[✔️] March 9, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*March 9, 2022*/

// /[ This is an excellent talk with a climate scientist - very current 
- important ]/
*We need to talk about the latest IPCC report | with Peter Kalmus & Ella 
Gilbert*
Mar 7, 2022
thejuicemedia
In which I chat with not one, but two climate scientists about the 
IPCC's latest Working Group II report, and how to deal with the 
psychological toll this fuckery has on all of us who are paying 
attention. Feat. NASA scientist Peter Kalmus and atmospheric scientist, 
Ella Gilbert./
/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ6tzLL0J3M/
/

/- -/

[ Risk explained in a brief video ]
*Can we survive the coming decades?*
Mar 6, 2022
Just Have a Think
Can we survive the coming decades? Given the state of global affairs 
today, that's probably a question many people are asking themselves 
right now. The IPCC has just published their answer, at least from a 
climate point of view. And they pull no punches. We're almost out of 
time, they say, and we need immediate global geopolitical cooperation to 
succeed. Oh dear!
Help support this channels independence at 
http://www.patreon.com/justhaveathink
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SH9wIbjKyU//
//

/- -/

/[ a large discussion of risk ]/
*Chuck Watson “From MAD to NUTS: Risk, Nukes, & Climate Change” | The 
Great Simplification #04*
Jan 26, 2022
Nate Hagens
On this episode we meet with risk expert and consultant, Chuck Watson.

Watson analyzes the types of risk we face in the modern world - from 
climate change to nuclear arms - and how the decisions of experts help 
us from plunging into the abyss. How do humans manage our instincts to 
over-react to risks we recently experienced with high-consequence, 
low-probability situations?

Further, Watson explores the role of human agency in risk analysis. How 
are humans smart enough to build dangerous systems, but unable to manage 
the same systems?  He looks at how building stronger governance systems 
will allow humans to overcome our current predicament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_MfMSPaLBc/
/


/[ Google news searches all sources ]
/*New study says Amazon rainforest is reaching tipping point*
https://news.google.com/stories/CAAqNggKIjBDQklTSGpvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoRUtEd2plcjlUbEJCRThYWVU3cXFDdGVTZ0FQAQ?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen 


/
/

/
/

/[  From the LA Times  ]
/*Editorial: Misinformation is blocking climate action, and the U.N. is 
finally calling it out*
BY THE TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD
MARCH 7, 2022
A landmark U.N. climate report on the escalating effects of global 
warming broke new ground by finally highlighting the role of 
misinformation in obstructing climate action. It was the first time one 
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s exhaustive 
assessments has called out the ways in which fossil fuel companies, 
climate deniers and conspiracy theorists have sown doubt and confusion 
about climate change and made it harder for policymakers to act.

The expert panel’s report released last week mostly focused on the 
increasing risk of catastrophe to nature and humanity from climate 
change. But it also laid out clear evidence of how misinformation about 
climate change and the “deliberate undermining of science” financed and 
organized by “vested economic and political interests,” along with deep 
partisanship and polarization, are delaying action to reduce greenhouse 
gas emissions and adapt to their impacts.

The assessment describes an atmosphere in which public perception about 
climate change is continually undermined by fossil fuel interests’ 
peddling of false, misleading and contrarian information and its 
circulation through social media echo chambers; where there’s an 
entrenched partisan divide on climate science and solutions; and people 
reject factual information if it conflicts with their political ideology.

Sound familiar? It should, because the climate misinformation landscape 
is worse in the United States than practically any other country.

While the section on misinformation covers only a few of the more than 
3,600 pages in the report approved by 195 countries, it’s notable that 
it’s in a chapter about North America and calls out the U.S. as a hotbed 
for conspiracy theories, partisanship and polarization. A 2018 study of 
25 countries that was cited in the IPCC report found that the U.S. had a 
stronger link between climate skepticism and conspiratorial and 
conservative ideology than in any other nation tested. These forces 
aren’t just a threat to democracy, they are major roadblocks to climate 
action and seem to have sharpened with the Trump presidency and the 
COVID-19 pandemic.

Misinformation was included in the North America chapter for the first 
time this year “because there has been a lot of research conducted on 
the topic since the last major IPCC report was published in 2014,” said 
Sherilee Harper, one of the lead authors and an associate professor at 
the University of Alberta in Canada. “Evidence assessed in the report 
shows how strong party affiliation and partisan opinion polarization can 
contribute to delayed climate action, most notably in the U.S.A., but 
also in Canada.”

The IPCC’s language is measured but leaves no doubt that the fossil fuel 
industry and politicians who advance its agenda are responsible. It is 
shameful that fossil fuel interests have been so successful in 
misleading Americans about the greatest threat to our existence. The 
industry has engaged in a decades-long campaign to question climate 
science and delay action, enlisting conservative think tanks and public 
relations firms to help sow doubt about global warming and the actions 
needed to fight it.

These dynamics help explain why U.S. politicians have failed time after 
time to enact significant federal climate legislation, including 
President Biden’s stalled but desperately needed “Build Back Better” 
bill that includes $555 billion to spur growth in renewable energy and 
clean transportation. And they show that combating disinformation is a 
necessity if we are to break through lawmakers’ refusal to act, which is 
increasingly out of step with Americans’ surging levels of alarm and 
concern about the overheating of the planet.

“We’ve seen misinformation poisoning the information landscape for over 
three decades, and over that time the public has been getting more and 
more polarized,” said John Cook, a postdoctoral research fellow at the 
Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University in 
Australia. “The U.S. is the strongest source of misinformation and 
recipient of misinformation. It’s also the most polarized on climate.”

Cook and his colleagues studied misinformation on conservative 
think-tank websites and contrarian blogs over the last 20 years and 
charted the evolution of the climate opposition from outright denial of 
the reality of human-caused climate change and toward attacking 
solutions such as renewable energy or seeking to discredit scientists.

Cook said his research has found the most effective way to counter 
climate obstruction misinformation is to educate people about how to 
identify and understand different tactics, such as the use of fake 
experts, cherry-picked facts, logical fallacies and conspiracy theories. 
For example, seeing words such as “natural” or “renewable” in fossil 
fuel advertising raises red flags that you’re being misled through 
greenwashing.

“It’s like teaching people the magician’s sleight-of-hand trick,” Cook said.

There have been important efforts recently to hold the fossil fuel 
industry accountable for disinformation. In a hearing that was modeled 
on tobacco industry testimony from a generation ago, House Democrats 
hauled in oil executives last fall to answer to allegations that their 
companies have concealed their knowledge of the risks of global warming 
to obstruct climate action (they, unsurprisingly, denied them).

Perhaps we are getting closer to a turning point, where public 
realization that we’ve been misinformed by polluting industries begins 
to overcome decades of planet-endangering deceit and delay. Having the 
world’s scientists finally begin to call out the problem certainly can’t 
hurt.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-03-07/climate-misinformation/
//
/


/[   we have an enemy, disasters, victims, refugees, intelligence, 
propaganda, what else//?  some have a refuge //] /
*Climate change is like war, California’s Jerry Brown says*
By KATHLEEN RONAYNE
March 8, 2022
WILLIAMS, Calif. (AP) — Former California Gov. Jerry Brown is living off 
the grid in retirement, but he’s still deeply connected on two issues 
that captivated him while in office and now are center stage globally: 
climate change and the threat of nuclear war.

The 83-year-old Brown, who left office in 2019, serves as executive 
chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which sets the 
Doomsday Clock measuring how close humanity is to self-destruction. He’s 
also on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Brown commended President Joe 
Biden for not raising the U.S. nuclear threat level after Russian 
President Vladimir Putin made veiled threats to use his country’s 
nuclear arsenal amid its war in Ukraine. Brown also urged Biden to 
resist Republican calls to increase oil production as gasoline prices soar.

“It’s true that the Russians are earning money from oil and gas, but to 
compound that problem by accelerating oil and gas in America would go 
against the climate goals, and climate is like war: If we don’t handle 
it, people are going to die and they’re going to be suffering. Not 
immediately, but over time,” said Brown, a Democrat.
Brown spoke to the AP last week from his home in rural Colusa County, 
about 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Sacramento. The land in 
California’s inner coastal mountain range has been in Brown’s family 
since the 1860s, when his great-grandfather emigrated from Germany and 
built a stagecoach stop known as the Mountain House.

The home Brown and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, finished building in 2019 
is called Mountain House III. The home is powered entirely by solar 
panels and is not connected to any local utility.

Though Brown is retired from electoral politics after serving a record 
four terms as California’s governor — from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019 
— he is hardly absent from public life.

Brown has organized conversations with John Kerry, Biden’s special 
presidential envoy for climate; Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy; and 
former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. He created and chairs the 
California-China Climate Institute at the University of California, 
Berkeley, which aims to boost collaboration on climate-related research 
and technology.

“No matter how antagonistic things get, cooperation is still the 
imperative to deal with climate and nuclear proliferation,” he said.

At the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, he brings an important 
political perspective as its scientists consider how to get their 
message out, said Rachel Bronson, the group’s president. Last week, he 
joined the organization’s science and security board as they formulated 
a statement on Putin’s nuclear threats.

The scientists decided to not update the Doomsday Clock, which in 2020 
was moved ahead 20 seconds to be set at 100 seconds to midnight, the 
metaphorical time representing global catastrophe. They did, however, 
warn Russia’s invasion has brought to life the “nightmare scenario” that 
nuclear weapons could be used to escalate a “conventional conflict.”

Bronson pursued Brown for a leadership role as his governorship ended 
because of the deep interest he’d shown on its nuclear work and his 
capacity to understand big threats.

“He thinks about existential risk,” Bronson said.

Indeed, Brown is a deep thinker on any number of issues, from 
hummingbirds to the very meaning of life and death. He trained to be a 
Jesuit priest but eventually abandoned those ambitions to follow his 
father into politics. Edmund “Pat” Brown was California governor from 
1959-1967.

Jerry Brown brings a philosophical approach to life and work, often 
ready with a Latin phrase or motto to summarize his views. He has long 
lamented that the buildup of nuclear weapons and climate change fail to 
capture enough attention in the face of more immediate concerns — these 
days the coronavirus and inflation.

“We have to have enough bandwidth to look at the big issues, because if 
they get away from us we won’t have the little issues to worry about,” 
Brown said.

He warned a Republican takeover of the U.S. House after this fall’s 
midterms, coupled with the possibility of the Supreme Court limiting the 
federal government’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, would 
make a climate “catastrophe all the more likely.”

Though Brown has long contemplated the fate of the planet, he’s perhaps 
more connected to it than ever before. He gets his power from the sun 
and water from a well. Fueled by climate change, California’s wildfires 
have become hotter, more unpredictable and more destructive in recent 
years and the location of Brown’s 2,500-acre (1,012-hectare) ranch has 
him living closer to the threat than ever.

He zips around the property on his ATV studying the trees and flowers, 
determined to learn their names, and in the fall he hosts friends to 
help harvest olives, which he has pressed into oil.

He’s offered his property as a meeting space for the California Native 
Plant Society, entomologists, and forestry and fire experts. Last fall 
the forest experts put together a declaration calling for the state to 
focus on better forest management to decrease the severity of wildfires. 
Many of their suggestions mirrored those being pursued by Gov. Gavin 
Newsom’s administration.

The entomologists, meanwhile, spent two days on the ranch for a planning 
retreat about how to protect California’s insects. Brown allowed them to 
survey his land and two researchers found new species — an ant and a 
beetle, said Dan Gluesenkamp, executive director of the California 
Institute for Biodiversity and organizer of the retreat.

Brown joined the scientists for meals to grill them on their research.

He “clearly reveled in sitting around the picnic table for dinner and 
having super hardcore conversations with the smartest entomologists on 
the planet,” Gluesenkamp said.

Sitting outside his home, Brown said he recently pondered what might 
have been had he won one of his three presidential campaigns, the last 
in 1992. He decided he’d much rather be in Colusa County.

“I’m very happy where I am — it’s a very amazing place. I can’t imagine 
being in a better place,” he said.

He then wondered aloud whether he could have avoided the same mistakes 
as those who became president. Then he quickly switched to considering 
why a hummingbird that caught his eye was moving so quickly from tree to 
tree
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-climate-biden-science-b7f4d8399218bdc4330305a913d56bb7



/[ People?   Of all people, only women get pregnant. ]/
*The latest climate report includes a new focus on pregnant people. One 
of its authors explains why.*
Heat, air pollution and natural disasters all have been shown to impact 
maternal and fetal health. Climate and health expert Kristie Ebi says we 
can take more measures to protect those affected.

Last June, over a period of three days, a heat wave baked the Pacific 
Northwest. Temperatures soared to 117 degrees in a region where many 
homes don’t have air conditioners.

While final estimates of heat wave-related fatalities are still being 
determined, Kristie Ebi, a professor with the Center for Health and the 
Global Environment at the University of Washington, said approximately a 
thousand people are believed to have died from the extreme temperatures. 
“If anything else happened that in a few days killed 1,000 people, we’d 
call it a mass casualty event,” Ebi said. But the United States, like 
other countries, has been slow to mitigate the dangers of extreme heat, 
and the problem is only going to get worse.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, a summary 
of the most recent climate science, released Monday, reiterated that we 
can expect these heat waves to become more frequent and intense, 
exposing more of the population to danger.

The recently released second installment of the report, focused on 
climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities, included a new section 
detailing the risks pregnant people face in a changing climate. A 
growing body of scientific research cited in the report details the ways 
in which climate-caused events like heat waves and other natural 
disasters affect maternal and fetal health. In the United States these 
risks are amplified by socioeconomic and racial disparities, with Black 
women already experiencing elevated risks of complications during a 
pregnancy.

It’s why Illinois Rep. Lauren Underwood, who co-sponsored legislation 
known as the Momnibus Act, included a bill called the Protecting Moms 
and Babies Against Climate Change Act. The legislation would fund 
training for medical professionals to identify risks posed by climate 
change for pregnant patients and would establish a Consortium on Birth 
and Climate Change Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Ebi, who was a lead author for the human health chapter of the most 
recent IPCC report, spoke to The 19th about the growing dangers of 
extreme heat, the need for more funding to research its implications and 
how to prevent health impacts in the future.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
*
**As one of the lead authors of the latest IPCC report, can you paint a 
picture of what rising temperatures will look like here in the United 
States?*

As the climate continues to change, we’re going to see not only 
increases in the average temperatures but along with that, the summers 
will be longer, start sooner and go further into the fall. So we’ll see 
these changes in the averages, but we also know that there will be 
significant changes in the frequency, intensity and duration of heat 
waves. The report that covers that for the IPCC came out last August and 
shows this significant increase in extreme events. We’ll see more events 
like the heat dome in the Pacific Northwest...
- -
‘We all know somebody’: Rep. Lauren Underwood on the fight to stop 
pregnancy-related deaths
Women of color are leading climate justice work. They’re also struggling 
to find funding...

*In the latest IPCC report, it says that women and those who are 
pregnant are more likely to suffer disproportionately in extreme weather 
events, like heat waves. Why is that?*

Specifically, why women are at higher risk is a very good question. What 
we know from the epidemiological research is that there are associations 
between these higher temperatures and low birth weight, stillbirths and 
other adverse pregnancy outcomes.

There is research now that’s trying to understand the timing of heat 
exposure during pregnancy. For example, are there particular trimesters 
when babies are most at risk when exposed to higher temperatures? 
Exactly how these mechanisms work are under research. And I’m sure by 
the next IPCC report [which will come out in the next six to seven 
years], there’ll be a whole lot more understood about that.

Then you can also think about other kinds of extreme events like 
flooding that can reduce access to prenatal care. Depending on where you 
are in the U.S., you can have deliveries outside of the health care 
system and have impacts to babies and children because of lack of access 
to care.

*This was the first time there was a section linking maternal health to 
climate change in the IPCC report. Why is that?*

Each assessment report is mandated to be comprehensive, and the number 
of publications on temperature and adverse pregnancy outcomes has 
increased significantly in the past few years. The fact that this report 
highlights this issue is a reflection of where the literature stands.

It’s much more a reflection of the fact that historically, including 
today, there is really appallingly low amounts of funding for research 
in this area. Funding in the NIH for climate change and health has been 
running at about 0.02 percent to 0.04 percent of their budget.

President Joe Biden put $110 million for climate change and health into 
his [proposed] budget, which on the one hand, is a huge increase and on 
the other hand, is still 0.2 percent of the NIH budget. When you look at 
the size of the institute’s within NIH, $100 million is nothing. There’s 
only so much a community can do when you don’t have resources, and 
that’s human and financial resources.

*The report also mentions children’s vulnerability to heat. What do 
those impacts look like? *

There’s been a lot of work to raise awareness about how many babies die 
every year untended in cars. Parents don’t understand how fast cars heat 
up and don’t understand that babies physiologically can’t adjust to that 
rapid increase in temperature.

When you think about children, there’s been lots of really interesting 
work done, for example, by Jennifer Vanos, a climate researcher at 
Arizona State University, showing how hot playground equipment and 
tarmac surfaces get. It’s also thinking about, as we have these really 
hot days, is it safe for children to go out and play when it’s so hot? 
Children aren’t necessarily great at remembering to drink sufficient 
fluids.
*
**How can we mitigate the threats posed by extreme heat? What can cities 
do to help those most vulnerable? *

One of the major ways to prevent adverse health impacts of heat waves is 
heat wave early warning systems. There’s been increasing skill in 
forecasting heat waves — for the heat dome here, we knew days in advance 
that we were going to have really high temperatures. But you need to 
have more than just the forecast. You need to have a whole early warning 
and response system. There’s several very good ones in the United States 
and around the world. They are not necessarily difficult, but they 
require a lot of coordination.

I think there’s real opportunities with thinking about setting multiple 
thresholds. For example, if you know that Saturday is going to be really 
hot but by Thursday the temperatures are going to be higher than normal, 
we have groups like babies, pregnant women and adults over the age of 65 
who would already be at higher risk with those temperatures. So it’s 
about thinking about setting up tiered systems based on what we 
understand about who is vulnerable at different thresholds.

Then with the thresholds, what is it that you do? Who do you need to 
have at the table? How do you reach out to these different vulnerable 
groups? You need somebody from EMT, from the fire department, from the 
police department, who reaches out to the elder care facilities. You can 
think about reaching out much more broadly to those who are most vulnerable.
https://19thnews.org/2022/03/ipcc-climate-report-new-focus-pregnant-people/



/[  Classic local news show interview scientist in 2017 boldly shows how 
local news addresses the global issues  ] /
*KQED Newsroom I Interview with Climate Scientist Jonathan Foley*
Apr 3, 2017
KQED News
Jonathan Foley, a climate scientist and the Executive Director of the 
California Academy of Sciences, believes 'people are going to die' as a 
result of Donald Trump's environmental policies during an interview with 
KQED Newsroom's host Thuy Vu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYrxdphNLIA



/[ call it a de-information action  ]/
*Heavily criticized paper blaming the sun for global warming is retracted*
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/03/04/heavily-criticized-paper-blaming-the-sun-for-global-warming-is-retracted/



/[The news archive - looking back at how the EPA has long been targeted 
for removal ]/
*March 9, 2017*
March 9, 2017: In an appearance on CNBC, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt 
denies human-caused climate change.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/09/epa-chief-scott-pruitt.html

https://thinkprogress.org/epa-head-falsely-claims-carbon-emissions-arent-the-cause-of-global-warming-262bd9b0937e#.oaigkdwq0 


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/09/us/politics/epa-scott-pruitt-global-warming.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur 



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