[✔️] February 21, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*February  21, 2022*/

/[ first get good information ]/
*Facebook whistleblower accuses company of failing to address climate 
change misinformation*
Frances Haugen’s lawyers filed two new SEC complaints
By Emma Roth  -- Feb 20, 2022 ...
- -
The first complaint, obtained by The Washington Post, alleges the 
presence of readily available climate change misinformation on Facebook, 
making Facebook’s claims that it’s fighting climate denial fall flat. It 
also contains internal documents detailing employees’ own experiences 
with climate-related falsehoods on the platform. As noted by The Post, 
one employee reports searching for “climate change” in the Watch tab and 
then seeing a video that promotes “climate misinfo” as the second 
result. The video in question has reportedly garnered 6.6 million views. 
Another employee allegedly urged the company to remove climate 
misinformation, rather than merely label posts with potential falsehoods.

The complaint also mentions Facebook’s Climate Science Information 
Center, a hub for credible climate change information the platform 
launched in 2020. As reported by The Post, the complaint references 
internal records that claim user awareness of the hub was “very low,” 
suggesting it may not have had its intended reach. Last year, Meta 
attempted to bolster its Climate Science Information Center with 
additional quizzes, videos, and facts. A study conducted months later 
found that climate change denial has become even more widespread on the 
platform.

The second complaint alleges Facebook’s promise to combat COVID-19 
misinformation didn’t align with its actions. According to The Post, the 
complaint cites an internal document showing a 20 percent increase in 
misinformation in April 2020, as well as a May 2020 record in which 
employees point out the presence of hundreds of anti-quarantine groups. 
Last July, President Joe Biden accused Facebook and other social 
platforms of “killing people” with misinformation about COVID-19 and its 
vaccines.

“We’ve directed more than 2 billion people to authoritative public 
health information and continue to remove false claims about vaccines, 
conspiracy theories, and misinformation,” Meta spokesperson Drew 
Pusateri said in an emailed statement to The Verge. “There are no 
one-size-fits-all solutions to stopping the spread of misinformation, 
but we’re committed to building new tools and policies to combat it.”

Haugen leaked a trove of internal Facebook documents — dubbed the 
Facebook Papers — to the Wall Street Journal last year. She has since 
testified before Congress to discuss possible changes to Section 230, 
the law that shields websites from legal accountability for illegal 
content that users may post.

The SEC didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/20/22943279/facebook-whistleblower-climate-change-misinformation-frances-haugen-sec



/[  Opinion - correct information makes better change ]/
*Less Lying Would Help*
Prevarication Prevents Perception
Bill McKibben
Feb 18
This week a Japanese study found that the big oil and gas companies 
are—despite their numerous protestations to the contrary—completely 
focused on more oil and gas. This comes as no real surprise, but as 
climate stalwart sociologist Robert Brulle told climate stalwart 
journalist Amy Westervelt in the climate stalwart pages of the Guardian, 
“this is the first robust, empirical, peer-reviewed analysis of the 
activities – of the speech, business plans, and the actual investment 
patterns – of the major oil companies regarding their support or 
opposition to the transition to a sustainable society.” Essentially, 
they talk a good game, but it’s entirely talk. As NPR pointed out in its 
coverage of the study, ‘glaringly, ExxonMobil generated no clean energy 
during the last decade.’ BP's global renewables capacity — the largest 
among the four majors — amounts to only 2,000 MW, or the the equivalent 
of about two large gas-fired power plants.

The Crucial Years is a reader-supported publication—that means you. To 
support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

This, it strikes me, is a problem for two reasons. One, it means they’re 
continuing to pour carbon into the atmosphere, where it, you know, 
wrecks the prospects for ongoing civilization. Two, it keeps us from 
ever really fully grappling with that fact. Climate campaigners have 
spent two decades doing all they could to force a recognition that the 
climate crisis was a) real and b) a crisis. Polling indicates they’ve 
largely succeeded—to the point where significant numbers of people feel 
a real (and justifiable) climate despair.

But we’re not doing the things scientists tell us we must—in large 
measure because the oil companies and their allies, having dropped their 
insistence that climate change wasn’t a problem, now insist they’re 
solving the problem. This is a different lie, but equally consequential. 
(And calling it ‘denial,’ by the way, seems weak to me; the problem is 
that it’s a lie, and lies make actual discussion impossible).

The oil companies aren’t alone. Kate Aronoff, writing in The New 
Republic, describes a new study from the UK campaigners Share Action: It 
finds that 25 European members of the grandly titled Net Zero Banking 
Alliance “have provided at least $38 billion in financing to 50 of the 
most expansionary upstream oil and gas companies on earth. Half of that 
financing was provided by four of the founding signatories of the 
Alliance: Barclays, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, and HSBC. Since the 
Paris Agreement was brokered in 2016, the European banks analyzed have 
furnished upstream oil and gas expanders with $400 billion, and they 
‘show no signs of stopping,’ the report writes.”

The challenge of switching our system to clean energy would be 
incredibly hard even if everyone was actually trying. But it gets 
exponentially harder if key players are poisoning not only the 
atmosphere but also the infosphere. One way to make it stop, as 
Westervelt points out, would be if pr firms and ad agencies stopped 
helping with the lying. She quotes Christine Arena, a former exec at pr 
giant Edelman, now working with the Clean Creatives campaign:

“PR and ad firms are central players in what we look at as the influence 
industry,” Arena says. “There’s a lot of money spent, and emphasis on 
external facing advertising, marketing, and promotion that helps prop up 
the fossil fuel industry’s social license to operate and give the world 
a sense that, to quote the American Petroelum Institute, ‘We’re on it.’ 
We don’t need regulation. We’re good corporate actors.”

It made me angry when, for decades, they insisted physics wasn’t real. 
It makes us all crazy (and powerless) when they insist that they’re 
doing what physics demands. They will, perhaps, go to hell for it, but 
not before they’ve taken the planet to someplace of a similar temperature.
- -
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/less-lying-would-help



/[ explaining it well in a  video https://youtu.be/HqZKibDw1K8 /
*Methane Growth is Accelerating*
Jan 30, 2022
Disaster Diaries
Ha!  I just realized I already recorded a version of this video back 
last October.  Well, maybe I have more followers now, or that otherwise 
you will enjoy this reprise! Too funny.
Links for this video:
(NOAA data)
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4/
  (previous version)
https://youtu.be/N4r1TWCNkv4
The planet is in crisis. Everywhere we turn, there is another climate 
change fueled disaster.  We are headed at full speed into unknown and 
uncharted planetary conditions.  Survivability on planet Earth for the 
ironically named species homo sapiens (wise man) will not exist for very 
much longer.

Please consider these three choices for living your life you can make 
right now:

1) Be kind.  Avoid pettiness and battles over the small stuff.  And 
today, more than ever before, it is ALL small stuff.

2) Be generous.  To the best of your ability, give to others.  Give to 
people who are in need.  Give to organizations that are doing what they 
can to prolong habitable spaces and conditions where nature can endure.

3) Be of service.  Find ways to donate your time to help others and help 
the planet.  If you help one butterfly live another day, you have done 
enough.

And love.  Most of all, love.  Others may not agree with your politics, 
your thoughts about COVID or your religious views on the meaning of 
life.  But they are going through the collapse of global-industrial 
civilization with you and they are going through the sixth mass 
extinction with you. So at the very least, you can love them.

Contact:
Web: www.ijmp.org
Twitter @EliotJacobson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqZKibDw1K8



/[  post doom, no gloom -- video talk and interview 45 min ] /
*Karen Perry: Post-doom BENEFITS of Collapse Acceptance*
Feb 20, 2022
thegreatstory
"Benefits of Collapse Acceptance," with Karen Perry, is the 80th video 
episode in Michael Dowd's "Post-Doom Conversations" series. Karen 
presented a list of 15 benefits that she herself has experienced, 
following years of climate activism (with her husband, Jordan Perry). 
2017 documentary featuring Karen and her husband, Jordan: "Innocently 
Violent": https://youtu.be/8KVybgQ4tdM
Time-coded list of the benefits below:
00:02 Introduction by Michael Dowd
01:01 The conversation begins by distinguishing "collapse acceptance" 
from the earlier stage of "collapse awareness."
06:12 Previews the final benefit: 15. "Global Hospice Time"
10:44 Benefit 1. Freedom (freedom "from" and freedom "to")
12:10 Benefit 2. Urgency
13:03 Benefit 3. Parameters (adds new parameters to your decision-making)
15:01 Benefit 4. Presence (focus on today, here)
16:12 Benefit 5. Gratitude
18:07 Benefit 6. Calmness / Grounding / Balance
20:00 Benefit 7. Community (localism)
21:44 Benefit 8. Release (from Superhero Savior Complex)
22:54 Benefit 9. Connection (heightened and expanded sense)
23:48 Benefit 10. Empathy
25:03 Benefit 11. Recognizing your Privilege
29:33 Benefit 12. Making Amends
30:51 Benefit 13. Comfortable with Death (Stephen Jenkinson, Caitlyn 
Doughty)
31:58 Benefit 14. Letting Go of Control
33:19 Benefit 15. Global Hospice Time
35:00 Bonus A. "You get to live a full and complete life now."
36:00 Where effort is welcome: "Normalization of Collapse" and ability 
to "Speak our Truth"
39:17 "I am so grateful for my collapse — first awareness and then 
acceptance" (summary)
40:00 Karen Perry and Michael Dowd each lead Post-Doom discussion groups.
More information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhKbOtZM01c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhKbOtZM01c



/[   those who suffer, seeking solace    ] /
*Conflict and Climate Change Ravage Syria’s Agricultural Heartland*
Drought and a decade of war have brought failing crops and poverty to a 
region once known as Syria’s breadbasket. Even the bread has changed.
By Jane Arraf
Feb. 19, 2022
HASAKA, Syria — At a government bakery in Hasaka, Syria, a faded image 
of former President Hafez al-Assad looms over the aging machinery and 
clanging steel chains of the assembly line. The painting dates from long 
before the war, when this region of northeast Syria was still under 
government control.

Outside, a long line of families and disabled men wait for bags of 
subsidized flat bread, which sells at about a quarter of the market price.

What is new at this bakery, the largest in the region, is the color of 
the flour dumped into giant mixing bowls: It is now pale yellow instead 
of the traditional stark white.

“This is a new experiment we started three or four months ago,” said 
Media Sheko, a manager of the bakery. “To avoid bread shortages, we had 
to mix it with corn.”...
- -
In a region ravaged by ISIS and armed conflict, prolonged drought and 
drying rivers have made stability even more precarious. Here, the 
normally abstract idea of climate change can be seen in the city’s daily 
bread.

The new recipe is not entirely welcome...
- -
“We feed corn to chickens,” said Khider Shaban, 48, a grain farmer near 
the town of Al Shaddadi, where bare earth has replaced most of the wheat 
fields because of lack of water. “What are we — chickens?”

The prolonged drought in the region has been linked to climate change 
worldwide. But in northeast Syria, the country’s historic breadbasket, 
its effects have been compounded by more than a decade of war, a 
devastated economy, damaged infrastructure and increasing poverty, 
leaving a vulnerable society even more at risk of destabilization...
“We feed corn to chickens,” said Khider Shaban, 48, a grain farmer near 
the town of Al Shaddadi, where bare earth has replaced most of the wheat 
fields because of lack of water. “What are we — chickens?”

The prolonged drought in the region has been linked to climate change 
worldwide. But in northeast Syria, the country’s historic breadbasket, 
its effects have been compounded by more than a decade of war, a 
devastated economy, damaged infrastructure and increasing poverty, 
leaving a vulnerable society even more at risk of destabilization.
This semiautonomous breakaway region in northeastern Syria, desperate 
for cash and stable relations with Damascus, still sells much of its 
wheat crop to the Syrian government, leaving little for its own population.

And farmers who cannot afford to feed and water their animals are 
selling them off at cut-rate prices.

“This problem of climate change is combined with other problems, so it’s 
not just one thing,” said Matt Hall, a strategic analyst for Save the 
Children in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. “There’s a war, there 
are sanctions, the economy is devastated. And the region can’t pick up 
the slack by importing wheat because it no longer has the money.”

For thousands of years, the Euphrates River and its largest tributary, 
the Khabur River, which cuts through Hasaka Province, nurtured some of 
the world’s earliest farming settlements. But the rivers have been 
drying up.

The U.S. space agency, NASA, which studies climate change, says the 
drought that began in 1998 is the worst that some parts of the Middle 
East have seen in nine centuries.
In northeast Syria, the drought has been particularly acute over the 
past two years. But lower than average rainfall is only part of the problem.
Turkey, which controls the region’s water supply from parts of northern 
Syria that it controls through proxy fighters, has been accused of 
reducing the flow to the area inhabited by the Kurds, whom it considers 
an enemy.

Since Turkey captured the Alouk water pumping station, the main water 
source for Hasaka Province, in 2019, aid agencies say forces under its 
command have repeatedly shut down the pumps, putting about a million 
people at risk.

Turkey has denied the accusation, blaming outages on technical problems 
and the lack of electricity from a dam outside of its control.

Whatever the cause, UNICEF says the water supply has been disrupted at 
least 24 times since late 2019.
The effects of the drought are on vivid display in the small city of Al 
Shaddadi, 50 miles south of Hasaka. The Khabur River, which flows 
through the town and was so vital in ancient times that it is referred 
to in the Bible, has been reduced to puddles of murky water.

Muhammad Salih, a president of the municipality, said 70 percent of the 
farmers in the area left their fields fallow this year because it would 
cost more to grow crops than they would receive selling them.

The low level of the Khabur, which many farmers depend on to irrigate 
their fields, means they have to operate their diesel-powered pumps 
longer to get the same amount of water. And the cost of diesel fuel has 
soared, along with prices of other essentials, because of an economic 
embargo on the region by its neighbors, Turkey and the 
government-controlled part of Syria, and American economic sanctions 
against Syria, which also affect this region.

Mr. Salih also blamed Turkey for reducing the water supply at the Alouk 
pumping station.

“One day they open the water and 10 days they do not,” he said.

He estimated that 60 percent of the local population was now living 
under the poverty line. “Some people are eating just one meal a day,” he 
said.

“This climate change, this drought is affecting the entire world,” he 
said. “But here in the autonomous administration we don’t have the 
reserves to cope with it.”
- -
The war against ISIS left entire sections of Al Shaddadi in ruins. 
U.S.-led airstrikes destroyed a large residential complex, water pumping 
stations, schools and bakeries used by ISIS, according to local 
authorities. The main bakery and some schools have been rebuilt.

Farmers from the countryside drive motorcycles through dusty streets. 
Women with their faces covered by black niqabs walk past chickens few 
people can afford to buy anymore.

In the surrounding farmlands, thin stalks of wheat and barley in the few 
fields planted last fall are less than half their height in pre-drought 
years.

“We can only pray for God to send us rain,” said Mr. Shaban, the wheat 
farmer. He said that he had to sell his sheep two years ago at reduced 
prices because he could not afford feed or water.

“I had to make the choice to give water to my family for drinking or 
give it to the sheep,” he said.

On a neighboring farm, Hassan al-Harwa, 39, said the high cost of feed 
meant his sheep were subsisting on straw mixed with a small amount of 
more nutritious barley instead of the higher-grain diet they used to 
consume.

Hassan al-Harwa said he used to get $200 a head for his sheep. Now, with 
skinnier sheep and depressed prices, they sell for $70 or less.

“They should be fatter and healthier,” Mr. al-Harwa said. “When there 
was rain two years ago, we had enough milk to get milk and cheese but 
now it is barely enough for their lambs.”

Before, he said, each sheep could fetch about $200 in the market. Now 
they sell for $70 or less, he said, because they are skinnier and 
because few people can afford to buy them.

The next day, four of the lambs had died. Mr. al-Harwa thought it was a 
virus but with no veterinarian it was hard to be sure.

Across the region, intense poverty and lack of opportunity have 
contributed to young men joining the Islamic State.

“It’s one small piece of this large, disastrous puzzle,” said Mr. Hall 
of Save the Children. “The grievances that are exacerbated by climate 
change are the same ones that drive disillusionment and recruitment” by 
ISIS.

The persistent drought has also been driving families from farms held 
for generations to the cities where there are more services but even 
less opportunity to make a living.

“The water is holding together many of these areas,” Mr. Hall said. 
“These agricultural communities are the social foundation for many 
areas. If you take away the agricultural capacity there is nothing 
holding these towns together.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/world/middleeast/syria-drought-climate-food.html



/[  See storm damage then talk in Environmental Coffeehouse - //video 
1:18.00 //] /
*As the Biosphere Dissolves- Severe Weather Edition..and a Dash of IPCC*
Feb 20, 2022
Environmental Coffeehouse
Severe weather events are all connected to climate change, scientists 
say, as warmer temperatures cause more precipitation, leading to heavier 
storms, and changing wind patterns bring blasts of cold air to 
previously unlikely locations.
https://unfoundation.org/blog/post/wh...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBOkit0wwH4


/[  Great Idea for a daily news show... but how do we get to see it 
every day ??  ] /
*The Daily Climate Show: Islands unite to fight polluters*
Feb 10, 2022
Sky News
On today's show, a warning from the President of Palau that his and 
other nations are at real risk of disappearing.
Plus, new technology that helps the shipping industry use less fuel.
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/skynews

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skynews

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skynews

For more content go to http://news.sky.com and download our apps: Apple: 
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/sky-n... Android 
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...

Sky News videos are now available in Spanish here / Los video de Sky 
News están disponibles en español aquí 
https://www.youtube.com/channel/skyne...

To enquire about licensing Sky News content, contact clipsales at sky.uk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwDWdtxBn6o



/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming February 21, 2021*
February 21, 2012: Conservative blogger Steven L. Taylor calls out GOP 
presidential candidate Rick Santorum for his repeated denials of climate 
change:

"[C]onservatives ultimately see any attempt at environment regulation as 
really not about the environment anyway, but about an excuse for 
increased government control.  Not only does this pay into general 
concerns about 'big government' but this strand of the argument asserts 
that all this researchy/sciencey talk is just a ruse:  those guys aren’t 
really scientists interested in understanding the environment.  No!  
They are Marxists in lab coats looking to fool you all into socialism!

"Now, understand:  I do not consider myself an expert on climate 
change.  I do not even have especially strong views on the subject, 
although I do accept the rather overwhelming scientific consensus that 
we have a climate change problem.  What this means in terms of policy is 
another issue. However, I find it problematic when politicians hand-wave 
over serious issues [due to] some inherent belief that they understand 
topics that would otherwise require a lifetime of study to 
understand...Further, while I understand concerns over taxes and 
regulations, that doesn’t make issues like pollution go away."In short:  
if one is going to make arguments on this topic (and seek to influence 
policy in this arena) I would like to see more than appeals to the 
Biblical creation story and fear mongering about government control."

I think that Rick Santorum is sincere (something that is helping him 
very much at the moment) but every time I read or hear anything that he 
says about why he believes what he believes he sounds like someone 
applying for a job in a religious institution, not someone running to be 
the President of the United States.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/santorum-and-climate-change-theology/


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