[TheClimate.Vote] March 1, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*March 1, 2021*/

[Storm chaser video recounting last year]
*TORNADOES OF 2020 - Is it over yet?*
Feb 28, 2021
Pecos Hank
741K subscribers
Best tornado, lightning and severe storm footage from 2020 in the tour 
of Tornado Alley highs and lows from March through July.  1075 confirmed 
tornadoes have been tallied in the US in 2020 including the third widest 
tornado ever recorded.
https://youtu.be/VyUL8161wUE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyUL8161wUE


[Audio interview]
*Nobel Climate Scientist Michael Mann on Denier Tactics and Idiocy 
(February 28, 2021)*
Feb 28, 2021
Al Franken
Mann Discusses his new book The New Climate Wa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJSaIg0U6SE

- -

[words from top US climatologist --  denial, deflection, division, 
doomism,..]
*Climatologist Michael E Mann: 'Good people fall victim to doomism. I do 
too sometimes'*
Jonathan Watts --  27 Feb 2021
The author and eminent climate scientist on the deniers’ new tactics and 
why positive change feels closer than it has done in 20 years

Michael E Mann is one of the world’s most influential climate 
scientists. He rose to prominence in 1999 as the co-author of the 
“hockey-stick graph”, which showed the sharp rise in global temperatures 
since the industrial age. This was the clearest evidence anyone had 
provided of the link between human emissions and global warming. This 
made him a target. He and other scientists have been subject to 
“climategate” email hacking, personal abuse and online trolling. In his 
new book, The New Climate War, he argues the tide may finally be turning 
in a hopeful direction.

*You are a battle-scarred veteran of many climate campaigns. What’s new 
about the climate war?*
For more than two decades I was in the crosshairs of climate change 
deniers, fossil fuel industry groups and those advocating for them – 
conservative politicians and media outlets. This was part of a larger 
effort to discredit the science of climate change that is arguably the 
most well-funded, most organised PR campaign in history. Now we finally 
have reached the point where it is not credible to deny climate change 
because people can see it playing out in real time in front of their eyes.

But the “inactivists”, as I call them, haven’t given up; they have 
simply shifted from hard denial to a new array of tactics that I 
describe in the book as the new climate war.

*Who is the enemy in the new climate war?*
It is fossil fuel interests, climate change deniers, conservative media 
tycoons, working together with petrostate actors like Saudi Arabia and 
Russia. I call this the coalition of the unwilling.

If you had to find a single face that represents both the old and new 
climate war it would be Rupert Murdoch. Climate change is an issue the 
Murdoch press has disassembled on for years. The disinformation was 
obvious last year, when they blamed arsonists for the devastating 
Australian bushfires. This was a horrible attempt to divert attention 
from the real cause, which was climate change. Murdoch was taken to task 
by his own son because of the immorality of his practices.

We also have to recognise the increasing roles of petrostate actors. 
Saudi Arabia has played an obstructionist role. Russia has perfected 
cyber warfare and used it to interfere in other countries and disrupt 
action on climate change. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has made a credible case 
about Russia’s efforts to hijack the 2016 presidential election and get 
Trump elected. Russia wanted to end US sanctions that stood in the way 
of a half-trillion-dollar deal between Rosneft and ExxonMobil. It 
worked. Who did Trump appoint as his first secretary of state? Rex 
Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil.

Today Russia uses cyberware – bot armies and trolls – to get climate 
activists to fight one another and to seed arguments on social media. 
Russian trolls have attempted to undermine carbon pricing in Canada and 
Australia, and Russian fingerprints have been detected in the 
yellow-vest protests in France.

*And WikiLeaks? Your book suggests they were involved?*
I’m not an expert but there has been a lot of investigative journalism 
about the role they played in the 2016 election. Julian Assange and 
WikiLeaks helped Donald Trump get elected, and in doing that they did 
the bidding of Putin. Their fingerprints are also all over the 
climategate affair 10 years ago. UK investigators have evidence of 
Russian involvement in that too.

*It’s an unlikely alliance.*
Yes, it’s a remarkable irony. Who would think you would see a US 
republican president, a Russian president and Rupert Murdoch working 
together as part of the coalition of the unwilling, doing everything in 
their power to prevent action on the defining crisis of our time: 
climate change.

*What is in it for Murdoch?*
The Saudi royal family has been the second-highest shareholder in News 
Corporation [Murdoch’s company]. And apparently Murdoch and the Saudi 
family are close friends, so that is a potential motive.
*You say the deniers are on the back foot and there are reasons to be 
hopeful. But we have seen false dawns in the past. Why is it different now?*
Without doubt, this is the best chance in the 20 years since I have been 
in the climate arena. We have seen false complacency in the past. In 
2007, after the IPCC shared the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore, there 
seemed to be this awakening in the media. that felt to many like a 
tipping point, though at the time I was very apprehensive. I knew the 
enemy wouldn’t give up and I expected a resurgence of the climate war. 
That’s exactly what we saw with the climategate campaign [the leaking of 
emails to try to tarnish scientists]. This is different. It feels 
different, it looks different, it smells different.

I am optimistic about a favourable shift in the political wind. The 
youth climate movement has galvanised attention and re-centred the 
debate on intergenerational ethics. We are seeing a tipping point in 
public consciousness. That bodes well. There is still a viable way 
forward to avoid climate catastrophe.

You can see from the talking points of inactivists that they are really 
in retreat. Republican pollsters like Frank Luntz have advised clients 
in the fossil fuel industry and the politicians who carry water for them 
that you can’t get away with denying climate change any more. It doesn’t 
pass the sniff test with the public. Instead they are looking at other 
things they can do.

*Let’s dig into deniers’ tactics. One that you mention is deflection. 
What are the telltale signs?*
Any time you are told a problem is your fault because you are not 
behaving responsibly, there is a good chance that you are being 
deflected from systemic solutions and policies. Blaming the individual 
is a tried and trusted playbook that we have seen in the past with other 
industries. In the 1970s, Coca Cola and the beverage industry did this 
very effectively to convince us we don’t need regulations on waste 
disposal. Because of that we now have a global plastic crisis. The same 
tactics are evident in the gun lobby’s motto, “guns don’t kill people, 
people kill people”, which is classic deflection. For a UK example look 
at BP, which gave us the world’s first individual carbon footprint 
calculator. Why did they do that? Because BP wanted us looking at our 
carbon footprint not theirs.

*This leads to the second tactic – division. You argue people need to 
focus strategically on system change, but online bots are stirring up 
arguments over individual lifestyle choices. That said, you suggest 
there is too much emphasis on reducing meat, which is a relatively minor 
source of emissions compared with fossil fuels. Isn’t that likely to be 
divisive among vegetarians and vegans?*
Of course lifestyle changes are necessary but they alone won’t get us 
where we need to be. They make us more healthy, save money and set a 
good example for others. But we can’t allow the forces of inaction to 
convince us these actions alone are the solution and that we don’t need 
systemic changes. If they can get us arguing with one another, and 
finger pointing and carbon shaming about lifestyle choices, that is 
extremely divisive and the community will no longer be effective in 
challenging vested interest and polluters.

I don’t eat meat. We get power from renewable energy. I have a plug-in 
hybrid vehicle. I do those things and encourage others to do them. but I 
don’t think it is helpful to shame people who are not as far along as 
you. Instead, let’s help everybody to move in that direction. That is 
what policy and system change is about: creating incentives so even 
those who don’t think about their environmental footprint are still led 
in that direction.

*Another new front in the new climate war is what you call “doomism”.  
What do you mean by that?*
Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic. 
Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, 
they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the 
bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.

What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise 
environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline 
demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but 
they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair. But 
“too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of 
science. Many of the prominent doomist narratives – [Jonathan] Franzen, 
David Wallace-Wells, the Deep Adaptation movement – can be traced back 
to a false notion that an Arctic methane bomb will cause runaway warming 
and extinguish all life on earth within 10 years. This is completely 
wrong. There is no science to support that.

*Even without Arctic methane, there are plenty of solid reasons to be 
worried about the climate. Can’t a sense of doom also radicalise people 
and act as an antidote to complacency? Isn’t it a stage in understanding?*
True. It is a natural emotional reaction. Good people fall victim to 
doomism. I do too sometimes. It can be enabling and empowering as long 
as you don’t get stuck there. It is up to others to help ensure that 
experience can be cathartic.

*You also suggest that Greta Thunberg has sometimes been led astray.*
I am very supportive of Greta. At one point in the book, I point out 
that even she has at times been a victim of some of this bad framing. 
But in terms of what she does, I am hugely supportive. Those I call out 
really are those who should know better. In particular, I tried to 
document mis-statements about the science. If the science objectively 
demonstrated it was too late to limit warming below catastrophic levels, 
that would be one thing and we scientists would be faithful to that. But 
science doesn’t say that.

*Ten years ago, you and other climate scientists were accused of 
exaggerating the risks and now you are accused of underplaying the 
dangers. Sometimes it must seem that you cannot win*.
It is frustrating to see scientists blamed. We also are told that we 
didn’t do a good enough job communicating the risks. People forget we 
were fighting the most well-funded, well-organised PR campaign in the 
history of human civilisation.

*Another development in the “climate war” is the entry of new 
participants. Bill Gates is perhaps the most prominent. His new book, 
How to Prevent a Climate Disaster, offers a systems analyst approach to 
the problem, a kind of operating system upgrade for the planet. What do 
you make of his take?*
I want to thank him for using his platform to raise awareness of the 
climate crisis. That said, I disagree with him quite sharply on the 
prescription. His view is overly technocratic and premised on an 
underestimate of the role that renewable energy can play in 
decarbonising our civilisation. If you understate that potential, you 
are forced to make other risky choices, such as geoengineering and 
carbon capture and sequestration. Investment in those unproven options 
would crowd out investment in better solutions.

Gates writes that he doesn’t know the political solution to climate 
change. But the politics are the problem buddy. If you don’t have a 
prescription of how to solve that, then you don’t have a solution and 
perhaps your solution might be taking us down the wrong path.

*What are the prospects for political change with Joe Biden in the White 
House?*
Breathtaking. Biden has surprised even the most ardent climate hawks in 
the boldness of his first 100 day agenda, which goes well beyond any 
previous president, including Obama when it comes to use of executive 
actions. He has incorporated climate policy into every single government 
agency and we have seen massive investments in renewable energy 
infrastructure, cuts in subsidies for fossil fuels, and the cancellation 
of the Keystone XL pipeline. On the international front, the appointment 
of John Kerry, who helped negotiate the Paris Accord, has telegraphed to 
the rest of the world that the US is back and ready to lead again. That 
is huge and puts pressure on intransigent state actors like [Australian 
prime minister] Scott Morrison, who has been a friend of the fossil fuel 
industry in Australia. Morrison has changed his rhetoric dramatically 
since Biden became president. I think that creates an opportunity like 
no other.
*The book provides a long list of other reasons to be hopeful – rapid 
take-up of renewable energy, technology advances, financial sector 
action and more. Even so, the US, like other countries, is still far 
short of the second world war-level of mobilisation that you and others 
say is necessary to keep global heating to 1.5C. Have the prospects for 
that been helped or hindered by Covid?*
I see a perfect storm of climate opportunity. Terrible as the pandemic 
has been, this tragedy can also provide lessons, particularly on the 
importance of listening to the word of science when facing risks. That 
could be from medical scientists advising us on the need for social 
distancing to reduce the chances of contagion, or it could be from 
climate scientists recommending we cut carbon emissions to reduce the 
risk of climate catastrophe. There is also awareness of the deadliness 
of anti-science, which can be measured in hundreds of thousands of lives 
in the US that were unnecessarily lost because a president refused to 
implement policies based on what health scientists were saying. Out of 
this crisis can come a collective reconsideration of our priorities. How 
to live sustainably on a finite planet with finite space, food and 
water. A year from now, memories and impacts of coronavirus will still 
feel painful, but the crisis itself will be in the rear-view mirror 
thanks to vaccines. What will loom larger will be the greater crisis we 
face – the climate crisis.

• The New Climate War by Michael E Mann is published by Scribe
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview



[Twice in the last 150,000 years]
*The Arctic Ocean was covered by a shelf ice and filled with freshwater*
Date: February 3, 2021
Source: Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine 
Research
Summary:

    The Arctic Ocean was covered by up to 900 m thick shelf ice and was
    filled entirely with freshwater at least twice in the last 150,000
    years. This surprising finding is the result of long-term research.
    With a detailed analysis of the composition of marine deposits, the
    scientists could demonstrate that the Arctic Ocean as well as the
    Nordic Seas did not contain sea-salt in at least two glacial
    periods. Instead, these oceans were filled with large amounts of
    freshwater under a thick ice shield. This water could then be
    released into the North Atlantic in very short periods of time. Such
    sudden freshwater inputs could explain rapid climate oscillations
    for which no satisfying explanation had been previously found.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210203123449.htm
- -
[2 videos by Paul Beckwith]
*Beckwith Updates and Lead-in to an Amazingly Awesome New Finding on a 
Completely Fresh Water Arctic*
Feb 27, 2021
Paul Beckwith
I just filmed a whole bunch of videos on the Arctic.
This video is kind of an overall series introduction, where I discuss 
some personal stuff in my life, the awesome books that I am reading, and 
then the Arctic. Basically I am just shooting the breeze, but I think 
you will find some interesting nuggets and hints on an enormously 
significant new finding. Namely, from about 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, 
and from 130,000 to 150,000 years ago, the Arctic Ocean basin was 
composed of completely fresh water, with the frozen ice on the surface.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB971Vbnyn0
- -
[tremendous temperature increases]
*Profound Implications of a Completely Salt-Free Arctic Ocean as 
recently as 60,000 Years Ago*
Feb 28, 2021
Paul Beckwith
A ground-breaking new finding in climate recently just occurred, and it 
seems blindingly obvious, in retrospect. In fact I became very close to 
figuring this out all by myself, many years ago.

During extremely cold, long duration ice ages, at two different periods 
in the last 150,000 years; namely (a) 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, and 
(b) 130,000 to 150,000 years ago; the entire Arctic Ocean was fresh 
liquid water, entombed underneath a thick ice layer, and separated from 
the Pacific Ocean by land, and from the Atlantic Ocean by a combination 
of land and grounded ice shelves, with only small passages where fresh 
water would exit, keeping salt water from entering. How was this possible?

During these exceptionally cold, long duration cold periods there was so 
much water stored within the glacial ice that global sea levels were 
lower by 130 meters (430 ft). With sea levels this low, the Bering 
Strait sea floor became dry land, as well as all the gaps within the 
Canadian Archipelago and the Nares Strait. There was no water channel 
connection to the Pacific Ocean at all.

On the Atlantic Ocean side of the Arctic, the ocean passages become 
greatly reduced by the lower sea level exposing the continental shelves. 
Very thick ice sheets on Greenland and Europe created extensive ice 
shelves on the coastlines that extended far out into the Arctic Ocean, 
and these ice shelves, up to 900 meters thick (90 meters above sea 
level, 810 meters below sea level) almost completely blocked off the 
remaining ocean passages between the Arctic Ocean and the Atlantic 
Ocean, between Greenland and northern Scotland.

Lots of fresh water still entered the Arctic Ocean, from meltwater, 
northern rivers, rainfall, and snow melt. Therefore, over time 
freshwater built up in the Arctic Ocean basin, floating above and 
eventually forcing out the remaining salt water near the ocean floor. 
Clearly, this led to an entirely fresh Arctic Ocean.

When these ice ages ended due to Milankovitch Cycle changes in Earth’s 
orbit around the Sun, and the Earth started warming, the sea level rose 
again and the ice shelves thinned, releasing huge amounts of fresh water 
back into the Atlantic Ocean and then the Pacific, causing enormous 
wrenching temperature swings and abrupt climate oscillations until the 
climate system again reached stability. The Arctic Ocean once again 
became a salty ocean.

Wow!!!
One of my subsequent videos goes through the peer reviewed paper on this 
with a fine toothed comb...
video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgF8Krun7Jw
- -
https://paulbeckwith.net/2021/02/28/profound-implications-of-a-completely-salt-free-arctic-ocean-as-recently-as-60000-years-ago/




[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - March 1, 2001 *

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak suggests that President George W. Bush 
will side with EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and Treasury 
Secretary Paul O'Neill regarding the need to combat carbon pollution. By 
the end of the month, Bush would declare that he would not move to 
regulate carbon emissions, nor would he embrace the Kyoto Protocol.

http://townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/2001/03/01/bushs_global_warming

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