[✔️] November 4, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*November 4, 2021*/

/[at COP26 - BBC has excellent coverage]/
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59054696
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172xv5fbrh0jlv

/- -
/

/[ clips from Scientific American and Nature  ] /
*Top Climate Scientists Are Skeptical That Nations Will Rein in Global 
Warming*
A Nature survey reveals that many authors of the latest IPCC climate 
science report are anxious about the future and expect to see 
catastrophic changes in their lifetime
By Jeff Tollefson, Nature magazine on November 3, 2021

As a leading climate scientist, Paola Arias doesn’t need to look far to 
see the world changing. Shifting rain patterns threaten water supplies 
in her home city of Medellín, Colombia, while rising sea levels endanger 
the country’s coastline. She isn’t confident that international leaders 
will slow global warming or that her own government can handle the 
expected fallout, such as mass migrations and civil unrest over rising 
inequality. With such an uncertain future, she thought hard several 
years ago about whether to have children.

“My answer was no,” says Arias, a researcher at the University of 
Antioquia in Medellín, who was one of the 234 scientists who wrote a 
climate-science report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change (IPCC) in August (see go.nature.com/3pjupro). That 
assessment, which makes clear that the world is running out of time to 
avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, will figure prominently 
in climate negotiations over the next two weeks at the COP26 meeting in 
Glasgow, UK.

Many other leading climate researchers share Arias’s concerns about the 
future. Nature conducted an anonymous survey of the 233 living IPCC 
authors last month and received responses from 92 scientists—about 40% 
of the group. Their answers suggest strong scepticism that governments 
will markedly slow the pace of global warming, despite political 
promises made by international leaders as part of the 2015 Paris climate 
agreement.

Six in ten of the respondents said that they expect the world to warm by 
at least 3 °C by the end of the century, compared with what conditions 
were like before the Industrial Revolution. That is far beyond the Paris 
agreement’s goal to limit warming to 1.5–2 °C...

Most of the survey’s respondents—88%—said they think global warming 
constitutes a ‘crisis’, and nearly as many said they expect to see 
catastrophic impacts of climate change in their lifetimes. Just under 
half said that global warming has caused them to reconsider major life 
decisions, such as where to live and whether to have children. More than 
60% said that they experience anxiety, grief or other distress because 
of concerns over climate change...
- -
For Arias, who frequently sees the impacts of political instability out 
of her office window as immigrants from strife-torn Venezuela wander the 
streets seeking food and shelter, the choice about children came 
naturally. She says many friends and colleagues have arrived at the same 
conclusion. “I’m not saying that that is a decision that everyone should 
make,” she says, “but it’s not something I am struggling with much any 
more.”...
- -
The pessimism expressed by some IPCC panellists underscores the vast 
gulf between hopes and expectations for the climate summit that began 
this week in Glasgow. In advance of the meeting, the United States, the 
European Union, China and others have announced new plans to curb 
greenhouse-gas emissions, although scientific analyses suggest those 
plans still fall well short of the Paris goals. Over the next two weeks, 
countries will formalize—and perhaps even strengthen—those commitments. 
But making them a reality will require as-yet-unprecedented political 
mobilization at the national level once leaders return home.
- -
“Right now, governments are just at the stage of providing green 
promises, but so far we have not seen any actions to curb greenhouse-gas 
emissions,” says Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla, an IPCC author and climate 
modeller at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Kigali, 
Rwanda. Sylla says his home country of Senegal has gone through all the 
motions and developed adaptation plans for a warming climate, but is 
anything changing on the ground? “I don’t think so,” he says.

CLIMATE ANXIETY
The scientists surveyed by Nature are part of the IPCC working group 
charged with assessing the causes and extent of climate change. Their 
latest report, approved by 195 governments in August, concluded that 
fossil-fuel emissions are driving unprecedented planetary changes, 
threatening both people and the ecosystems that humans rely on for food 
and other resources. “Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale 
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 
1.5 °C or even 2° C will be beyond reach,” the IPCC said. But in 
announcing the report, IPCC scientists stressed that these goals could 
still be achieved.

A separate report from the United Nations Environment Programme last 
week projected that the climate commitments already announced by nations 
would put the world on a path towards 2.7 °C of warming by the end of 
the century (see go.nature.com/3vphvtu). Other projections raise the 
possibility of even more reductions. The Climate Action Tracker, a 
consortium of scientific and academic organizations, estimates that 
warming would be limited to 2.4 °C if countries follow through on their 
latest pledges under the Paris agreement. One of the goals of the 
climate negotiations is to prompt more-ambitious steps for limiting 
greenhouse-gas emissions, but most respondents to the Nature survey 
seemed to be pessimistic about future policies and the amount of warming 
(see Supplementary information for survey data tables).

Do you think you will see catastrophic impacts of climate change in your 
lifetime poll results.
Credit: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02990-w; Source: 
Nature analysis
The survey results might not be surprising given the decades of limited 
progress in tackling climate change, but the opinions of climate 
researchers should raise alarms, says Diana Liverman, a geographer who 
studies climate at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “I suppose the 
fact that they’re pessimistic should make us even more worried.”

The Nature survey has limitations: it doesn’t capture the views of 60% 
of the IPCC authors, and two scientists wrote separately to Nature 
expressing concerns about the poll precisely because it taps into 
opinions rather than science. Those who took part did so in a personal 
capacity, not as representatives of the IPCC. Still, the survey provides 
a snapshot of the views of a significant proportion of the researchers 
who wrote the report.

POSITIVE SIGNALS
Although the results indicate that many harbour deep concerns, the 
survey also revealed signs of optimism. More than 20% of the scientists 
said they expect nations to limit global warming to 2 °C, and 4% said 
the world might indeed meet its most aggressive goal of limiting warming 
to 1.5 °C—a target that many scientists and academics wrote off from the 
moment the Paris agreement was signed in 2015...
- -
Charles Koven, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National 
Laboratory in California, draws hope about the future because of 
advances in science and technology, and rapidly evolving public opinion. 
One positive development, he says, is that results in the past few years 
indicate that global average temperatures will level off quickly once 
humanity stops emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This is 
contrary to long-held expectations that warming would continue for 
decades even if emissions were halted, owing to a lag in the climate 
system. He also cites plummeting costs of clean-energy technologies, as 
well as rising public demand for action in the face of increasingly 
visible climate impacts—such as the wildfires that he and his family 
have grown accustomed to each year in California.

“Fundamentally, I believe that the majority of people really do care 
about the future, and that it is possible for governments to coordinate 
and avoid the worst climate outcomes,” Koven says.

Two-thirds of the respondents said they engage in climate advocacy, and 
almost all of those who do said they promote climate science through 
speeches, publications or videos. Some 43% of those who engage said they 
have signed letters or petitions, and 40% said they have contacted 
lawmakers to advocate for climate policies. One-quarter said they have 
joined demonstrations...
- -
The tables turned, however, when scientists considered whether the IPCC 
should take on more of an advocacy role, which would be a sharp break 
from its remit of neutrally assessing the science: nearly three-quarters 
of the respondents said the IPCC should refrain from climate advocacy. 
One survey respondent gave the IPCC credit for sticking to its core 
mission. “By focusing on the best available scientific information, it 
has avoided the politicization that has occurred with other scientific 
issues, such as masking and vaccinating for COVID-19,” the respondent said.
- -
Like Arias, Sylla sees the impacts of political and economic instability 
as people pile aboard small boats leaving Senegal for a perilous journey 
in search of a better future. He also fears the situation will only get 
worse as the climate warms. Although he is currently planning to build a 
house for his family—far from the sea and in a location that is unlikely 
to flood—Sylla isn’t convinced that Senegal is where he wants to ride 
out the climate storm. But he is keenly aware of the fact that Europe 
and the United States are also vulnerable to the inevitable impacts of 
global warming. “So the question is, where do you go?”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-climate-scientists-are-skeptical-that-nations-will-rein-in-global-warming/

- -

/[RollingStone rolls out the optimism - subscription required $]/

*Ten Reasons for Optimism on Climate Change*
These are dark times, but hope is not lost nor foolish, and change has 
already begun
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/climate-change-optimism-glasgow-cop26-1252377/


/
//[One opinion report from COP26 video  ]/
*COP 26: End the Cynicism and Denial - Pt1*
Nov 1, 2021
theAnalysis-news
The global elites call for technology and market “solutions” they know 
will not reach the necessary targets. They are condemning human society 
to its demise. A mass movement to demand real solutions is urgently 
needed. Patrick Bond and Paul Jay discuss the climate crisis on 
theAnalysis.news. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tWyoqo13Lk


/[ Oh not good, even the rumor of this is bad ]/
*Secretive court system poses threat to Paris climate deal, says 
whistleblower*
Treaty allows energy corporations to sue governments for billions over 
policies that could hurt their profits
Jennifer Rankin in Brussels -  3 Nov 2021
A secretive investor court system poses a real threat to the Paris 
climate agreement, activists have said, as governments taking action to 
phase out fossil fuels face a slew of multimillion-dollar lawsuits for 
lost profits.

New data seen by the Guardian shows a surge in cases under the energy 
charter treaty (ECT), an obscure international agreement that allows 
energy corporations to sue governments over policies that could hurt 
their profits.

Coal and oil investors are already suing governments for several 
billions in compensation for lost profits over energy policy changes. 
For example, the German energy company RWE is suing the Netherlands for 
€1.4bn (£1.2bn) over its plans to phase out coal, while Rockhopper 
Exploration, based in the UK, is suing the Italian government after it 
banned new drilling near the coast.

“It’s a real threat [to the Paris agreement]. It’s the biggest threat I 
am aware of,” said Yamina Saheb, a former employee of the ECT 
secretariat who quit in 2018 to raise the alarm...
- -
“The Paris agreement … means that we need to decarbonise in the current 
decade before 2030,” said Saheb, also a co-author of the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on mitigation. She 
has estimated that foreign investors could sue governments for €1.3tn 
until 2050 in compensation for early closure of coal, oil and gas plants 
– a sum that exceeds what the EU hopes to spend on its green deal in the 
next decade.

As compensation to companies is paid by public funds, governments would 
have less money to pay for new technology to make buildings, transport 
and industry greener. Saheb argued these payments could endanger the 
green transition. “It’s impossible to do everything,” she said.

Separate analysis of the treaty shared exclusively with the Guardian 
showed a 269% increase in cases in 2011-20 compared with the previous 
decade. “We are going to see in future many more cases,” said Lucía 
Bárcena, of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, who compiled 
the data. Since 2013, two-thirds of the cases have been brought against 
western European governments.

“The energy charter treaty … has no cohesion at all with [EU] climate 
policies,” Bárcena said. “Trade and investment agreements are binding on 
states, which means if they break the contract then they have to pay 
huge amounts of money, while there is no other mechanism that binds 
countries to the goals that they are setting at Cop26. There is a big 
asymmetry.”

Representatives from the ECT’s 54 members are meeting next week for a 
ninth round of talks on modernising the treaty...
- -
Signed in 1994, the treaty was intended to protect western companies 
investing in the oil- and gas-rich countries of the former Soviet Union. 
Only foreign investors, rather than domestic ones, can use the system, 
prompting longstanding complaints of privileged access. Campaigners now 
fear it could stymie the green transition.

“We obviously have to get out of the fossil field quite quickly and the 
energy charter treaty is in the way because it protects fossil fuels,” 
said Cornelia Maarfield, a senior trade and investment policy 
coordinator at the Climate Action Network Europe. “Our main concern is 
that once governments start taking decisions to phase out coal, gas and 
oil, they will run into difficulties with the investment protection 
chapter of this agreement.”

Germany’s RWE is suing the Netherlands for €1.4bn after the Dutch 
government decided to close all coal-fired power plants by 2030, 
including RWE’s Eemshaven plant, which began operating in 2015 with an 
expected life-span of 40 years. RWE said it supported the energy 
transition in the Netherlands, and “the only issue is therefore the fact 
that the coal ban law does not provide for adequate compensation”.

Another German utility, Uniper, is reported to be seeking between €850m 
and €1bn for the early closure of its Maasvlakte coal-fired power plant 
near Rotterdam, which opened in 2016. The company declined to confirm 
the damages it was seeking, saying: “Uniper is convinced that shutting 
down our power plant in Maasvlakte after only 15 years of operation 
would be unlawful without adequate compensation.”

The London-listed Rockhopper is suing Italy after MPs in 2016 
reintroduced restrictions on drilling for oil and gas within 12 nautical 
miles of the coast. Rockhopper, which has never revealed the size of its 
claim, said in September it was suing for “very significant monetary 
damages on the basis of lost profits” after the Italian government 
rejected its oil exploration plans on the Ombrina Mare project in the 
Adriatic Sea.

Rockhopper said: “The Italian government issued licences and encouraged 
significant investment in oil and gas exploration based on this 
platform. Clearly it is not equitable to change the rules halfway 
through. It is also important to note that Italy continues to produce 
significant quantities of oil and gas within 12 miles of the coast.”

Investors are known to have filed 142 cases against governments since 
the ECT came into force in 1998. But these are only the known cases. 
Even the ECT’s Brussels-based secretariat acknowledges it does not have 
a complete picture, because investors are not obliged to reveal legal 
action under the ECT.

Urban Rusnák, the secretary general of the Energy Charter Secretariat, 
rejected the view that the treaty would hamper governments getting out 
of fossil fuels, saying it did not proscribe energy policy. “The treaty 
does not ban the governments [from stopping fossil fuels] There is 
nothing like automatic punishment.”

He suggested governments could quit fossil fuels without disputes under 
the ECT if they took a smart approach. “If the government is clever 
enough and they care about their investment climate, they can manage 
around,” he said.

Rusnák, who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, stressed the importance 
of the ECT in upholding the rule of law. “Some recent requests of 
climate activists to ban all fossil fuels without any compensation are 
coming very close to what happened in Czechoslovakia … when the regime 
in 1948 decided to expropriate all industries for a good reason of 
social justice,” he said. “My point here is not about individual cases. 
It’s about the system. Either we as a western civilisation really 
believe what we have agreed: we have to honour our agreements, and if 
conditions change we have to sit down and negotiate how we will get out 
of it.”

Neither did he agree with a proposal by NGOs that EU governments should 
quit the ECT en masse. “It is legally possible but the consequences are 
dire,” he said, referring to a 20-year sunset clause that meant 
signatories remained bound for two decades. “Please be serious about the 
reform … Otherwise you will be locked in a treaty that you don’t like 
for 20 years.”

Saheb argues the treaty is beyond reform because central Asian member 
states will veto any weakening of protection for fossil fuels. “The EU 
countries should withdraw altogether as one,” she said. “If we withdraw 
altogether we could agree to cancel this clause and then we could move 
on with our energy transition.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/03/secretive-court-system-poses-threat-to-climate-deal-says-whistleblower

/
/

/[ Battleground of misinformation ]/
*Report links most climate change denial on Facebook to 10 publications*
'The Toxic Ten' includes Breitbart, Russia Today and Media Research Center.
I. Bonifacic -- Nov 2nd, 2021
Most climate change misinformation comes from only a handful of sources. 
That’s according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital 
Hate (CCDH). The organization found that ten publishers are responsible 
for 69 percent of all interactions with climate change denial content on 
Facebook. Included in the group, which the CCDH titled “The Toxic Ten,” 
are Breitbart, Russia Today and Media Research Center, which has ties to 
the fossil fuel industry.

The findings broadly mirror that of another report the CCDH published 
earlier in the year, which found that as much as 73 percent of vaccine 
misinformation on Facebook can be linked to only 12 individuals dubbed 
the “disinformation dozen.” That study has been widely cited by US 
lawmakers who have called on social media platforms to do more to 
address the “urgent threat” misinformation represents to public health.

As it did with the earlier disinformation dozen report, Meta, Facebook’s 
parent company, disputed the methodology the CCDH used to compile its 
latest study. “The 700,000 interactions this report says were on climate 
denial represent 0.3 percent of the over 200 million interactions on 
English public climate change content from Pages and public groups over 
the same time period,” a spokesperson for the company said. It also 
pointed to the recently announced expansion of features like the Climate 
Change Information Center as evidence of its commitment to tackling 
misinformation on the topic.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Imran Ahmed, the chief 
executive of the CCDH, said the organization looked at approximately 
7,000 articles published between October 2020 and October 2021. He 
called the sample “robust” and said there was enough data “to derive 
representative finds of trends.”

Additionally, the report examined the financial incentives involved in 
publishing climate change denial content. The CCDH estimates eight of 
the companies included in the Toxic Ten made $5.3 million in Google ad 
revenue over the last six months, with $1.7 million going to the search 
giant. "We recently announced a new policy that explicitly prohibits 
publishers and YouTube Creators from monetizing content that promotes 
climate change denial. This policy will go into effect on November 8 and 
our enforcement will be as targeted as removing ads from individual 
pages with violating content," a spokesperson for Google told Engadget.

“When you put it all together, you’ve got these two industries, Big Oil 
and Big Tech, and they are the two industries that pose the greatest 
threat to the survival of our species,” Ahmed told The Post.

The timing of The Toxic Ten report comes as delegates from around the 
world meet at the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Scotland in what’s been 
described as “the world’s last best chance” to curb greenhouse gas 
emissions. Without dramatic reductions, the planet is currently on track 
for a “catastrophic” 2.7 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures. 
With every additional degree of warming beyond the 1.5-degree target put 
forward by the Paris Agreement, there’s a greater risk of the planet 
passing specific tipping points that could lead to even more dramatic 
changes to the climate.
https://www.engadget.com/climate-change-denial-report-ccdh-205333083.html

- -
/[ Who are the Toxic Ten? ]/
*The Toxic Ten*
How 10 fringe publishers fuel 69% of digital climate change denial
The science is undeniable - human activity is warming our planet at an 
ever-accelerating rate and leading to catastrophic climate change.

Yet, ten publishers - The Toxic Ten -  are spreading baseless, 
unscientific climate denial on their own websites and across social 
media. They are responsible for 69% of all interactions with climate 
denial content on Facebook.

​It's a climate denial propaganda machine funded in part by Google via 
ad revenue, and spread across the world via social media, in particular 
Facebook, who allow them to pay to promote their denial.

We are calling on Facebook and Google to stop promoting and funding 
climate denial, start labelling it as misinformation, and stop giving 
the advantages of their enormous platforms to lies and misinformation.

The Toxic Ten have a huge digital footprint with 186 million direct 
followers.
The Toxic Ten account for 69% of interactions with climate denial on 
Facebook
Facebook failed to label 92% of Toxic Ten posts
The Toxic Ten have generated $5.3 million in Google Ads revenue
Download the full report 
https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com

    *Breitbart **
    **The Western Journal**
    **Newsmax**
    **Townhall Media**
    **Media Research Center**
    **The Washington Times**
    **The Federalist Papers**
    **The Daily Wire**
    **Russian State Media**
    **The Patriot Post*

/ugd/f4d9b9_277d4dc5f1f84858a6a2dc149f00b759.pdf
https://www.counterhate.com/toxicten



/[ reports from the history of battlegrounds ]/
*How the fossil fuel industry got the media to think climate change was 
debatable*
By Amy Westervelt
Late last year, the Trump administration released the latest national 
climate assessment on Black Friday in what many assumed was an attempt 
to bury the document. If that was the plan, it backfired, and the 
assessment wound up earning more coverage than it probably would have 
otherwise. But much of that coverage perpetuated a decades-old practice, 
one that has been weaponized by the fossil fuel industry: false equivalence.

Although various business interests began pushing back against 
environmental action in general in the early 1970s as part of the 
conservative “war of ideas” launched in response to the social movements 
of the 1960s, when global warming first broke into the public sphere, it 
was a bipartisan issue and remained so for years. On the campaign trail 
in 1988, George H.W. Bush identified as an environmentalist and called 
for action on global warming, framing it as a technological challenge 
that American innovation could address. But fossil fuel interests were 
shifting as the industry and its allies began to push back against 
empirical evidence of climate change, taking many conservatives along 
with them.

Documents uncovered by journalists and activists over the past decade 
lay out a clear strategy: First, target media outlets to get them to 
report more on the “uncertainties” in climate science, and position 
industry-backed contrarian scientists as expert sources for media. 
Second, target conservatives with the message that climate change is a 
liberal hoax, and paint anyone who takes the issue seriously as “out of 
touch with reality.” In the 1990s, oil companies, fossil fuel industry 
trade groups and their respective PR firms began positioning contrarian 
scientists such as Willie Soon, William Happer and David Legates as 
experts whose opinions on climate change should be considered equal and 
opposite to that of climate scientists. The Heartland Institute, which 
hosts an annual International Conference on Climate Change known as the 
leading climate skeptics conference, for example, routinely calls out 
media outlets (including The Washington Post) for showing “bias” in 
covering climate change when they either decline to quote a skeptic or 
question a skeptic’s credibility.

Data on how effective this strategy has been is hard to come by, but 
anecdotal evidence of its success abounds. In the early 1990s, polls 
showed that about 80 percent of Americans were aware of climate change 
and accepted that something must be done about it, an opinion that 
crossed party lines. By 2008, Gallup found a marked partisan divide on 
climate change. By 2010, the American public’s belief in climate change 
hit an all-time low of 48 percent, despite the fact that those 20 years 
saw increased research, improved climate models and several climate 
change predictions coming true.

By demanding “balance,” the industry transformed climate change into a 
partisan issue. We know that was a deliberate strategy because various 
internal documents from ExxonMobil, Shell, the American Petroleum 
Institute and a handful of now-defunct fossil fuel industry groups 
reveal not only the industry’s strategy to target media with this 
message and these experts, but also its own preemptive debunking of the 
very theories it went on to support.

It need not have been such a successful strategy: If news purveyors 
really wanted to be evenhanded on coverage of climate change, they could 
certainly weave in the insights of more conservative scientists — those 
whose predictions err on the sunnier side of apocalypse. Instead, many 
took the industry’s bait, routinely inserting denialist claims into 
stories about climate science in the interest of providing balance: In 
an analysis of 636 articles covering climate change that appeared in 
“prestige U.S. outlets” from 1988 to 2002, researchers from the 
University of California at Santa Cruz and American University found 
that 52.65 percent presented climate science and contrarian theories as 
equal. The practice continued into the mid-2000s. As recently as 2007, 
PBS NewsHour invited well-known (and widely debunked) former weatherman 
Anthony Watts on to counterbalance Richard Muller, a former Koch-funded 
skeptic who had shifted his view.

By about 2008, most mainstream print outlets had moved past the notion 
that “balance” means including climate contrarians in coverage of 
climate science. These outlets do still trip up occasionally, though. In 
2017, ProPublica published a remarkably uncritical Q&A with Happer, for 
example, describing him as “brilliant and controversial,” and 
characterizing his view that global warming is good for the planet as 
merely “unusual.” That same year, the New York Times was roundly 
criticized for hiring climate contrarian Bret Stephens as a regular 
editorial columnist (and his first column didn’t help).

While print outlets aren’t perfect, TV news has lagged further behind on 
climate, often presenting climate contrarians as an equal and opposite 
balance to climate scientists. In coverage of the national climate 
assessment, for example, multiple cable news shows featured both climate 
scientists and climate deniers, as though the two are simply opposite 
sides of a debate. “Meet the Press,” “Anderson Cooper 360” and “State of 
the Union” all brought on climate deniers to provide balance to their 
shows. Republican politicians made the cable news rounds, too, spouting 
familiar tall tales about climate change being normal and cyclical or 
sun spots and volcanoes being the real culprits. Sen. Joni Ernst 
(R-Iowa) repeated the “the climate always changes” story on CNN, while 
Rick Santorum, informal White House adviser Stephen Moore and British 
politician Nigel Farage pushed the “climate scientists getting rich” 
narrative.

Though some outlets have moved to extricate deniers from the 
conversation, too many television news programs continue to bring on 
“contrarian” experts, giving a platform to tired lies. I say “lies” 
because fossil fuel industry scientists debunked these theories 
themselves decades ago, so they are knowingly perpetuating falsehoods. 
In a “global warming primer” prepared in the 1990s by the Global Climate 
Coalition, a since-disbanded consortium of fossil fuel producers, 
utilities, manufacturers, and other U.S. business interests (including 
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce), a Mobil scientist debunked all of the 
prevailing contrarian theories of the day on climate change. That part 
of the primer was left unprinted, of course, and oil companies went on 
to fund scientists promoting those very theories — the same ones that 
industry spokesmen and conservative politicians spout today.

In addition to propping up experts and leaning on media to use them as 
sources, oil companies have spent millions on advertising and 
advertorials over the years. Which seems innocuous — most companies 
advertise — but oil companies don’t sell a consumer product so much as a 
commodity. Most people aren’t loyal to a particular brand of gas; they 
buy whatever is most convenient or cheapest. So, when oil companies take 
out ads, it’s with the intention of shifting the opinions of the voting 
public, policymakers, and the media.

In an exhaustive survey of ExxonMobil’s advertorials from 1977 to 2014, 
science historian Naomi Oreskes and researcher Geoffrey Supran found 
that these pieces often took the form of “op-ads” that look and read a 
lot like op-eds but are paid for by an advertiser. Some simply presented 
positive stories about the company (heavily focused on their investments 
in algal biofuels, for example), but others argued for more relaxed 
policies on offshore drilling or a “common sense” approach to climate 
change regulation. The researchers found that “83 percent of 
peer-reviewed papers and 80 percent of internal documents acknowledge 
that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12% of 
advertorials do so, with 81 percent instead expressing doubt.”

A 1981 internal Mobil memo discovered by the Climate Investigations 
Center is an evaluation of the first decade of Mobil’s advertorial 
program, and it makes the company’s goals clear: “Not only is the 
company presenting its opinion to key opinion leaders, but it has been 
engaging in continuing debate with the New York Times itself. In fact, 
the paper has even changed to positions similar to Mobil’s on at least 
seven key energy issues.”

Granted, Mobil communications staff are giving themselves a lot of 
credit here, but whether they accomplished their goal is almost beside 
the point. This document shows the intention of these campaigns, and 
that’s something that should be taken seriously by any media outlet 
agreeing to run them, especially because many still do today. Campaigns 
that bring in big money at a time when the business of news is 
struggling are surely hard to turn down, but media outlets need to 
seriously consider the impact these campaigns have on their ability to 
inform the public, and work to mitigate that impact, above and beyond 
the usual “church and state” division between advertising and editorial. 
They could stop running these campaigns alongside climate reporting, do 
a better job of labeling campaigns, or refuse to run them altogether.

It’s well past time the media stopped allowing itself to be a tool in 
the fossil fuel industry’s information war. Oreskes likens the push for 
“balance” on climate change to journalists arguing over the final score 
of a baseball game. “If the Yankees beat the Red Sox 6-2, journalists 
would report that. They would not feel compelled to find someone to say 
actually the Red Sox won, or the score was 6-4,” she says.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/10/how-fossil-fuel-industry-got-media-think-climate-change-was-debatable/


/[ hear the discussion at COP26 ]/
*Building Materials and Bio-economy in the Global Climate Agenda —The 
panel debates*
Streamed live Nov 3, 2021
We Don't Have Time
 From the Nordic Pavilion: The panel debates:
- The importance of embodied carbon in building materials in climate 
mitigation
- The challenges of using local materials in emerging economies
- Global opportunities for circularity
- Good case study examples from around the globe

UN 2030 Agenda-based assessment framework for the circular built 
environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3AUtLxtWxs

- -

COP26 Backdoor
*Daily live broadcasts from COP26 in Glasgow, and from hubs in 
Stockholm, Helsinki, Washington DC *and Nairobi. November 1-12, 2021
https://www.wedonthavetime.org/event/cop26



/[ media misleading - a bit of history in brief video]/
*How Big Oil Has Misled the Public on Climate Change Since the 1970s | 
Amanpour and Company*
Nov 1, 2021
Amanpour and Company
Last Thursday's House Oversight Committee hearing featured testimony 
from six major fossil fuel companies and trade associations about their 
part in climate change, and whether they misled the public about the 
reality of the crisis. Rep. Ro Khanna helped lead this historic hearing. 
He joins Hari Sreenivasan to explain the disconnect between what these 
companies say and what they do.
Originally aired on November 1, 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtRZszvvlxU

- -

/[DeSmog uncovers ]/
*In Their Own Words: The Dirty Dozen Documents of Big Oil’s Secret 
Climate Knowledge*
Science historian Ben Franta unpacks some of the most critical documents 
exposing what the fossil fuel industry knew and when they knew it.
Oct 29, 2021
By Paul D. Thacker

“Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes,” said 
ExxonMobil lobbyist Keith McCoy. “Did we join some of these ‘shadow 
groups’ to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But 
there’s nothing illegal about that.”

These are the words McCoy was caught saying on a secretly recorded video 
released by Unearthed, Greenpeace U.K.’s investigative journalism arm, 
and the British Channel 4 News this summer exposing how the oil giant 
and lobby groups such as the American Petroleum Institute seed doubt 
about climate change and undermine legislation to stop global warming.

These revelations quickly spurred calls for Congress to investigate 
Exxon’s and other fossil fuel companies’ efforts to obstruct climate 
action. On July 26, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform sent a 
letter to McCoy requesting his voluntary appearance before the 
committee. And on October 28, Congress questioned the CEOs of 
ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP America, Shell, and the American Petroleum 
Institute on their history of blocking climate policy.

For years, academics, journalists, and activists have been unearthing 
documents proving that the fossil fuel industry knew about the dangers 
of climate change since the late 1950s. That’s many, many years before 
McCoy was even twinkle in his daddy’s eye and decades before he came to 
Washington to join in Exxon’s campaign to deny science and delay action 
to save the planet from “catastrophic climate change” — a term Exxon 
used back in 1981.

These documents show how companies worked to erode public acceptance of 
climate science over the years — including Exxon corporate reports from 
the late 1970s, revealed by DeSmog in 2016, which stated “There is no 
doubt” that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels was a growing “problem.”

To explain the long history of what the fossil fuel industry knew and 
when they knew it, Stanford University science historian Ben Franta has 
collected a dozen of his favorite documents....
more at: 
https://www.desmog.com/2021/10/29/dirty-dozen-documents-big-oil-secret-climate-knowledge-part-1/

- -

[ even more history of misinformation ]
*Part 2: The Dirty Dozen Documents of Big Oil’s Secret Climate Knowledge*
Industry documents from the 1980s reveal how fossil fuel companies 
promoted climate denial and avoided action to limit catastrophic climate 
impacts.
- -
By 1980, industry published its first attempt at deceiving the public on 
what it knew about greenhouse gases — a booklet that downplayed climate 
change’s dangers and argued that scientists were divided on the 
research. Throughout the ‘80s, fossil fuel companies began accumulating 
more evidence that climate change was going to be a disaster in the 
future and that governments were going to start regulating their 
industry. Records show that they began to plot ways to deceive the 
public and undermine policies, and in 1989 they created a coalition of 
American companies to fight policies and deny that climate change was real.

Stanford science historian Ben Franta and I continue our discussion of 
these key documents, what they say, how they were found, and what this 
means for the fossil fuel industry. This conversation is part two in our 
series and has been edited and condensed for clarity.
https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/part-2-the-dirty-dozen-documents


/[ TV Humor, 12 min video ] /
*World Leaders Try To Wish Away Climate Change, Bezos Skips Halloween To 
Party With Bill Gates*
**Nov 1, 2021
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Trick-or-treaters were turned away from Jeff Bezos's house this year, 
because the Amazon founder skipped town for a yacht party with fellow 
billionaire Bill Gates. Over in Europe, G20 leaders tossed coins into a 
fountain to celebrate their agreement on a target date for global net 
zero carbon emissions
https://youtu.be/meUe2Vg4pOo?t=134



[ Economist Films. What would three degrees look  like? 16 min video]
*This is what 3°C of global warming looks like*
It’s an entirely plausible scenario. This film shows the catastrophic 
consequences
Oct 30th 2021
Arise of 3°C in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels by 2100 
would be disastrous. Its effects would be felt differently around the 
world, but nowhere would be immune. Prolonged heatwaves, droughts and 
extreme weather events could all become increasingly common and severe. 
Worryingly, slow progress from governments in cutting emissions make 
this an uncomfortably plausible scenario. This film shows what that 
world would look like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo
https://www.economist.com/films/2021/10/30/this-is-what-3degc-of-global-warming-looks-like

- -

/[ See the view of 3 degrees from a 2008 video ]/
YouTube from 2008
*3 Degrees Warmer: Heat Wave Fatalities | National Geographic*
Jan 29, 2008
National Geographic
If the world warms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rdLu7wiZOE

- -

/[ points posted on Richard Pauli's web site in 2007 //From 
//http://localsteps.org/howbad.html //]/
*Three Degrees*
The Kalahari desert spreads across Botswana, engulfing the capital in 
sand dunes, and driving millions of refugees out to surrounding countries.
A permanent El Nino grips the Pacific, causing weather chaos around the 
world, and drought in the Amazon.
The whole Amazonian ecosystem collapses in a conflagration of fire and 
destruction – desert and savannah eventually take over where the world’s 
largest rainforest once stood.
Huge amounts of carbon pour into the atmosphere, adding another degree 
to global warming. Water runs short in Perth, Sydney and other parts of 
Australia away from the far north and south.
Hurricanes strike the tropics half a category stronger than today’s, 
with higher windspeeds and rainfall.
Agriculture shifts into the far north – Norway’s growing season becomes 
like southern England is today. But with declines in the tropics and 
sub-tropics due to heat and drought, the world tips into net food deficit.
The Indus river runs dry due to glacial retreat in the Himalayas, 
forcing millions of refugees to flee Pakistan.
Possible nuclear conflict with India over water supplies.
Notes from Mark Lynas author of _Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet_
Three Degrees video description from National Geographic
http://localsteps.org/3degreemap.html



/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming November  4, 1988*
Discussing the conflict of visions at the heart of the 1988 presidential 
campaign, the New York Times notes:

    "Neither candidate has a record in office as a committed
    environmentalist. [Vice President George] Bush, for example, headed
    a Reagan Administration task force that recommended relaxing many
    environmental regulations. [Massachusetts Governor Michael] Dukakis
    sought waivers of Federal requirements that Boston Harbor be cleaned
    up. Yet both candidates are campaigning as strong conservationists,
    and protection of the environment has become a widely discussed
    issue for the first time in a Presidential campaign.

    "Mr. Bush ran a series of television advertisements attacking Mr.
    Dukakis for pollution in Boston Harbor. Mr. Dukakis, saying he was
    not at fault, responded with ads blaming Reagan budget cuts for the
    harbor's pollution and criticizing the Vice President for opposing
    renewal of the Clean Water Act and strong regulation of corporate
    polluters.

    "Mr. Dukakis has won the endorsement of most national environmental
    organizations. The League of Conservation Voters, the political arm
    of the main environmental groups, gives Mr. Dukakis a rating of B,
    Mr. Bush a grade of D+, based on their records and stated positions.

    "Neither man has promised to spend much new money on the
    environment. But both have endorsed a program to reduce pollution
    that causes acid rain, both say they would bring an end to ocean
    dumping and both promise to call a meeting of world leaders to
    address the threat of global warming caused by man-made gases."

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/04/us/emotional-issues-are-the-1988-battleground.html?pagewanted=print&src=pm

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