musicians are compelled to write a song after a lovers’ quarrel, an 
encounter with a great work of art or a particularly resonant overheard 
exchange. Tamara Lindeman, the 36-year-old Canadian singer and 
songwriter who records under the name the Weather Station, was recently 
driven to write one immediately after reading an article about the oil 
and gas corporation Exxon Mobil.

“When I say that, it sounds very esoteric or political or strange, but 
it’s very personal to me,” she said on a video call from her Toronto 
home one Monday morning in January, her sandy-blond bangs hanging as 
long as the fringe on her brown suede jacket. Call the songs on her 
piercing record “Ignorance,” due Feb. 5, anthems of ambivalence: 
Lindeman wrote most of them over what she calls “a weird winter where I 
was obsessively reading about climate change” and enamored of a 
particular toy keyboard with a built-in drum machine.

Around that time, she also began attending Fridays for Future 
demonstrations in Toronto and hosting a series called Elephant in the 
Room, for which she interviewed other musicians and activists about 
climate change.

“Her eyes are open,” said Ben Whiteley, who has played bass on her 
records and in her touring band since 2017. “She’s an incredibly nuanced 
thinker, very aware of the human emotional state. So she was like, ‘We 
need to address the emotional side of climate change.’”
“I feel as useless as a tree in a city park, standing as a symbol of 
what we have blown apart,” Lindeman sighs on the poignant “Tried to Tell 
You,” which sets its poetic, observational melancholy to an insistent 
beat. (She found the band she needed to achieve the album’s push and 
pull between weight and lightness in Toronto, including two 
percussionists, the jazz saxophonist Brodie West and Tegan and Sara’s 
keyboardist Johnny Spence.) Atop that sturdy, percussive foundation, 
Lindeman’s nimble voice moves from airy falsetto to an earthy alto with 
the grace and daring of a diving bird.

When listening to the Weather Station, Joni Mitchell often comes to 
mind; Lindeman also cites the more recent work of the indie musician 
Weyes Blood for giving her “permission” to explore, in songs, her 
relationship to an ailing planet with an almost romantic intensity.

The song that was kindled after the Exxon Mobil article is “Robber,” the 
striking leadoff track. Newly flushed with feelings of anger and 
betrayal, Lindeman revisited a droning chord progression to which she’d 
previously written an entirely different set of lyrics. She began with a 
phrase that popped into her mind: “I never believed in the robber.” It 
meant a few different things to her at once — the lies at the heart of 
so many collective cultural myths; the ease with which individuals are 
blamed for problems caused by larger institutions — which was a sign 
that she was moving in the right direction.
“I think the metaphors or the emotions that lead me to want to write or 
finish a song are always the ones that are complicated,” she said. “When 
I can’t fully get to the bottom of an idea, that’s when I’m most likely 
to make a song.”
Though Lindeman’s music sounds nothing like Drake’s, their origin 
stories are oddly similar: Both are former Canadian child actors who 
managed to reinvent themselves, in adulthood, as respected musicians. 
Under the stage name Tamara Hope, Lindeman acted steadily throughout her 
teens, and her IMDb page is a slightly surreal trip — a role as Tilda 
Swinton’s daughter in the thriller “The Deep End”; the title character 
in “Guinevere Jones,” a Canadian-Australian TV show about a high 
schooler with magical powers bestowed by Merlin himself. “I think if I 
could go back in time, I would be like, ‘This is not for you,’” she said 
with a laugh, before suddenly turning more ruminative.

“I was grateful to it in many ways, but I think for me personally it was 
a dangerous profession, because it’s very psychologically strange,” she 
said, especially for an actor who isn’t the star. “You have to show up 
and say your lines and hit your marks, and people just come up and touch 
you, put clothes on you, touch your face. You have no autonomy. It made 
me very protective of my selfhood, because I did have that experience of 
it, being dissolved by my job.”
Music provided a more freeing outlet. By her early 20s Lindeman devoted 
herself to her first passion, singing and composing songs. She put out a 
series of increasingly bold and well-received folk albums as the Weather 
Station (“I’m lucky that the moniker I chose when I was 20 wasn’t 
terrible”) on Canadian labels.
“Ignorance,” her first album for the American label Fat Possum, is 
likely to bring an even larger audience. It also gave her an opportunity 
to make peace with her professional past by directing her own music 
videos. The results are dazzling and disarming: They restage banal 
indoor activities in the middle of a forest, as Lindeman’s finely 
calibrated facial expressions communicate a subtle sense of surrealism 
and unease.

“I forgot she had this whole other life,” said the bassist Whiteley, who 
also worked on the videos. “I was like, ‘She knows how to do this. This 
is her old world.’ As people get older and more comfortable with 
themselves, it’s easier to bring back old parts of you.”
While touring tirelessly for her 2017 self-titled album, with strangers’ 
eyes on her night after night, though, Lindeman had started to feel 
pangs of that loss of selfhood that troubled her as a young actress. She 
kept asking herself, “What can I wear onstage that would make me feel 
less exposed?” She went through a men’s wear phase, and toyed with the 
idea of making an outfit that looked like it was made of grass (“didn’t 
work”). Then, while scrolling Instagram, she saw someone wearing a suit 
made out of mirrors.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God! This is it!’” she said. “Because it makes you 
invisible. It felt like a visual metaphor for how it feels to perform 
and to know that people are, for good and bad, bringing their own 
emotions to you as a performer, and expecting you to reflect them back 
to them.” She made her own to wear in the music videos and on the cover 
of “Ignorance.” It is, however, about as comfortable as an outfit made 
of glass shards can be: “I can’t sit down in it. It’s heavy. It’s a 
pretty ridiculous thing.”

But the mirror suit is also a way of blending into her natural 
environment, becoming one with the flora and fauna that “Ignorance” 
longs to preserve. “I tried to wear the world like some kind of 
garment,” she sings on “Wear,” a sparse and slinky meeting of head and 
heart.
Making music has allowed Lindeman to feel like she’s gradually regained 
her artistic autonomy, but it’s also made her wonder if all songwriters 
are inherently somewhat selfless — walking mirrors dissolving into their 
surroundings and reflecting back the shared fears and joys of their times.

“Something I realized about classic songwriting throughout history, like 
Motown songs or Beatles songs, is that they take a feeling from the air 
that everyone is feeling, and then they just give it into a melody,” 
Lindeman said. “There’s something beautifully alchemical about that.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/25/arts/music/weather-station-ignorance.html



[Meat makes heat]
*Episode 17 - Engineers Warning to Humanity : Vegan World 2026! - The 
Moonshot of Our Generation*
Jan 26, 2021
Sailesh Rao
While scientists are trained to tease out nature’s processes using the 
scientific method, engineers apply established scientific knowledge to 
design, create and maintain products and processes that solve problems. 
As such, engineers are trained to evaluate the proposed solution in the 
Paris Climate Accord and determine whether it meets our needs. 
Unfortunately, not only is the Paris Climate Accord found wanting, its 
singular focus on fossil fuel reductions to the exclusion of food and 
lifestyle systems makes the Paris Climate Accord downright dangerous.

It is engineers who designed and created the transportation and 
life-support systems that safely conveyed humans to the moon and back. 
It is engineers’ warnings on the temperature sensitivity of the O-ring 
seals in the propulsion system that were ignored by NASA managers 
resulting in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of Jan 28, 1986, 
which cost the lives of 7 human beings. If this present warning is 
ignored, it might put in jeopardy the lives of 7 billion human beings, 
not to mention all of spaceship Earth’s life-support systems. Therefore, 
we urge global policymakers to pay heed to our warning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az7o-nfYG78



[didn't say when]
*The U.S. Government's Entire 645,000-Vehicle Fleet Will Go All-Electric*
https://jalopnik.com/the-u-s-governments-entire-645-000-vehicle-fleet-will-1846132563



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 27, 1995 *

The New York Times reports:

    "Whatever happened to global warming? The question was on many lips
    a year ago, when the northeastern United States suffered through its
    bitterest winter in years. Now an exceptionally warm winter has
    whipsawed perceptions about the world's climate once again.

    "An answer has become apparent in annual climatic statistics in the
    last few days: global warming, interrupted as a result of the
    mid-1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, has resumed
    -- just as many experts had predicted.

    "After a two-year cooling period, the average temperature of the
    earth's surface rebounded in 1994 to the high levels of the 1980's,
    the warmest decade ever recorded, according to three sets of data in
    the United States and Britain.

    "The earth's average surface temperature last year closely
    approached the record high of almost 60 degrees measured in 1990.
    That was the last full year before the Pinatubo eruption, which
    cooled the earth by injecting into the atmosphere a haze of
    sulfurous droplets that reflected some of the sun's heat."

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/27/us/a-global-warming-resumed-in-1994-climate-data-show.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm


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