[✔️] March 18, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
👀 Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Mar 18 10:12:14 EDT 2022
/*March 18, 2022*/
[ NOAA data from Wildfire Today ]
*Western drought expected to continue through June*
Author Bill Gabbert -- March 17, 2022
Affecting parts of 23 states
In an analysis updated March 17 by NOAA, the drought in the western half
of the United States is expected continue at least through June 30,
2022, affecting parts of 23 states.
And in most of those areas the temperatures will be higher than average
and there will be less than average precipitation.
https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Drought-tendency-March-17-June-30-2022.png
https://wildfiretoday.com/2022/03/17/western-drought-expected-to-continue-through-june/
- -
/[ bookmark this site for a US Drought Monitor - Maps, Data, summary,
etc. ]/
*U.S. Drought Monitor*
Map released: March 17, 2022
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx
Current map - https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap.aspx
- -
[ also bookmark this NOAA site ]
*US Seasonal Drought Outlook *[Map]*
*pdf version
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/seasonal_drought.pdf
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/sdo_summary.php
/[ words from climate scientists -- brief video clips ]/
*Cross Section of Key Scientists on Climate Extremes and the Impact on
Infrastructure*
Mar 17, 2022
greenmanbucket
Clips from recent interviews, March 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35JzjT2lTyM
/
/
/[ Sarcasm atop Aussie Satire video ad ]/
*Honest Government Ad | The Floods 🌊*
Mar 17, 2022
thejuicemedia
The Australien Government has made an ad about this summer’s floods and
it’s surprisingly honest and informative. 🇦🇺👽🌊
👉 Help communities recover from the floods in Qld/NSW:
🔹 https://www.gofundme.com/f/bundjalung-community-flood-relief
🔹 https://www.floodhelpnr.com.au
🔹 https://www.givit.org.au/storms-and-flooding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvFy2TuPDaw
/[ Global warming means that everything is interconnected ]/
//*As BP, Shell, ExxonMobil Announce Cutting Ties to Russia, Oil Baron
Charles Koch Remains Silent About His Sprawling Russian Operations*
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 8, 2022 ~
British Petroleum (BP), Shell, ExxonMobil and Norwegian oil and gas
producer, Equinor, have all released statements indicating they are
severing business ties with Russia in response to its invasion of
Ukraine. But billionaire oil baron Charles Koch, who has sat at the helm
of Koch Industries for more than half a century, has been unusually
quiet about his plans for his sprawling Russian operations.
According to Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in
the world, three of its companies operate in Russia: Molex, a
manufacturer of semi-conductors, printed circuits, fiber optics and a
multitude of other electrical components; Koch Engineered Solutions,
which makes process and pollution control equipment; and Guardian
Industries, a glass and auto parts manufacturer. Another unit of Koch
Industries, Koch Supply and Trading, has a history of trading Russian oil.
Guardian Industries’ division, Guardian Glass, has two large plants in
Russia: one in Ryazan and one in Rostov. The Rostov plant was described
as follows in a 2011 press release from Guardian Glass:
“The $220-million plant will be Guardian’s largest, producing 900
tons of glass per day, and will include a technologically advanced
glass coater.
“The Rostov plant will produce Guardian’s high-performance,
energy-efficient ClimaGuard(R) (residential) and SunGuard(R)
(commercial) glass products for construction of homes, offices,
retail, health-care and other facilities. The plant is expected to
begin operation in mid-2012, based on fulfillment of all incentives
and agreements with local authorities, and will initially create 300
new jobs…
“The location is a good fit for Guardian’s growth strategy to supply
glass to Russia and neighboring countries….”
Should Charles Koch be supplying glass for “homes, offices, retail,
health care” in Russia while Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the
name of Russia, is bombing homes, offices and hospitals into rubble in
Ukraine and ruthlessly killing innocent children and families?
In addition to imposing sweeping financial sanctions, both the European
Union and the U.S. have imposed sanctions intended to strip Russia of
technology that would allow its economy to advance while it bombs its
neighbor and makes thinly-veiled threats about its potential use of
nuclear weapons. According to the European Council on Foreign Relations,
this is what those technology sanctions consist of:
“The long list of advanced technologies subject to de facto bans on
exports to Russia includes semiconductors, telecommunications
equipment, software (including that for encryption), lasers,
aviation and space systems, and oil-refining machinery. While EU
sanctions are limited to sales and exports to Russia from within the
union, the US now prohibits exports to Russia and Belarus from
anywhere in the world of any product created using American software
or equipment. With other important tech players such as South Korea,
Japan, and Taiwan having joined the blockade, Russia is largely cut
off from the global high-tech industry.”
This raises the question as to whether products produced within Russia
by U.S. corporations need to be separately sanctioned. Other major
corporations did not need to have that spelled out and quickly announced
that they were severing relationships with Russia. Koch, however, is not
known for altruistic behavior. In fact, it is known for exactly the
opposite.
According to ImportGenius.com, in the past eight years Koch Supply and
Trading has purchased large amounts of oil from two Russian companies,
Gazprom Neft and Surgutex. Koch Supply and Trading is a sprawling
trading octopus that operates in the dark for the most part. For all
anyone knows, it could be trading Russian oil on world markets, which
could be propping up the price of Russian oil and helping to finance
Putin’s brutal and murderous campaign in Ukraine.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the first-ever shipments of
Russian crude oil purchased by the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in
2002 were supplied by Koch Industries.
For the past forty years, Charles Koch has been involved in creating and
funding a sprawling network of front groups that seek to shrink the
federal government in order to gut it of its regulatory powers over
corporations – particularly those involved with fossil fuels, like his
own Koch Industries. Charles Koch, who is currently worth $53 billion
according to Forbes, also holds semi-annual strategy meetings with
like-minded billionaires and millionaires to plan how to sway election
outcomes to candidates that will do their bidding in Congress.
In 2014, then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Charles Koch and
his brother, David (who died in 2019) of trying “to fix every election
in America to their liking.” That was the same year that Koch Industries
launched its first ever nationwide marketing campaign – which since that
time has enriched media outlets with millions of dollars in ads for its
consumer paper products division which produces such items as Dixie
disposable paper plates, bowls, cups and Northern Quilted and Angel Soft
bath tissue.
Charles Koch tried to distance himself in the media from Donald Trump’s
reelection bid but he and Koch Industries were deeply incentivized to
ensure that Donald Trump had another four years as President, because
the first Trump administration had been packed with Koch-friendly
operatives.
A Koch nonprofit front group that played a major role in the 2016
presidential election was Freedom Partners. (It shuttered in 2019.) It
was hard to see where Freedom Partners began and Koch Industries ended.
In 2018, we took a hard look at Freedom Partners’ Board of Directors. We
found that all but one of its Board Members was a current or former Koch
company employee. According to the Center for Media and Democracy,
Freedom Partners ended up with 12 of its former employees working in the
Trump Administration.
Freedom Partners Action Fund, a related organization that pummeled
Democrats in attack ads in the leadup to the 2016 election, had received
at least $14 million from Charles Koch and his trust before it shuttered
its operations.
Freedom Partners put their marching orders for the first Trump
administration in a formal memo. The Trump administration quickly
marched to the beat, from the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord
to the massive tax cut for corporations.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seen as an enemy by the
fossil fuels industry, was handily dealt with by the Trump
administration. He put industry cronies in charge. Koch Industries has
been serially charged, including a criminal conviction, with dangerously
polluting the environment. On January 13, 2000, the Justice Department
and the Environmental Protection Agency announced the largest civil fine
ever imposed against Koch Industries to resolve claims related to its
“more than 300 oil spills from its pipelines and oil facilities in six
states.” The company agreed to pay a $30 million civil penalty and spend
$5 million on environmental projects. Daniel Schulman documented Koch
Industries’ history of environmental abuses in his 2014 book, Sons of
Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and
Private Dynasty.
The activities of Charles Koch and Koch Industries are incompatible with
a democracy. They have funded climate denial front groups for decades.
They’ve turned much of the Republican Party into parrots of Ayn Rand.
They own a political campaign services company with a massive voter
database called i360 that works on behalf of Koch-approved candidates
for both state and federal office. (How is it legal, by the way, for a
fossil fuels conglomerate to function as a de facto political party/get
out the vote operation?) And as we reported in January of last year, the
money trail to the January 6 siege on the Capitol leads directly to
Charles Koch and Koch Industries.
Last March, Daniel Lippman at Politico reported that Charles Koch had
made a commitment to donate $4.5 million over five years to the think
tank, the Atlantic Council. What happened next was that a pro-Russian
article popped up on the Atlantic Council’s website. The co-author of
the piece, Emma Ashford, had come from the Cato Institute. (For how the
Koch brothers kept their ownership of the non-profit think tank, the
Cato Institute, a secret for decades, see our report: Secret Owners of
Cato Institute Surface as Koch Brothers Move to Take Control.)
The article on Russia at the Atlantic Council was so bad that 22 of the
think-tanks’ staffers and fellows released a statement distancing
themselves from the article. According to Lippman, “One person who
signed the statement told POLITICO that they worried the article was, or
might be viewed as, a shoddy work product influenced by a $4.5 million
donation over five years to the Atlantic Council from Charles Koch, who
advocates for less American intervention abroad.”
Something has gone incredibly wrong with U.S. intelligence and the U.S.
national security apparatus for this Koch Industries structure to be
tolerated in America.
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/03/as-bp-shell-exxonmobil-announce-cutting-ties-to-russia-oil-baron-charles-koch-remains-silent-about-his-sprawling-russian-operations/
/
/
/[ "Climate change is threat multiplier for all other risks." Beckwith
video rant -- start video at about 5 mins in ]/
*Climate Change Risk Assessment: Emissions, Heat Waves, Drought, and
Cascading Impacts: Chatham House*
Mar 17, 2022 -- Paul Beckwith
I chat in detail about the excellent Chatham House report on Climate
Change Risks to our society.
First I talk a bit about what Chatham House is and does. You may have
heard about meetings that follow Chatham House rules, which basically
mean that all ideas and topics in the meeting can be openly and publicly
disseminated, but no person in the meeting can be identified and no idea
can be attributed to any person. This protocol ensures that ideas can be
openly and truthfully discussed without any political or peer pressure
nonsense inhibitions.
I then go over the key summary and conclusions of the report, and talk
about the key ideas within, relating to direct climate effects,
temperature rises, heat waves and drought and direct impacts on society
via food supply disruption and water disruption.
To me, the most interesting and important sections in the report are on
the cascading systemic impacts of climate change on society, and the
numerous cause and effect flowcharts outlining how climate disruption
impacts and multiplies societal disruption in areas of finance, supply
chains, armed conflict, resource wars, political instabilities, poverty,
nationalism and populism; all very relevant topics two years into a
pandemic that many thing is ending, with armed conflict of Russia
invading Ukraine and dictator threats of nuclear conflict and chatter
about the possibilities of World War III.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kERePJmr-HE
- -
[ Research Paper mentioned above ]
https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/2021-09-14-climate-change-risk-assessment-quiggin-et-al.pdf
/[ Make it a holiday ] /
*Why misinformation is 'sticky' and sometimes easy to fall for*
MAR 16, 2022
BY Kim Malcolm, Andy Hurst
MisinfoDay is a yearly education event hosted by the Center for an
Informed Public (CIP) at the University of Washington and Washington
State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication. The goal
is to teach high school students how to identify and combat online
misinformation.
Maddy Jalbert is a postdoc scholar with the CIP. She's an expert on why
people fall for misinformation. She told KUOW’s Kim Malcolm about some
of her findings.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
*
**Maddy Jalbert:* One of the big reasons people fall for misinformation
is that we don't always question whether information is true. When we go
about our daily lives, for example, you're probably not questioning,
‘Oh, is she lying about her name? Is she lying about where she's from?
Is her name really Maddy?’ We often don't go about just questioning
everything. In fact, we generally go about the world assuming that what
we're told is true, unless we have a reason to question it.
*
**Kim Malcolm: And once someone has been given a piece of information,
even if it turns out it's untrue, it can be hard to get it out of your
head, right?*
Information can be very sticky. Once we learn something, we just can't
go back and erase the information. Think about in the courtroom if
someone gives evidence and then withdraws it. It's not like the jury can
simply pretend that they've never heard the evidence before.
I'll give you an example of something that was sticky for me. You may
have heard that you lose most of your heat through your head, so you had
a parent that told you to wear a hat. You may think when it's cold out,
the most important thing you can wear is a hat. But you've also probably
thought, ‘if I'm going outside, am I going to be warmer if I wear a coat
and I wear warm pants and I wear boots, and I don't wear a hat, or if I
go outside naked with just a hat?’
We can see that we hold this false belief, we lose most of our heat
through our head, but we're really bad at updating that based on our
experience. We've never really connected our experience to the belief,
so these things can just be really sticky.
*
**You've also studied something called the illusory truth effect. What
is that?*
The illusory truth effect refers to the phenomenon that merely repeating
information makes it seem more true. This occurs for true information
and for false information. If you've seen something before, you're more
likely to believe it when you come across it again. Before it was ever
studied in a lab, demagogues knew that it worked, that just merely
repeating something over and over was an effective tactic to spread that
belief.
*You study misinformation, but you also look at how to fight it. What is
the key for individuals, even if they think they're super savvy about
what they're looking at?*
That is a good question. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I
would say one key thing is just being aware that everyone is susceptible
to misinformation. As individuals, we have a tendency to believe that
others can be biased, but we ourselves are not. But in fact, all of us
are susceptible to misinformation. This is really just a byproduct of
the way our brains work. Our brains like to take shortcuts because we
really just can't do everything all of the time. And typically, the
shortcuts work. When we come across something and it feels true, we
trust the source. Oftentimes, that information is true, but when we rely
on these shortcuts, it's inevitable that there are going to be false
beliefs and misinformation that sneak in. It's really just part of being
human.
*It has come up in conversation a lot over the last couple of years that
media literacy needs to be required curriculum for middle school and
high school students. What do you think of that?*
I think that media literacy is one of the most important things you can
teach. Every day I'm on social media, and with social media, we tend to
build habits. If we can teach people to have good social media habits
and good media habits when they're younger, as they get older those
habits are going to be useful for the rest of their lives.
Listen to the interview by clicking the play button...
https://kuow.org/stories/why-misinformation-is-sticky-and-sometimes-easy-to-fall-for
- -
[After you get news, it's time to check the listings in databases]
*SourceWatch and DeSmogBlog*
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch
https://www.desmog.com/databases/
/[ "Jason Edward Hickel is an economic anthropologist whose research
focuses on ecological economics, global inequality, imperialism and
political economy." Consider an eco-Utopia. Such a great interview.
Alas, how do we make a fast transition? ]/
*Degrowth and Ecosocialism | Jason Hickel*
Mar 17, 2022
Planet: Critical
Economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel, is one of the leading degrowth
researchers leading the charge for ecosocialism. He says if we limit the
energy demands of the elite and hungry multinational corporations,
reimagining economics to support and nurture human dignity, we could
stay within our planetary boundaries—and lift the entire world out of
poverty.
- -
Degrowth proves putting people over profit would be good for the planet.
Some of the most exciting policies include shortening the work week,
providing universal basic services, and redistributing income. As we
discuss, it’s a form of environmentalism that could join forces with the
labour movement to dictate massive, sweeping global changes that could
provide a better quality of life for every living being on earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isjWWCRBJBk
- -
/[ books by Jason Hickel]/
“A powerfully disruptive book for disrupted times. Jason Hickel takes
all we've been told about growth and development and turns it inside
out, offering instead a radically possible vision of a post-growth
future. If you’re looking for transformative ideas, this book is for you.”
https://www.jasonhickel.org/
/[The news archive - looking back]/
*March 18, 2013*
USA Today reports: "Could the USA deal with a Hurricane Katrina every
two years? Such a scenario is possible by the end of the century due to
climate change, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/03/18/storm-surge-hurricane-climate-change-global-warming/1997113/
- -
More daily news summaries
---------------------------------------
Climate Nexus https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News summarizes the
most important climate and energy news of the day, delivering an
unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant reporting. It also provides
original reporting and commentary on climate denial and pro-polluter
activity that would otherwise remain largely unexposed. 5 weekday
=================================
Carbon Brief Daily https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief
sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of
subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours
of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our
pick of the key studies published in the peer-reviewed journals.
more at https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief
==================================
The Daily Climate Subscribe https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*
Get The Daily Climate in your inbox - FREE! Top news on climate impacts,
solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered week days. Better than coffee.
Other newsletters too
more at https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/
- -
[After you get the news, it's time to check the listings in databases]
*SourceWatch and DeSmogBlog*
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch
https://www.desmog.com/databases/
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News
<https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/2017-October/date.html>
/
https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe
<mailto:subscribe at theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request>
to news digest./
Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only. It does not carry
images or attachments which may originate from remote servers. A
text-only message can provide greater privacy to the receiver and
sender. This is a hobby production curated by Richard Pauli
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for commercial
purposes. Messages have no tracking software.
To subscribe, email: contact at theclimate.vote
<mailto:contact at theclimate.vote> with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe,
subject: unsubscribe
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at
https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for
http://TheClimate.Vote <http://TheClimate.Vote/> delivering succinct
information for citizens and responsible governments of all levels. List
membership is confidential and records are scrupulously restricted to
this mailing list.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/attachments/20220318/a633aad0/attachment.htm>
More information about the TheClimate.Vote
mailing list