[✔️] May 26, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*May 26, 2021*/

[Shell feels the heat]
*'The climate has won today' - Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% 
in landmark climate case*
The case is unique in that no compensation is being demanded from the 
company. Instead, for the first time in history, Shell is being asked to 
issue a policy change...
However, for the Dutch-British company, the ruling is only legally 
binding in the Netherlands...
https://www.euronews.com/green/2021/05/26/shell-ordered-to-cut-co2-emissions-by-45-in-landmark-climate-case


[BBC tells US about racism]
*Global heating: Study shows impact of 'climate racism' in US*
By Matt McGrath
A new study says that black people living in most US cities are subject 
to double the level of heat stress as their white counterparts.

The researchers say the differences were not explained by poverty but by 
historic racism and segregation.

As a result, people of colour more generally, live in areas with fewer 
green spaces and more buildings and roads.

These exacerbate the impacts of rising temperatures and a changing climate.

How calls for climate justice are shaking the world

    -- G7 ministers agree new steps against fossil fuels
    -- Thousands skip school for Australia climate strikes
    -- The Antarctic ice shelf in the line of fire
    -- Cities are well known magnifiers of a warmer climate.

The surface urban heat island effect is the technical term for the 
impact that the buildings, roads and infrastructure of cities have on 
temperatures....
- -
For black people this was particularly stark. The researchers say they 
are exposed to an extra 3.12C of heating, on average, in urban 
neighbourhoods, compared to an extra 1.47C for white people...
- -
In around half the cities, the average person of colour faced higher 
summertime heat than people living below the poverty line, even though 
just 10% of people of colour were classed as poor...
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57235904
- -
[Nature Communications]
*Disproportionate exposure to urban heat island intensity across major 
US cities*
Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 2721 (2021)

    *Abstract*
    Urban heat stress poses a major risk to public health. Case studies
    of individual cities suggest that heat exposure, like other
    environmental stressors, may be unequally distributed across income
    groups. There is little evidence, however, as to whether such
    disparities are pervasive. We combine surface urban heat island
    (SUHI) data, a proxy for isolating the urban contribution to
    additional heat exposure in built environments, with census
    tract-level demographic data to answer these questions for summer
    days, when heat exposure is likely to be at a maximum. We find that
    the average person of color lives in a census tract with higher SUHI
    intensity than non-Hispanic whites in all but 6 of the 175 largest
    urbanized areas in the continental United States. A similar pattern
    emerges for people living in households below the poverty line
    relative to those at more than two times the poverty line.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22799-5



[add it to the list]
*An unexpected side effect of climate change? More stillbirths*
An analysis of multiple scientific studies suggests that higher 
temperatures may cause more stillbirths
By MATTHEW ROZSA -- MAY 25, 2021

Climate change is perhaps the greatest existential threat that humanity 
has ever faced — and as environmental research accumulates, we keep 
discovering unexpected side effects of making industrial civilization 
reliant on fossil fuels. The latest one: a likely link between global 
warming and increased numbers of stillbirths.

A new study published in the scientific journal Environmental Research 
suggests a connection between an increase in the Earth's temperature and 
more stillbirths. Authors from the University of Queensland found that 
pregnant women who were exposed to extreme ambient temperatures during 
their pregnancy seemed to be at an increased risk of stillbirth, 
especially later in the pregnancy. Scholars at their School of Earth and 
Environmental Science and the Mater Research Institute reviewed 12 
studies with relevant data in their study.

"An estimated 17–19% of stillbirths are potentially attributable to 
chronic exposure to extreme hot and cold temperatures during pregnancy," 
the authors note.

"Climate change can have a multitude of impacts on an individual's 
health, especially among vulnerable populations," the research team 
behind the study told Salon by email. "For pregnant mothers, extreme 
weather events can impact access to antenatal services and increase risk 
of heat-related illnesses. Mothers living in low-resource settings are 
particularly vulnerable to these effects."

In a press release regarding the study, environmental scientist Dr Scott 
Lieske described how their conclusions suggest that marginalized 
populations which already struggle disproportionately due to lack of 
resources will be even harder hit as global temperatures rise and they 
suffer more miscarriages.

"More than two million stillbirths occur every year around the world, 
with the most occurring in low resource settings," Dr. Lieske said in 
the press release. "Not only are these poorer countries already affected 
disproportionately by stillbirth, they're now going to be 
disproportionately affected by climate change as well. If the link 
apparent in this research bears out upon further scrutiny, the majority 
of new stillbirths will occur invariably in the nations already 
suffering the most."...
- -
The possible rise in stillbirths is only the latest in a series of red 
flags indicating that pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are making 
Earth less habitable. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the 
population sizes of "mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish" have 
fallen by 68 percent since 1970, amounting to an "unprecedented" decline 
in Earth's biodiversity. Over the last two centuries, humans have 
destroyed one-third of the planet's forest cover and overfished 
one-third of the world's fish stocks. We also continue to churn out 
plastic products that clog up our oceans, clutter up our land and 
contain chemicals that have been linked to ominously declining sperm 
counts...

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer for Salon....
https://www.salon.com/2021/05/25/an-unexpected-side-effect-of-climate-change-more-stillbirths/



[yikes, forget the iced tea]
*Researchers find Greenland glacial meltwaters rich in mercury*
New research shows that concentrations of the toxic element mercury in 
rivers and fjords connected to the Greenland Ice Sheet are comparable to 
rivers in industrial China, an unexpected finding that is raising 
questions about the effects of glacial melting in an area that is a 
major exporter of seafood...
- -
Hawkings also said it was worth noting that this source of mercury is 
very likely coming from the Earth itself, as opposed to a fossil fuel 
combustion or other industrial source. That may matter in how scientists 
and policymakers think about the management of mercury pollution in the 
future.

"All the efforts to manage mercury thus far have come from the idea that 
the increasing concentrations we have been seeing across the Earth 
system come primarily from direct anthropogenic activity, like 
industry," Hawkings said. "But mercury coming from climatically 
sensitive environments like glaciers could be a source that is much more 
difficult to manage."
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-greenland-glacial-meltwaters-rich-mercury.html


[Disinformation warfare]
*Top Scientist Cuts Ties With National Lab After It Invited A Climate 
Denier To Speak*
A federal research facility’s prioritizing a politically connected 
darling of right-wing media over its own star scientist shows climate 
denialism’s lasting power.

By Alexander C. Kaufman
Steve Koonin has been a frequent commentator on television and in 
newspapers owned by conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch
FOX BUSINESS NETWORK
Steve Koonin has been a frequent commentator on television and in 
newspapers owned by conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch.
Ben Santer, one of the world’s best-known climate scientists, announced 
this week he is severing ties with the Lawrence Livermore National 
Laboratory after the federal research facility invited a climate denier 
to give a book talk this Thursday.

Santer had planned to retire from the lab, where he has worked for 29 
years, in September, but would continue his award-winning atmospheric 
research on a part-time basis and maintain his affiliation.

But in a blog post published Monday, the MacArthur “Genius” grant 
recipient said his employer failed to “adequately address” concerns he 
raised with hosting physicist Steve Koonin to speak about his new book, 
“Unsettled,” which sows doubt over the reality of human-causing global 
warming. Santer cast the decision to allow Koonin, a New York University 
professor, to promote his polemic at an official lab event as a betrayal 
of the research conducted there for decades.

“Writing and releasing this statement may be viewed by some as an act of 
disloyalty. I do not see it that way,” Santer wrote in a statement 
posted to the Union of Concerned Scientists’ website. “I chose to remain 
loyal to the climate science we have performed at LLNL for over three 
decades. I do not intend to remain silent while the credibility and 
integrity of this research is challenged.”

Santer hyperlinked the work “integrity” to an appearance Koonin made on 
an official podcast of the Heartland Institute, a far-right advocacy 
group that, in addition to promoting misinformation about climate 
science and cigarette smoking’s link to cancer, organized harassment 
campaigns against scientists.

Koonin “is not an authoritative voice on climate science,” Santer wrote, 
noting that the lab’s “climate scientists have devoted their careers to 
measuring, modeling, and understanding changes in the climate system. 
Professor Koonin has not.”

Climate change and atmospheric scientist Ben Santer, at the podium on 
the right, speaks during open panel discussion on evolu
MEDIANEWS GROUP/ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER VIA GETTY IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES
Climate change and atmospheric scientist Ben Santer, at the podium on 
the right, speaks during open panel discussion on evolution and climate 
change at Chapman University.

Santer’s dramatic statement this week highlights the lasting power of a 
political movement dreamed up in the conference rooms of the fossil fuel 
industry’s public relations firms and made real with the same kind of 
advertising campaigns that staved off smoking regulations for years 
after the health risks were clear. A co-author of the United Nations 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 1996 report, Santer wrote 
that year that: “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human 
influence on global climate.” Those words made him the target of a 
harassment campaign that included everything from death threats to a 
congressional inquiry into his research funding.

The effects of climate change are today visible, and the solutions to 
all but eliminate fossil fuels ― electric vehicles, renewable 
electricity ― are cheaper and more widely available than ever before. 
Polls show a wide majority of Americans understand humans’ role in 
causing climate change and support government policies to mitigate it.

Tactics to delay the transition from fossil fuels have largely shifted. 
A Harvard University study published last week in the journal One Earth 
found that Exxon Mobil Corp. tweaked its rhetoric on climate change in 
recent years to deflect from systemic overhauls and instead focus on 
individuals’ lifestyle choices.

In undercutting the very conclusion that emissions cause climate change, 
Koonin represents a more traditional approach to denialism.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained theoretical physicist, 
Koonin, 69, spent five years as oil giant BP’s chief scientist before 
joining the Obama administration’s Department of Energy in 2009. After 
less than three years, he left to work for a national security think 
tank before taking his current job as director of New York University’s 
Center for Urban Science and Progress.

As public understanding of the threat global warming poses to society 
grew over the past decade, Koonin transformed himself into a contrarian 
darling of right-wing media, publishing routine diatribes against the 
proven link between fossil fuel emissions and planetary heating in pages 
notoriously loose with facts that challenge conservative ideologies.

In 2014, Koonin argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that climate 
science was “not yet mature enough to usefully answer the difficult and 
important questions being asked of it.” In 2017, he captured the Trump 
administration’s attention with his call to host a “red team-blue team” 
debate over climate change, a proposal that received so much internal 
criticism it failed to gain serious traction within the White House. His 
new book collating many of those same talking points received 
predictably fawning reviews in The New York Post and the Wall Street 
Journal.

A firefighter keeps watch as flames advance along the Western Divide 
Highway during the SQF Complex Fire on September 14, 202
DAVID MCNEW VIA GETTY IMAGES
A firefighter keeps watch as flames advance along the Western Divide 
Highway during the SQF Complex Fire on September 14, 2020, near Camp 
Nelson, California. Worsening wildfires across the U.S. West are among 
the more visible signs of global warming.
Subscribe to the Politics email.
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His nearly 30-month stint in the Obama administration granted him unique 
credibility with conservatives, who see in apparent converts to their 
cause evidence that the scientific consensus on climate change is more 
of a worldwide conspiracy than empirical reality. Michael Shellenberger, 
an environmentalist turned climate contrarian, has become a similar 
fixture in the right-wing political universe, appearing on Fox News and 
Heartland Institute podcasts to recant his past participation in what he 
calls scientists’ “climate alarmism,” as E&E News reported last week.

Koonin did not return a request for an interview.

John Holdren, the Obama administration’s chief science adviser from 2009 
to 2017, balked at the idea that science is ever “settled,” but warned 
that Koonin was not engaged in “the healthy, informed skepticism on 
which all science flourish,” but rather “a mish-mash of seemingly 
cherry-picked data and apparent misunderstandings of current climate 
science.”

The propagation of such misinformed skepticism, he said, “is a menace to 
public understanding and prudent policymaking.”


“Predictably, Koonin’s views have been receiving a warm welcome from the 
usual defenders of climate-change complacency at Fox News and the Wall 
Street Journal editorial page,” he wrote in an op-ed published Monday in 
The Hill.

The consistency with which Koonin has made the same, widely debunked 
arguments for the past seven years show he has “learned nothing between 
2014 and 2021,” said Susan Hassol, director of Climate Communication, a 
nonprofit that helps scientists translate climate science in plain 
language.

“Someone who can’t update their thinking with new information and new 
understanding is not behaving like a scientist,” Hassol said. “Koonin is 
not a climate scientist. He’s a theoretical physicist. He’s never 
published a single peer-reviewed paper on climate science.”

For a national lab “to invite someone who’s not even in that field and 
has never published in that field and only airs his ideas in right-wing 
media is absurd,” she added.

But what Koonin lacks in climate science credentials, he makes up for in 
political connections. In 2012, he was appointed to the independent 
board of governors of the Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC, a 
contracting company that works on nuclear security issues for the 
eponymous laboratory. He continues to serve in that role today, 
according to the lab’s website.

Someone who can’t update their thinking with new information and new 
understanding is not behaving like a scientist.
Susan Hassol, director of Climate Communication
It was Brad Roberts, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Center 
for Global Security Research, who invited Koonin to speak, a source with 
knowledge of the talk confirmed to HuffPost. Neither Roberts nor 
spokespeople for the laboratory responded to emailed questions and 
interview requests sent Tuesday morning. But a spokesperson for the lab 
defended Koonin’s talk to the environmental news site Earther on Monday: 
“Differing technical opinions are part of the scientific process.”

“Throughout its history the Lab has invited guest speakers whose 
opinions differ from those of the Lab and its workforce. It does not 
mean the Lab endorses those opinions,” the spokesperson said. “The Lab 
has a long and distinguished history in groundbreaking climate research 
— the Lab continues to advance and stand by that research.”

Differing opinions are one thing. But Donald Wuebbles, a University of 
Illinois atmospheric scientist who spent 20 years at Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory and worked with both Santer and Koonin, said this 
was a matter of facts.

“Koonin had plenty of opportunities to actually do legitimate discussion 
of the science within the science realm. He never would do that,” 
Wuebbles said. “Instead he took potshots at what we were researching in 
the Wall Street Journal. I think Steve Koonin mostly cares about Steve 
Koonin, and doesn’t care about the world.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/santer-koonin-climate_n_60ad529fe4b0a24c4f821f58
- -
[DeSmog Blog reports on Koonin]
https://www.desmog.com/steve-koonin/
- -
[Whereas Ben Santer is a Saint]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_D._Santer
- -
[another report]
*Top Climate Scientist Blasts Government Lab After Denier Invited to Speak*
Ben Santer, one of the nation’s leading climate scientists, said he is 
cutting ties with a prestigious government-funded laboratory over its 
plans to invite a scientist who has spread climate denial to speak in a 
seminar.

Santer’s work has shaped much of climate science for the past 25 years. 
His work studying the “fingerprints” of climate change have informed 
decades of research and he was the author of a seminal sentence in a 
crucial 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that said 
the science showed “a discernible human influence on global climate.”

On Monday, Santer, who is affiliated with the Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory, sent out an emailed statement viewed by Earther and 
first published by the Union of Concerned Scientists in protest of a 
planned LLNL seminar with Steve Koonin, a well-known climate denier 
whose new book on how climate science is “unsettled” has attracted 
widespread praise from right-wing media and condemnation from basically 
everyone else.

In his statement, Santer didn’t mince words, alleging that Koonin is 
“not an authoritative voice on climate science” and that LLNL management 
had not adequately responded to Santer’s concerns about the seminar, 
which was scheduled to be held on May 27.
“Differing technical opinions are part of the scientific process,” a 
spokesperson for LLNL told Earther in an email. “Throughout its history 
the Lab has invited guest speakers whose opinions differ from those of 
the Lab and its workforce. It does not mean the Lab endorses those 
opinions. The Lab has a long and distinguished history in groundbreaking 
climate research — the Lab continues to advance and stand by that research.”

Koonin, a physics professor who worked at BP in the mid-2000s and who 
now is at NYU, is one of those dangerous figures who plays up the 
whataboutism that has plagued the conversation around climate science 
for decades. While he technically accepts the fact that humans are 
exerting some influence on the climate—which, in his opinion, does not 
make him a “climate denier”—his beef is with just how bad it’s going to 
be. These viewpoints—and the fact that he worked briefly in the 
Department of Energy under President Barack Obama—have made him a 
favorite among those who seek to further discredit climate science. 
Koonin was even tapped in 2018 by Scott Pruitt, the oil-and-gas serving, 
hotel lotion-loving, then-chief of Environmental Protection Agency, to 
lead the Trump administration’s theoretical exercise to try to discredit 
climate science, after Koonin authored a Wall Street Journal article 
proposing the idea. The exercise never came to fruition. (We’ve reached 
out to Koonin for comment on Santer’s letter and will update this post 
if we hear back.)

Koonin’s currently on a right-wing-fueled press tour for his new book 
Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It 
Matters, which, as the title suggests, posits that the whole global 
warming thing isn’t that bad and relies on misinformation to make its 
points. Erroneous theories promoted by Koonin in the book include the 
idea that Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t melting any faster than it was 80 
years ago (false) and that sea level rise isn’t accelerating (also false).

Carbon dioxide levels are higher than they were, sure, but they’re not 
at a planetary high, Koonin points out, so we should all just relax (he 
seemingly conveniently forgets that the last time carbon dioxide was 
this high, the Arctic was probably full of plants and ice-free). The 
Wall Street Journal—which routinely runs pro-oil propaganda and 
anti-renewable-energy screeds—simply loved the book, publishing an 
error-filled review written by one of its resident fossil energy 
boosters in April (that 12 climate scientists later took a red pen to in 
a major correction). Tucker Carlson also had Koonin on to claim climate 
science is “being used as a tool to scare young people, create depression.”

“It is simply untrue that Prof. Koonin is confronting climate scientists 
with unpleasant facts they ignored or failed to understand,” Santer 
wrote in his resignation letter. “The climate science community treats 
uncertainties in an open and transparent way. It has done so for 
decades. At LLNL, we routinely consider whether uncertainties in models, 
observations, and natural climatic variability call into question 
findings of a large human influence on global climate. They do not.”

Koonin has historically “taken potshots at the science, but doesn’t 
really get involved with scientists in a careful sense,” said Don 
Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of 
Illinois and a former researcher at LLNL, who knows both Koonin and 
Santer. “He publishes his comments in the Wall Street Journal—that isn’t 
exactly peer-reviewed literature.”

Wuebbles pointed out that much of the claims in Koonin’s book directly 
contradict exhaustively peer-reviewed science, much of which was covered 
in the Fourth National Climate Assessment produced by the U.S. 
government—and authored and peer-reviewed by dozens of top-level 
scientists—in 2017. Wuebbles said he talked with Koonin “a number of 
times” after the NCA was released about his scientific concerns.

“Several times, I pointed out that he was overstating things, and his 
response is he goes and writes a book,” he said. “That’s just not how 
science is done. There’s a peer review process. You want to write a 
peer-reviewed paper and say this wasn’t done right? Go ahead.”

LLNL is a pretty big deal in the climate space. Established by the 
University of California, Berkeley in 1952, the lab is currently funded 
by the Department of Energy and works on a wide range of issues related 
to energy and national security. That includes a lot of climate 
programming: LLNL is one of the nation’s leading climate modeling 
institutions, using data and complex calculations to predict how the 
planet might change with increased warming. Inviting someone like Koonin 
to LLNL to give a talk is kind of like asking a tobacco apologist to 
address the American Lung Association. Santer was set to retire from 
LLNL in September, but said he will have no further affiliation with the 
lab following his retirement.

Wuebbles explained that the bulk of work at Livermore is done on nuclear 
weapons, meaning that the lab as a whole is aimed mostly at working on 
non-climate issues. “You have a lot of people with strong physics 
backgrounds who don’t understand the atmosphere. [They] don’t know the 
nuances of the science, so you’ll hear the argument and say, huh, that 
sounds pretty reasonable, but what you don’t realize is that it’s a 
misrepresentation of the science, or there’s half-truths involved. You 
have to understand the details, the depths of the science to understand 
these arguments. In my community, everyone wants the truth—we don’t want 
to misrepresent the truth.”

In his statement, Santer seemed to be on the same page.

“We live in a democracy. Free speech is important,” he wrote. “It is 
important to hear diverse perspectives on issues of societal concern. It 
is equally important for U.S. citizens to receive the best-available 
scientific information on the reality and seriousness of climate change.”
https://earther.gizmodo.com/top-climate-scientist-blasts-government-lab-after-denie-1846956716



[Chevron's big ethical struggle]
*DRILLED SEASON 5: LA LUCHA EN LA JUNGLA*
For more than 30 years, Chevron has been battling a group of Ecuadorian 
plaintiffs over oil pollution in the Amazon. Chevron inherited the case 
from Texaco when it acquired the company. It was ordered to pay millions 
of dollars to the plaintiffs by multiple Ecuadorian judges, but instead 
sued the plaintiffs and their lawyers in the U.S. under racketeering 
laws. And the story just continues to get more wild from there. This 
story has it all: bags of cash, secret cameras, bribed judges, First 
Amendment violations, a lawyer on house arrest, secret tribunals, and at 
the end of it all thousands of indigenous people with a simple request 
“Let us live.”

We’ve Had Corporate Personhood For A Decade…What About Ecosystem Personhood?
April 10, 2021 / International, law, Podcast, rights of nature, Season 5
Oil and gas companies are nervous about an increased push worldwide for 
laws governing the rights of nature ...
https://drillednews.com/drilled-podcast-season-5/
https://drillednews.com/weve-had-corporate-personhood-for-a-decade-what-about-ecosystem-personhood/
- -
[Trailer for an important movie]
*INVISIBLE HAND - Rights Of Nature Documentary (Official Trailer 2020)*
Aug 15, 2020
Public Herald
 From Executive Producer Mark Ruffalo comes the world’s first 
documentary film on the Rights of Nature Movement,  a “Paradigm 
Shifting” story about the current global battle between capitalism and 
democracy where the fight for our survival is at stake. Join the Virtual 
World Premiere of INVISIBLE HAND on September 4th, 2020 6:00-9:00 pm. 
Tickets ($1): https://invisiblehandfilm.com

Ruffalo will join a public discussion immediately after the screening 
with the film’s award-winning directors, Joshua B. Pribanic and Melissa 
Troutman, and Rights of Nature experts who featured in the doc. The 
group will open up a Q&A and talk about how this movement can actually 
create the systemic cultural change we need.

Tickets Available ($1) to all Public Herald Patrons: Become a Patron! » 
https://patreon.com/publicherald

"This Film Gave Me Chills" - Columbus International Film Festival

"A Masterpiece" - Columbus International Film Festival

"Paradigm Shifting" - Virginia Community Rights Network

SHORT SYNOPSIS
Produced by award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo, INVISIBLE HAND takes you 
behind the curtain of the global economy where ‘Rights of Nature’ 
becomes “capitalism’s one true opponent.”

In the fall of 2014, for the first time in United States history, an 
ecosystem filed to defend itself in a lawsuit claiming its ‘right to 
exist' in Grant Township, Pennsylvania. For attempting such a radical 
act, Grant’s rural community of 700 people were sued by a corporation, 
then by the state government, and are now locked in a battle to defend 
the watershed they call home through civil disobedience. The water they 
drink, the Rights to Nature laws they've passed are all on the line in 
this exclusive story.

Half a continent away in Standing Rock, North Dakota, the same industry 
threatening Grant Twp. is using militarized force against indigenous 
tribes and allies fighting to protect Mother Earth. The two, Grant 
Township and Standing Rock, are joined in an international fight to 
protect more than just water. They fight for their community, democracy, 
and for Nature as a living entity unto itself.

In the end, "Who will speak for Nature?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzDFF0y-O9w


[video interview]
*Heather Cox Richardson | What Could Possibly Go Right?*
Jul 9, 2020
postcarboninstitute
Heather Cox Richardson addresses the question of What Could Possibly Go 
Right? with a political focus. Her insights include:
That the current condition is waking people up from autopilot and 
creating the realization they need to pursue change personally to create 
the society in which they want to live.

A reminder that the beauty of a democratic system is getting to choose 
which direction to go.

That the desire for equality of opportunity and access should no longer 
be pushed to the narrative of special interest in politics.

The potential to innovate and create change through crowdsourcing 
government and society.

That the American dream needs to be rewritten and move away from the 
heteronormative nuclear family as its centerpiece, to a more 
community-centered and diverse view.
Learn more: https://bit.ly/pci-wcpgrseries
Listen on your favorite podcast app: https://bit.ly/wcpgrsurl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhplj1ZmQtk

- -

[disinformation studies]
*History & Politics Chat: April 27, 2021*
May 2, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson
Want more History & Politics Chat? Send me your questions on Facebook, 
and find me on Facebook Live every Tuesday at 4 pm (eastern time).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBYIhK-6ZCg


[This is an important archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming  May 26, 1990 *
May 26, 1990: The New York Times covers the release of the First 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report:

    *Scientists Urge Rapid Action on Global Warming*

    By Craig R. Whitney, Special To the New York Times
    A panel of scientists warned today that unless emissions of carbon
    dioxide and other harmful gases were immediately cut by more than 60
    percent, global temperatures would rise sharply over the next
    century, with unforeseeable consequences for humanity.

    While much of the substance of the report has already been
    disclosed, the report had immediate political consequences. Prime
    Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, breaking with the Bush
    Administration's skepticism over the need for immediate action, said
    today that if other countries did their part, Britain would reduce
    the projected growth of its carbon dioxide emissions enough to
    stabilize them at 1990 levels by the year 2005.

    West Germany's Environment Minister, Klaus Topfer, has proposed that
    Europe should go further and cut present emissions by 25 percent by
    that time, but the United States has said until now that the
    scientific case for global warming - the so-called greenhouse effect
    - has not been made and that no action needs to be taken.

    Mrs. Thatcher's action is a blow to the Bush Administration, which
    was counting on her as its major ally in slowing any international
    action to reduce the industrial pollution that causes global warming.

    The report by a working group of the United Nations
    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was approved by all but a
    handful of the 90 delegates from 39 countries, said Dr. John T.
    Houghton, chairman. The report said that if nothing at all was done,
    the global mean temperature could rise 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit by the
    end of the 21st century.

    It said that in that case, ocean water would expand and ice stored
    at the poles could melt, raising the level of the sea by 25.6
    inches. That would be enough to submerge the Maldives and inundate
    the coastal plains of Bangladesh and the Netherlands, oceanographers
    say.

    Mr. Houghton, Britain's chief meteorologist, said that only a
    handful of the scientists in the panel disagreed with the findings,
    which he said were dramatic confirmation of how rapidly the carbon
    dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons and other gases released into
    the air by industrial processes, the burning of tropical forests and
    other factors had been changing the earth's atmosphere since the end
    of the 18th century. A draft of the report was previously disclosed.

    Britain and U.S. Percentages
    Britain, with 1 percent of the world's population, is responsible
    for about 3 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions, Mrs. Thatcher
    said. The United States, with 5 percent of the population, is
    responsible for about 25 percent of the emissions, American
    scientists say.

    Prof. Bert Bolin, the chairman of the intergovernmental panel,
    described Mrs. Thatcher's action as ''very useful'' but said, ''It
    is not enough in the long term.'' If all countries did as Britain
    suggested, Dr. Houghton said, it would still not be enough to stop
    the enhanced greenhouse effect. ''If you want to stop it, you have
    to cut by 60 percent immediately,'' he said at a news conference in
    Englefield Green, where the working group discussed its findings
    this week.

    ''She has taken a kind of halfway position between the aggressive
    moves being considered by the West Germans and the 'What, me worry?'
    position of the United States,'' said Michael Oppenheimer, an
    atmospheric physicist of the Environmental Defense Fund of New York
    City, who was in a group of scientists Mrs. Thatcher invited a year
    ago to advise her on global warming.

    Called Too Little Too Late
    British environmental groups denounced Mrs. Thatcher's proposal as
    too little, too late. ''It does not even go as far as the very
    modest first step that the European Community proposed back in March
    of stabilizing emissions at the present level by the year 2000,''
    said Andrew Dilworth, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth.

    Mrs. Thatcher, in her speech at the opening of a center for climate
    prediction and research in Bracknell, said, ''It is no good setting
    political targets for action which are just not realistic in
    practice.'' Mrs. Thatcher, who had been briefed on the working
    group's findings earlier this week, said today that reducing
    projected increases in British carbon dioxide emissions by 30
    percent in 15 years would mean ''significant adjustments to our
    economies - more efficient power stations, cars which use less fuel,
    better insulated houses and better management of energy in general.''

    The working group's report is one of three that were commissioned in
    November 1988 by the United Nations Environment Program and the
    World Meteorological Organization for a global climate conference in
    Geneva in November. Another working group headed by the Soviet Union
    is considering the impact of climate changes on agriculture,
    forests, fisheries, water resources, and sea barriers, and the
    third, headed by the United States, is considering strategies for
    responding to climate change. Professor Bolin said today that he
    would not discuss the draft reports of either of them.

    Cut of 60% Recommended
    The United Nations group's report today said that just to stabilize
    atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and
    chlorofluorocarbons at today's levels, there would have to be
    immediate cuts of more than 60 percent in their output. Depending on
    how much was actually done to cut emissions, it said, global mean
    temperature would still keep rising between 0.1 degrees centigrade
    (0.18 degrees Fahrenheit) and 0.2 degrees centigrade (0.36 degrees
    Fahrenheit) per decade.

    Global mean surface air temperature has already increased by 0.3
    degrees centigrade (0.54 Fahrenheit) to 0.6 degrees centigrade (1.08
    degrees Fahrenheit) over the last 100 years, it said, with the five
    average warmest years all occurring in the 1980's.

    Scientists who study global climate trends concede, however, that
    the computer models on which they base their predictions are flawed.
    While the researchers can measure gases in the atmosphere with
    precision, they have not perfected methods of predicting their
    effects on particular regions on earth.

    So far, there has been only one major step to control greenhouse
    gases - the major industrialized countries' pledge last year to ban
    production of chlorofluorocarbons, used as refrigerants and
    propellants, by the end of this century because they rise to the
    upper atmosphere and destroy the ozone molecules that block most of
    the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation.

    A version of this article appears in print on May 26, 1990, Section
    1, Page 6 of the National edition with the headline: Scientists Urge
    Rapid Action on Global Warming

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/26/world/scientists-urge-rapid-action-on-global-warming.html


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