[✔️] May 22, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 22, 2021*/

[NYTimes report]
*Scientists Predict an ‘Above Normal’ Atlantic Hurricane Season*
The forecast, which follows a record season in 2020, arrives as 
hurricanes are becoming more destructive over time.
By John Schwartz - May 20, 2021
Federal scientists on Thursday forecast that 2021 could see in the range 
of 13 to 20 named storms, six to 10 hurricanes, and three to five major 
hurricanes of Category 3 or higher in the Atlantic. Ben Friedman, the 
acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration, said, “an above-normal season is most likely.”

Hurricane season runs from June 1 until Nov. 30, though the last six 
years have seen storms form before its official start.

This year’s announcement comes after a record-shattering 2020 season of 
30 named storms — so many that we ran through the alphabet for only the 
second time and resorted to using Greek letters.

Hurricanes have become more destructive over time, in no small part 
because of the influences of a warming planet. Climate change is 
producing more powerful storms, and they dump more water because of 
heavier rainfall and a tendency to dawdle and meander; rising seas and 
slower storms can make for higher and more destructive storm surges. But 
humans play a part in making storm damage more expensive, as well, by 
continuing to build in vulnerable coastal areas...
- -
One way that people oversimplify climate change, Dr. Camargo said, is 
asking whether climate change “caused” a storm. That “is not the right 
way to frame the problem,” she said. Instead, it should be “how much has 
climate change contributed to this hurricane?”...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/climate/atlantic-hurricane-outlook.html



[must be electric]
*Your Uber and Lyft driver must go electric. California’s latest climate 
change mandate*
MAY 21, 2021
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article251574748.html



[not to mention living in your car]
*Stop Worrying and Love the F-150 Lightning*
Here are seven ways Ford’s first electric pickup truck signals that 
decarbonization has entered a new era.
ROBINSON MEYER - MAY 19, 2021

    4. An electric vehicle is, at a mechanical level, a giant battery on
    wheels. Ford is pitching this not only as a technical necessity but
    as a feature: They want you to plug stuff into the car. “Let’s say
    you’re at a tailgate or at work. You can set up a cement mixer, a
    band, or lights and draw only half the power the truck is capable of
    producing at a time,” Linda Zhang, the chief engineer on the
    Lightning, told me. Like all electric vehicles, the F-150 replaces
    the hefty internal-combustion engine with a much smaller electric
    motor, and like many EVs therefore has a storage compartment under
    its front hood: a “frunk.” Except the F-150 has a “power frunk”—the
    most marvelous three-syllable phrase American marketing has produced
    since “half-priced apps”—meaning that it both opens to the touch of
    a button and has multiple plugs for appliances...

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/05/f-150-lightning-fords-first-electric-truck/618932/



[responsible action]
O*regon weighs new rules to protect workers as climate change makes 
wildfires, extreme heat more prevalent*
Updated May 20, 2021
Oregon OSHA will host listening sessions Thursday and next Tuesday to 
give workers the opportunity to share their thoughts on the potential 
rules and their own experiences working in excessive heat and amid 
wildfire smoke. They’ll likely hear from workers and their advocates 
that the rules can’t come soon enough.

“Workers should not be in a position of choosing between their health 
and a paycheck,” said Nora Apter, climate program director at the Oregon 
Environmental Council. “We’re at the table to ensure that doesn’t happen 
in the future.”

WILDFIRE SMOKE
The air quality in many parts of Oregon reached hazardous levels last 
September as wildfires raged throughout the state. Air quality levels in 
some places topped 500, the very highest measurement, signifying an 
immediate risk to public health.

In California, when the Air Quality Index reaches an unhealthy level of 
151, employers are required to either halt operations or provide workers 
with particulate respirators, such as N95 masks.

Oregon didn’t have a similar mandate last year...
- -
“I would like to see some common-sense safety rules and stricter 
enforcement,” he said. “When the air quality reaches a certain 
threshold, employers should be required to provide N95s, provide 
ventilation. If they can’t bring down the particulates in the air with a 
ventilation system, then workers shouldn’t be working. We’re talking 
about human lives.”

EXTREME HEAT
Last year’s wildfires were extraordinary in their scale and impact, but 
farmworkers and others who work outside routinely face a much more 
common hazard: a very hot day.

Ira Cuello-Martinez, climate policy associate at PCUN, Oregon’s largest 
farmworker union, said he has heard stories from workers who have had to 
duck behind cars and trucks during their breaks simply to access shade 
during the hottest days of the summer. In other cases, he said workers 
have complained that they haven’t been provided breaks or water, even as 
temperatures topped 90 degrees.

Cuello-Martinez said many farmworkers wear layers, even when it’s hot, 
to protect their skin from the sun. Many are also paid by how much they 
pick, incentivizing them to work quickly even in extreme heat. That can 
put them at significant risk for heat-related illness...
- -
Apter, of the Oregon Environmental Council, said the state at a minimum 
needs to ensure that employers provide access to drinkable water, shade 
or cooling stations, regular breaks and time to acclimate to heat. She 
said those working during wildfires should be provided with respirators 
and the option to relocate to a safer location...
- -
Suisman, though, said many workers are skeptical about whether the rules 
will make a meaningful difference.

Oregon OSHA only inspects 2.5% of workplaces in a typical year and can 
dismiss complaints without visiting a workplace, though the agency does 
prioritize visiting high-risk workplaces like farms.

Oregon also has a history of handing out fines to employers who violate 
rules that are significantly smaller than the national average, 
according to annual reports from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Violations are often downgraded on appeal, too. A total of 1,629 Oregon 
OSHA violations were resolved through the appeals process over the last 
three years, with 43% amended on appeal and 12% rescinded, according to 
Oregon OSHA data.

“These rules are only step one,” Suisman said. “They will hopefully 
empower workers to be able to tell their supervisors, ‘We have the right 
to these protections.’ But then there also has to be meaningful 
enforcement.”...
-- 
Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg at oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg
https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2021/05/oregon-weighs-new-rules-to-protect-workers-as-climate-change-makes-wildfires-extreme-heat-more-prevalent.html
- -
https://osha.oregon.gov/rules/advisory/smoke/Pages/default.aspx


[having been losing  battles for decades now]
*Climate change disinformation is evolving. So are efforts to fight back*
Researchers are testing games and other ways to help people recognize 
climate change denial
By Carolyn Gramling - MAY 18, 2021

Over the last four decades, a highly organized, well-funded campaign 
powered by the fossil fuel industry has sought to discredit the science 
that links global climate change to human emissions of carbon dioxide 
and other greenhouse gases. These disinformation efforts have sown 
confusion over data, questioned the integrity of climate scientists and 
denied the scientific consensus on the role of humans.

Such disinformation efforts are outlined in internal documents from 
fossil fuel giants such as Shell and Exxon. As early as the 1980s, oil 
companies knew that burning fossil fuels was altering the climate, 
according to industry documents reviewed at a 2019 U.S. House of 
Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing. Yet these 
companies, aided by some scientists, set out to mislead the public, deny 
well-established science and forestall efforts to regulate emissions...
- -
Cook and van der Linden have also been testing ways to get out in front 
of disinformation, an approach known as prebunking, or inoculation 
theory. By helping people recognize common rhetorical techniques used to 
spread climate disinformation — such as logical fallacies, relying on 
fake “experts” and cherry-picking only the data that support one view — 
the two hope to build resilience against these tactics.

This new line of defense may come with a bonus, van der Linden says. 
Training people in these techniques could build a more general 
resilience to disinformation, whether related to climate, vaccines or 
COVID-19.

Science News asked Cook and van der Linden about debunking conspiracies, 
collaborating with Facebook and how prebunking is (and isn’t) like 
getting vaccinated. The conversations, held separately, have been edited 
for brevity and clarity.

*We’ve seen both misinformation and disinformation used in the climate 
change denial discussion. What’s the difference?*

van der Linden: Misinformation is any information that’s incorrect, 
whether due to error or fake news. Disinformation is deliberately 
intended to deceive. Then there’s propaganda: disinformation with a 
political agenda. But in practice, it’s difficult to disentangle them. 
Often, people use misinformation because it’s the broadest category.

*Has there been a change in the nature of climate change denialism in 
the last few decades?*
Cook: It is shifting. For example, we fed 21 years of [climate change] 
denial blog posts from the U.K. into a machine learning program. We 
found that the science denialism misinformation is gradually going down 
— and solution misinformation [targeting climate policy and renewable 
energy] is on the rise [as reported online in early March at SocArXiv.org].

As the science becomes more apparent, it becomes more untenable to 
attack it. We see spikes in policy misinformation just before the 
government brings in new science policy, such as a carbon pricing bill. 
And there was a huge spike before the [2015] Paris climate agreement. 
That’s what we will see more of over time.

*How do you hope Facebook’s new climate change misinformation project 
will help?*
Cook: We need tech solutions, like flagging and tagging misinformation, 
as well as social media platforms downplaying it, so [the 
misinformation] doesn’t get put on as many people’s feeds. We can’t 
depend on social media. A look behind the curtain at Facebook showed me 
the challenge of getting corporations to adequately respond. There are a 
lot of internal tensions.

van der Linden: I’ve worked with WhatsApp and Google, and it’s always 
the same story. They want to do the right thing, but don’t follow 
through because it hurts engagement on the platform.

But going from not taking a stance on climate change to taking a stance, 
that’s a huge win. What Facebook has done is a step forward. They 
listened to our designs and suggestions and comments on their [pilot] test.

We wanted more than a neutral [label directing people to Facebook’s 
information page on climate change], but they wanted to test the neutral 
post first. That’s all good. It’ll be a few months at least for the 
testing in the U.K. phase to roll out, but we don’t yet know how many 
other countries they will roll it out to and when. We all came on board 
with the idea that they’re going to do more, and more aggressively. I’ll 
be pleasantly surprised if it rolls out globally. That’s my criteria for 
success.

*Scientists have been countering climate change misinformation for 
years, through fact-checking and debunking. It’s a bit like 
whack-a-mole. You advocate for “inoculating” people against the 
techniques that help misinformation spread through communities. How can 
that help?*
van der Linden: Fact-checking and debunking is useful if you do it 
right. But there’s the issue of ideology, of resistance to fact-checking 
when it’s not in line with ideology. Wouldn’t life be so much easier if 
we could prevent [disinformation] in the first place? That’s the whole 
point of prebunking or inoculation. It’s a multilayer defense system. If 
you can get there first, that’s great. But that won’t always be 
possible, so you still have real-time fact-checking. This multilayer 
firewall is going to be the most useful thing.

*You’ve both developed online interactive tools, games really, to test 
the idea of inoculating people against disinformation tactics. Sander, 
you created an online interactive game called Bad News, in which players 
can invent conspiracies and act as fake news producers. A study of 
15,000 participants reported in 2019 in Palgrave Communications showed 
that by playing at creating misinformation, people got better at 
recognizing it. But how long does this “inoculation” last?*
van der Linden: That’s an important difference in the viral analogy. 
Biological vaccines give more or less lifelong immunity, at least for 
some kinds of viruses. That’s not the case for a psychological vaccine. 
It wears off over time.

In one study, we followed up with people [repeatedly] for about three 
months, during which time they didn’t replay the game. We found no decay 
of the inoculation effect, which was quite surprising. The inoculation 
remained stable for about two months. In [a shorter study focused on] 
climate change misinformation, the inoculation effect also remained 
stable, for at least one week.

*John, what about your game Cranky Uncle? At first, it focused on 
climate change denial, but you’ve expanded it to include other types of 
misinformation, on topics such as COVID-19, flat-earthism and vaccine 
misinformation. How well do techniques to inoculate against climate 
change denialism translate to other types of misinformation?*
Cook: The techniques used in climate denial are seen in all forms of 
misinformation. Working on deconstructing [that] misinformation 
introduced me to parallel argumentation, which is basically using 
analogies to combat flawed logic. That’s what late night comedians do: 
Make what is obviously a ridiculous argument. The other night, for 
example, Seth Meyers talked about how Texas blaming its [February] power 
outage on renewable energy was like New Jersey blaming its problems on 
Boston [clam chowder].

My main tip is to arm yourself with awareness of misleading techniques. 
Think of it like a virus spreading: You don’t want to be a 
superspreader. Make sure that you’re wearing a mask, for starters. And 
when you see misinformation, call it out. That observational correction 
— it matters. It makes a difference.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-change-disinformation-denial-misinformation 




[for instance - Exxon makes the most plastic]
*Who’s Making — and Funding — the World’s Plastic Trash?*
ExxonMobil, Dow, Barclays, and more top lists in a new report ranking 
the companies behind the single-use plastic
https://www.desmog.com/2021/05/18/companies-banks-making-funding-the-worlds-single-use-plastic-trash/



[of course]
*Climate Justice Is About More Than Just Fossil Fuels*
A true commitment to climate justice is much broader: It necessarily 
entails building local resilience to climate impacts.
By Matthew Sehrsweeney - MAY 7, 2021

In the fight for a better world, universities are becoming critical 
sites of conflict. In the past year, graduate student unions from New 
York University to the University of California–Santa Cruz have gone on 
strike to demand basic cost-of-living adjustments in cities where 
skyrocketing rent is pushing working-class people to the fringes. 
Shortly after the murder of George Floyd last May, after intense 
pressure from the student body, the University of Minnesota cut ties 
with the Minneapolis Police Department. And at an ever-increasing clip, 
student organizers are successfully pushing their university 
administrations to divest from fossil fuels.

Far from being isolated sites of esoteric academic debate, universities 
must be seen for what they are: vast, powerful institutions with tens of 
thousands of students and workers, the actions of which have deep 
implications for both local communities and the rest of the world...
- -
For example, in March, after nearly a decade of intense pressure from 
student organizers, the University of Michigan announced full divestment 
from fossil fuels. The week prior to the announcement, the university 
released its carbon neutrality plan—also the subject of intense 
pressure—which aims to achieve university-wide true carbon neutrality by 
2040.

At first glance, it looks like UM is acknowledging its massive 
responsibility in mitigating the climate crisis and charting a bold path 
to make good on it—and indeed, these steps are monumental: Michigan’s 
endowment is the first of the world’s top 10 largest university 
endowments to divest.

But campus climate activists here and elsewhere should not be so easily 
satisfied.
While these victories are worth celebrating, neither reflect 
universities’ full capacity—or responsibility—to mobilize their 
resources to address the climate crisis, and neither are sufficient for 
advancing climate justice.

As climate organizers on the University of Michigan’s campus, we 
observed numerous examples of the dangerous implications of this 
incomplete framing in the creation of the university’s carbon neutrality 
plan. In addressing commuting emissions, for example, the plan focuses 
heavily on electric vehicle charging infrastructure—a strategy that is 
biased toward those wealthy enough to own electric vehicles and 
inattentive to the profound environmental injustices associated with 
lithium mining.

A more holistic, climate justice–informed approach, on the other hand, 
could address commuting emissions in a manner that simultaneously builds 
community resilience: by meaningfully addressing the housing crises that 
universities often produce...
- -
These initiatives constitute a critical component of universities’ 
fundamental responsibility to advance local climate justice. As probably 
one of the most powerful institutions in their communities, they have a 
duty to build community resilience by ensuring that everyone’s basic 
needs are met. An honest commitment to advancing climate justice also 
extends far beyond addressing present, local harms. Universities must 
meaningfully account for their role in dispossession of Indigenous land 
and continued complicity in environmental racism perpetrated by 
investor-owned utilities, exploring material reparative action informed 
by the needs of oppressed communities...
And while divesting from the purveyors of climate catastrophe is 
crucial, doing so while maintaining investments in, for example, the 
prison industrial complex, or, in UM’s case, palm oil plantations 
implicated in horrific human rights abuses only enables the destruction 
that they purportedly have divested from. It’s not just fossil fuels, 
and it’s not just melting icebergs: Climate justice demands categorical 
divestment from all harm.

But that requires a fundamental reevaluation of university financial 
governance: Multibillion-dollar endowments should not be managed in 
secret by cloistered corporate boards; in determining how to mobilize 
resources for a just transition, students, faculty, staff, and the local 
community deserve a seat at the table.

The institutional intransigence of wealthy research institutions poses a 
daunting set of barriers. But these barriers are not insurmountable. 
Indeed, the success of recent student movements—not just in 
divestment—should indicate to organizers that sustained pressure can 
effect appreciable, sometimes profound, change.

But to push universities beyond the traditional focuses of campus 
climate organizing campaigns to address these interrelated harms, 
student organizers need to abide by a concomitantly broad approach to 
organizing. We need to reimagine the boundaries of the coalitions we can 
build.

Take graduate student labor organizing: In the past few decades, it has 
gained appreciable traction, all while increasingly engaging in the 
bargaining strategies that advance goals to benefit the broader 
community. These are powerful potential allies. Student climate 
organizers can—and have—also built power by working in solidarity with 
campus racial justice movements and other divestment movements. And 
organizers should look beyond the boundaries of the university, building 
relationships and trust with longtime community organizers with deep 
institutional knowledge—especially important because of the inherent 
challenge of sustaining a movement with an ephemeral student population.

Of course, the onus should not be on student organizers; administrations 
should relieve students of this unpaid burden of accountability by 
acting proactively to align their institutional policies with their 
espoused commitment to serving the common good. They should be taking 
drastic action to build resilience in their local communities; push 
toward a swift, just transition to a green, regenerative economy; and, 
more broadly, engage in efforts to redistribute their immense resources 
and power.

Divestment from fossil fuels and carbon neutrality are a step in the 
right direction, but not nearly enough—now is not a moment for partial 
measures; it is a moment for radical transformation.

Matt Sehrsweeney is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan 
School of Environment and Sustainability and Ford School of Public 
Policy, and an organizer with the Climate Action Movement
https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/climate-justice/


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  May 22 , *

Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh reports on Republican presidential 
candidate Jeb Bush's devotion to denial and scorn of solutions:

"First he asserted that the government shouldn’t try to pick winners and 
losers when it comes to energy sources, citing fracking as an example of 
the market’s ability to find solutions.

"But as economists will tell you, for the market to work efficiently, 
it’s important to get prices right. If the cost of carbon-based fuels 
reflected the environmental harm caused, higher prices would reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions while also rendering cleaner energy more cost 
competitive. Bush didn’t do a media availability, but afterward, I did 
squeeze in this query: Given his belief in the market’s ability to find 
the best solution, does he favor a tax on carbon emissions?

"His one-word answer corresponded with the quick shake of his head: 'No.'"

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/05/21/jeb-bush-good-and-bad/IOe0h7GNuTWInlQuyz0iXM/story.html# 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/21/3661573/jeb-bush-climate-change-intellectual-arrogance/ 



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