[✔️] January 20, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*January 20, 2022*/

/[ Full text of a brief, carefully worded message sent to PR and 
advertising industries  ]/
*450+ Scientists' Letter to Agencies: Drop Fossil Fuel Clients.*

    As scientists who study and communicate the realities of climate
    change, we are consistently faced with a major and needless
    challenge: overcoming advertising and PR efforts by fossil fuel
    companies that seek to obfuscate or downplay our data and the risks
    posed by the climate crisis. In fact, these misinformation campaigns
    represent one of the biggest barriers to the government action
    science shows is necessary to mitigate the ongoing climate emergency.

    The science could not be more clear: We must eliminate carbon
    pollution as soon as possible — nearly 50% this decade, and fully by
    2050. That requires an immediate and rapid transition away from all
    fossil fuels. Coal, oil, gas, and electricity companies must
    immediately, unreservedly, begin a transition to a zero carbon future.

    If PR and advertising agencies want to be part of climate solutions
    instead of continuing to exacerbate the climate emergency, they
    should drop all fossil fuel clients that plan to expand their
    production of oil and gas, end work with all fossil fuel companies
    and trade groups that perpetuate climate deception, cease all work
    that hinders climate legislation, and instead focus on uplifting the
    true climate solutions that are already available and must be
    rapidly implemented at scale.

    To put it simply, advertising and public relations campaigns for
    fossil fuels must stop.

https://cleancreatives.org/scientists  [450 listed on the page]

- -

/[ Abstract from peer reviewed article generating this action]/
Published: 30 November 2021
*The role of public relations firms in climate change politics*
Robert J. Brulle & Carter Werthman
Climatic Change volume 169, Article number: 8 (2021) Cite this article
1003 Accesses
314 Altmetric
Metricsdetails

*Abstract*

    Climate change policy has long been subject to influence by a wide
    variety of organizations. Despite their importance, the key role of
    public relations (PR) firms has long been overlooked in the climate
    political space. This paper provides an exploratory overview of the
    extent and nature of involvement of PR firms in climate political
    action by organizations in five sectors: Coal/Steel/Rail, Oil & Gas,
    Utilities, Renewable Energy, and the Environmental Movement. The
    analysis shows that the engagement of public relations firms by
    organizations in all of these sectors is widespread. In absolute
    terms, the Utility and Gas & Oil sectors engage the most PR firms,
    and the Environmental Movement engages the fewest. Organizations in
    the Utilities Sector show a statistically significant higher use of
    PR firms than the other sectors. Within each sector, engagement of
    PR firms is concentrated in a few firms, and the major oil companies
    and electrical-supply manufactures are the heaviest employers of
    such firms. PR firms generally specialize in representing specific
    sectors, and a few larger PR firms are widely engaged in climate and
    energy political activity. PR firms developed campaigns that
    frequently relied on third-party groups to engage with the public,
    criticize opponents, and serve as the face of an advertising
    campaign. Our analysis shows that PR firms are a key organizational
    actor in climate politics.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-021-03244-4

- -

/[  Reuters report  ]/
*Scientists target PR and ad firms they accuse of spreading disinformation*
By Valerie Volcovici - Jan 19, 2022
WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - More than 450 scientists on Wednesday 
called on the executives of major advertising and public relations firms 
to drop their fossil fuel clients and stop what the scientists said was 
their spread of disinformation around climate change.

They sent a letter to the executives of major global public relations 
and advertising firms, including conglomerate WPP, Edelman and IPG, as 
well as the CEOs of their clients who tout sustainability goals 
including Unilever, Amazon and Microsoft.

"As scientists who study and communicate the realities of climate 
change, we are consistently faced with a major and needless challenge: 
overcoming advertising and PR efforts by fossil fuel companies that seek 
to obfuscate or downplay our data and the risks posed by the climate 
crisis," the scientists wrote.

None of the advertising and PR firms or their clients were immediately 
available to comment on the letter.
There has been increasing scrutiny of the role that PR and advertising 
firms play in helping oil and gas companies to play down their role in 
exacerbating climate change or "greenwashing" with claims the companies 
offer climate solutions.

A U.S. House panel questioned oil company CEOs in October about their 
role in spreading climate change misinformation and subpoenaed them for 
documents related to money they spent on PR and marketing firms as well 
as social media firms.
The panel's investigation is expected to dig into these third party 
companies.

Several lawsuits accuse major oil and gas companies of "greenwashing," 
citing ad campaigns that make what the suits allege are unsubstantiated 
claims meant to deceive customers into believing products are 
environmentally friendly.

Climate scientist Michael Mann, a signatory to the letter, said the ad 
campaigns minimize environmental risks.

“We climate scientists have been trying to raise the climate crisis 
alarm for decades, but we've been drowned out by these fossil fuel 
industry-funded PR campaigns,” said Mann.

A campaign led by Clean Creatives, a group pressuring ad and PR firms to 
drop fossil fuel clients, had called on Edelman to drop its oil and gas 
clients. Edelman said earlier this month it would not but said it would 
set up a panel of "external climate experts to offer input and guidance 
on strategy and on assignments and client situations of concern.”

In a statement to Reuters in December 2020, WPP said: “WPP recognizes 
the importance of its role in addressing climate change by applying 
rigorous standards to the content we produce and helping clients to 
accelerate the world’s transition to a lower-carbon economy.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/scientists-target-pr-ad-firms-they-accuse-spreading-disinformation-2022-01-19/

- -

/[ Official press release campaign designed to name, shame and blame ]/
*Over 450 Scientists Sign Letter Calling on PR and Ad Agencies to Drop 
Fossil Fuel Clients*
Jan 19
Contact: Jamie Henn, jamie at fossilfree.media, 415-601-9337

“To put it simply, advertising and public relations campaigns for fossil 
fuels must stop.”

The letter comes days after Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, says 
that science will guide its decisions about ongoing work with high 
polluting clients

Over 450 scientists have signed a letter calling on public relations and 
advertising agencies to stop working with fossil fuel companies and 
spreading climate disinformation. This is the first time that so many 
scientists have come together to call out the role of PR and advertising 
in fueling the climate crisis.

“As scientists who study, and seek to communicate, the realities of the 
climate emergency on both the planet and people, we are constantly faced 
with the challenge of overcoming advertising and PR efforts by fossil 
fuel companies that seek to obfuscate or downplay our data, and the risk 
of the climate emergency. In fact, these campaigns represent one of the 
biggest barriers to the government action science shows is necessary to 
mitigate the ongoing climate emergency, and avert total disaster,” the 
authors write. “A scientifically sound approach for PR and advertising 
agencies considering what clients to continue working with leads to only 
one conclusion: end all relationships with companies that plan to expand 
their production of oil and gas. Stop all work that weakens legislative 
efforts to reduce carbon pollution.”

The letter was organized by a group of leading scientists including Dr. 
Jason Box, Dr. Astrid Caldas, Dr. Peter Gleick, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth 
Johnson, Dr. Michael Mann, Dr. Kate Marvel and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, 
in partnership with the Clean Creatives campaign and the Union of 
Concerned Scientists.

“For decades, the fossil fuel industry has misled the public with 
greenwashing campaigns and sabotaged climate action, even as the climate 
crisis worsens,” said Dr. Astrid Caldas, Senior Climate Scientist at the 
Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s clear we need to sharply cut carbon 
pollution as soon as possible—by at least 50% this decade and reaching 
net-zero preferably well before but no later than 2050—to avoid the most 
dangerous climate change impacts. But the PR and advertising companies 
that abet the spread of climate disinformation are standing in the way. 
We’re calling on them to use their skills and resources to align with 
the science instead, and promote bold, ambitious, equitable climate 
action beginning with the Build Back Better Act.”

The letter comes at a time of mounting pressure on PR and advertising 
agencies to stop working with fossil fuel companies to spread climate 
disinformation. A first-of-its-kind, peer reviewed study published in 
the scientific journal Climatic Change this December identified hundreds 
of campaigns by PR, advertising and marketing firms designed to obstruct 
climate action.

“We climate scientists have been trying to raise the climate crisis 
alarm for decades, but we've been drowned out by these fossil fuel 
industry-funded PR campaigns,” said climate scientist, Dr. Michael Mann. 
“Greenwashing is a primary tactic in what I call the 'New War’ on 
climate action and it must be called out for what it is—denial under 
another name.”

A number of PR and advertising agencies have defended their work with 
fossil fuel clients as helping those companies address the climate 
crisis, but the letter from the scientists was clear: any work with 
clients planning to expand fossil fuel production was counterproductive 
and could be seen as greenwashing.

“The science could not be more clear: We must eliminate carbon pollution 
as soon as possible — nearly 50% this decade, and fully by 2050. That 
requires an immediate and rapid transition away from all fossil fuels,” 
the scientists write in the letter. “To put it simply, advertising and 
public relations campaigns for fossil fuels must stop.”

“For decades, fossil fuel companies have used greenwashing campaigns to 
hide from public accountability and attack climate scientists who speak 
the truth even though they have frequently spread misinformation. PR and 
advertising agencies that support greenwashing hold major responsibility 
for letting the climate crisis get this far. I hope this letter will 
serve as a wakeup call for them to preserve their credibility by ending 
their complicity,” said Dr. Gary Yohe, Huffington Foundation Professor 
of Economics and Environmental Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan 
University, who has been involved as a senior author for the United 
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and served as 
vice-Chair of the third US National Climate Assessment.

The scientists are releasing their letter just over a week after 
Edelman, the world’s largest PR company, announced that after an 
internal review of their clients they wouldn’t be dropping any fossil 
fuel contracts, but that future work would be guided by scientific 
principles. Amongst the various new initiatives that Edelman announced 
was a pledge to, “finalise an independent council of external climate 
experts to offer input and guidance on strategy and on assignments and 
client situations of concern.”

“Edelman said that they will use the best available science to evaluate 
whether they will continue to work with fossil fuel clients,” said 
Duncan Meisel, Clean Creatives campaign director. “Well, here are 450 of 
the world’s best scientists telling firms like Edelman that work needs 
to cease immediately. Edelman wants to confuse the issue, but these 
climate experts are crystal clear: there are no excuses for continuing 
to greenwash fossil fuel companies.”

Clean Creatives will be sending the scientist letter to other top PR and 
advertising agencies including Edelman, WPP, and IPG. They will also be 
sending it to some of the agencies’ largest sustainability oriented 
clients, companies like Unilever, Amazon, Microsoft, North Face and more.

“Scientists have been sounding the climate alarm for decades, but 
they’ve been drowned out by billions of dollars of PR and Advertising 
from the fossil fuel industry,” said Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil 
Free Media, home of the Clean Creatives campaign. “Now, scientists are 
saying enough is enough. The pollution of our airwaves is inextricably 
tied to the pollution of our atmosphere. The only way to clean up both 
is to stop this propaganda at the source: the PR and ad agencies that 
continue to work on behalf of fossil fuels. It’s time for creatives to 
come clean.”
                                                      ###
https://cleancreatives.org/news/scientists-letter-jan-2022



/[  General overview of articles from 2021  ] /
January 19. 2022.  8:00
*Analysis: The climate papers most featured in the media in 2021*

In a year that was again dominated by Covid, 2021 still managed to 
squeeze in a summer Olympics with no spectators, a cargo ship getting 
stuck in the Suez Canal, and various billionaires blasting into space.

Despite the ever-frantic news cycle, climate change nonetheless made 
headlines – not least because of some record-breaking extreme weather, a 
new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and 
the delayed COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

But also making the news were many of the thousands of peer-reviewed 
journal papers about climate change that are published every year.

These studies were picked up around the world by news outlets and shared 
on social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. 
Tracking all these “mentions” was Altmetric, an organisation that scores 
academic papers according to the attention they receive. (Full details 
of how the Altmetric scoring system works can be found in an earlier 
article.)

Using Altmetric data for 2021, Carbon Brief has compiled its annual list 
of the 25 most talked-about climate change-related papers that were 
published the previous year.

This year’s list includes research on “noisy” oceans, record-shattering 
weather extremes and the “climate denial” of major oil companies.

The infographic above shows which ones made it into the top 10, while 
the chart at the end of the article shows which journals feature most 
frequently in the top 25.
- -
The highest-placed climate paper – landing in 144th position overall – 
is the Nature Climate Change paper, “The burden of heat-related 
mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change”.
- -
Using data from 732 locations in 43 countries over 1991-2018, the study 
estimated that 37% of “warm-season heat-related deaths” can be 
attributed to human-caused climate change. While this health burden 
“varied geographically”, the authors found that increased mortality was 
“evident on every continent” and was “of the order of dozens to hundreds 
of deaths per year in many locations”.

The study was picked up in 865 online news stories from 617 outlets, 
including the Guardian, New York Times, Sydney Morning Herald, i 
newspaper, Times, Bloomberg, Evening Standard, Associated Press and 
Independent. The paper was also mentioned by 69 blog posts and 1,286 
tweets, giving it an overall Altmetric score of 5,715.

This tally is a little lower than the top climate papers in 2020, 2019 
and 2018, which scored 6,174, 7,136 and 6,061, respectively...
- -
*Top journals*
Across the top 25 papers in Carbon Brief’s leaderboard, there are two 
journals that feature most frequently – Nature and Nature Climate 
Change, with five papers each. Nature is perennially high-placed in this 
analysis, taking first – or joint first – spot in Carbon Brief’s top 25 
in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2015.

The next highest is Science with four papers represented. Then follows 
12 journals with one paper each.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-the-climate-papers-most-featured-in-the-media-in-2021
- -
[ Top papers ]
*DATA Top climate papers 2021 from Altmetric | Carbon Brief*
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HLK46r0NukieHdJwfGTWJRnG-6lON2i5ke0UhRYSPrM/edit#gid=1529023877



/[ Look back at the movie -- clips from first and last paragraphs of 
opinion]/
*Don’t Look Up Is Missing What We Really Need From Climate Change Movies*
It’s time to stop getting metaphorical and start getting real.
BY SAM ADAMS - JAN 19, 2022
In the key scene in Don’t Look Up, which Netflix says is now the 
second-most-viewed movie in its history, Jennifer Lawrence’s astronomer 
and her fellow scientist Leonardo DiCaprio make an appearance on a 
morning news show to warn the people of Earth that they have six months 
before their entire planet is obliterated. During a routine scan of deep 
space, Lawrence has discovered a massive comet that’s headed straight 
for us, and every second the hosts spend in idle banter is one tick 
closer to the end of everything we know. After seething for what feels 
like an eternity, Lawrence finally snaps, right after Tyler Perry’s host 
jauntily asks if there’s any chance that the comet might hit his 
ex-wife’s house. “Maybe the destruction of the entire planet isn’t 
supposed to be fun,” she screams, her voice echoing around the set as it 
catches in her throat. “Maybe it’s supposed to be terrifying.”...
- -
Collective stories are difficult for Hollywood to tell, which is why 
Wallace-Wells, in his storytelling chapter, calls climate change “a 
major mismatch of a subject for all the tools we have at hand.” But 
there might be another way to go about it, especially if we’re less 
focused on depicting the end of the world and more concerned with 
avoiding it. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, who studies the effects of 
climate fiction on audiences, suggests what we need is not the 
occasional catastrophic spectacle but “a constant stream of climate 
narratives.” Instead of thinking about climate change as a dramatic 
singularity, like a comet hurtling through space, it should simply be a 
part of the world movie characters live in, just as it is, inextricably, 
part of ours. For decades, Hollywood treated racism as the province of 
malignant individuals, bigoted bad guys who could be vanquished and make 
us feel like we’d made the world a little better just by watching them 
fall. But the industry is learning, slowly and imperfectly, to tell 
stories in which race is an omnipresent factor, even if it’s not what 
the movie’s overtly about. We need to think about climate the same way, 
not as something that’s only relevant when it’s central to the plot but 
that colors where the characters live, how they dress, what they eat, 
what keeps them up at night. Science-fiction writers, Brady says, are 
already having to revise their manuscripts as their projections are 
overtaken by the rapidly shifting realities of climate change, so it’s 
no longer a question of predicting the future but dealing with the 
present. The question shouldn’t be whether climate change should be part 
of a story. It should be why it’s not.
https://slate.com/culture/2022/01/dont-look-up-netflix-climate-change-movies-allegory.html



/[ The news archive - looking back toward the present moment - time warp ]/
*On this day in the history of global warming January 20, 2015*

Washington Post columnists Catherine Rampell and Eugene Robinson 
denounce the GOP's continued refusal to do anything about human-caused 
climate change.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-dangerously-in-denial-on-climate-change/2015/01/19/20796658-a01c-11e4-b146-577832eafcb4_story.html?tid=HP_opinion?tid=HP_opinion 


http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-republicans-are-stubbornly-blocking-the-road-on-climate/2015/01/19/a1942808-a004-11e4-9f89-561284a573f8_story.html 



/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/


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