[✔️] November 16, 2022 - Global Warming News Digest

Wed Nov 16 04:27:57 EST 2022

/*November 16, 2022*/

/[ a famous painting blackened - video ]/
*Climate activists throw black liquid at Gustav Klimt painting in Vienna*
Pair attack Death and Life painting in Leopold Museum in protest against 
fossil fuel ‘death sentence’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/15/climate-activists-throw-black-liquid-at-gustav-klimt-painting-in-vienna
https://twitter.com/letztegenAT/status/1592461949719437312?

- -

/[See the artwork in larger image ]/
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/death-and-life/rAGqexSs58_H0A?hl=en

*Death and Life*
Gustav Klimt 1910/15
Gustav Klimt’s large painting Death and Life, created in 1910, features 
not a personal death but rather merely an allegorical Grim Reaper who 
gazes at “life” with a malicious grin. This “life” is comprised of all 
generations: every age group is represented, from the baby to the 
grandmother, in this depiction of the never-ending circle of life. Death 
may be able to swipe individuals from life, but life itself, humanity as 
a whole, will always elude his grasp. The circle of life likewise 
repeats itself in the diverse, wonderful, pastel-coloured circular 
ornaments which adorn life like a garland. Gustav Klimt described this 
painting, which was honoured with a first prize at the 1911 
International Art Exhibition in Rome, as his most important figurative 
work. Even so, he seems to suddenly no longer have been satisfied with 
this version in 1915, for he then began making changes to the 
painting—which had by that time long since been framed. The background, 
reportedly once gold-coloured, was made grey, and both death and life 
were given further ornaments. Standing before the original and examining 
the left interior edge of Josef Hoffmann’s frame for the painting, one 
can still discern traces of the subsequent over-painting, which was done 
by Klimt himself.

Details
Title: Death and Life
Creator: Gustav Klimt
Date Created: 1910/15
Physical Dimensions: w200.5 x h180.5 cm (Without Frame)
Type: Paintings

/[ Politico text and audio ]/
*Egypt’s COP27 PR disaster*
A hunger striker, a stream of sewage and filthy hotel rooms. Organizers 
are under pressure over climate summit failings.
- -
According to three people familiar with the situation, around 80 youth 
delegates who had paid around $700 each for their accommodation arrived 
at their hotel late on Saturday to find they either had no rooms, or 
were being asked to pay an additional fee of between $300 and $600 per 
night.

Following hours-long negotiations, some were forced to find new 
accommodation in the early hours of the morning. Those who finally 
entered their rooms — in some cases after agreeing to the extra fee — 
found them filthy and with only four beds for six or seven people. 
Several were forced to sleep in rooms with no locks and were woken by 
men entering and demanding their passports...
The Egyptian COP organizers are now under intense diplomatic pressure 
over the situation, after key negotiators had to leave the talks to 
ensure their youth delegates were safe. The EU and other delegations 
raised their concerns with the Egyptian government, the EU’s top 
international climate policy adviser Jacob Werksman said...
- -
The COP27 talks have also been lambasted for shortages of food and water 
— with some delegates noting that the talks felt like a simulation of 
the hunger games-style deprivation with which climate change threatens 
millions of people. Or, as POLITICO’s Global Insider put it, a “green 
Fyre Festival.”

On Thursday, organizers cut food prices in half. Drinks were free — 
meaning delegates no longer needed to pay for bottles of Coca-Cola, the 
official sponsor and largest plastic polluter on Earth...
- -
Human rights activists argue that climate change and justice are 
inextricably linked. Even if the Egyptians didn’t truly believe that, 
they should at least pretend more convincingly that they do, said 
Callamard...
https://www.politico.eu/article/egypts-cop27-pr-disaster-alaa-abd-el-fattah/

/[ Democracy Now - on COP27   “If you’re going to discuss about malaria, 
do not invite the mosquitoes.” video interview ]/
*Vanessa Nakate Condemns Fossil Fuel Lobbying at U.N. Climate Talks as 
Global Warming Devastates Africa*
NOVEMBER 15, 2022
At the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, we speak with 
prominent Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate about the impact of 
the climate crisis on the continent of Africa. Earlier today she spoke 
at a COP27 event and blasted world leaders for not doing more. She 
describes the need for wealthy nations gathered at the U.N. climate 
conference, particularly the U.S., to finance loss and damage for poorer 
nations in the Global South. “For the current and historic emitters, 
they need to take responsibility for the climate crisis, and they need 
to pay for this crisis,” says Nakate.
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/15/vanessa_nakate_cop27_financing_loss_damage

/[ big, thoughtful words from Bill McKibben - NYT text and audio ]/
Listen to “The Ezra Klein Show”: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, 
Google Podcasts, Stitcher,
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/opinion/how-to-listen-ezra-klein-show-nyt.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-bill-mckibben.html

- -

/[ text transcript  - clips ]/
*Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Bill McKibben*
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-bill-mckibben.html
- -
/[McKibben]/
But that means a movement that has spent most of its life learning how 
to stop terrible things from happening, it needs to become something 
different. A movement that builds real things in the real world at a 
breakneck pace. A movement that doesn’t just say yes, but figures out 
how to make all kinds of communities and groups and cities around the 
country say yes. Yes and yes and yes, again and again and again, faster 
than we have in decades.

The climate movement has to govern now. They have to help this country 
build this whole infrastructure that they have imagined. And governing 
and building in this country, it is damn hard. But this should be, I 
think, a space not just for hope but for excitement.

I mean, one reason I wanted to have this topic, this conversation right 
now, post-election, is that however the House turns out, these next two 
years are not going to be a period of passing major climate bills 
through Congress. There’s going to be a lot of paralysis, a lot of 
infighting. But that doesn’t mean the next two years will be a time of 
stasis...
- -
[ McKibben ]  But that means a movement that has spent most of its life 
learning how to stop terrible things from happening, it needs to become 
something different. A movement that builds real things in the real 
world at a breakneck pace. A movement that doesn’t just say yes, but 
figures out how to make all kinds of communities and groups and cities 
around the country say yes. Yes and yes and yes, again and again and 
again, faster than we have in decades.

The climate movement has to govern now. They have to help this country 
build this whole infrastructure that they have imagined. And governing 
and building in this country, it is damn hard. But this should be, I 
think, a space not just for hope but for excitement.

I mean, one reason I wanted to have this topic, this conversation right 
now, post-election, is that however the House turns out, these next two 
years are not going to be a period of passing major climate bills 
through Congress. There’s going to be a lot of paralysis, a lot of 
infighting. But that doesn’t mean the next two years will be a time of 
stasis...
- -
BILL MCKIBBEN: [CHUCKLES] Well, I mean, what I said in The New Yorker 
was we’re at the point where we might well be able to end the 
700,000-year habit of setting things on fire.

Fire has been good for human beings. We learned to cook food, which let 
us get bigger brains. We were able to migrate north and south away from 
the Equator. The anthropologists even think that gathering around the 
campfire helped build the bonds that make us a social species. And once 
we learned to burn coal and gas and oil with the Industrial Revolution, 
we produced modernity and the prosperity that came with it.

But now burning stuff has turned into a big problem. There’s climate 
change. There’s the direct health effects. The new data indicates that 
nine million people a year die from breathing the combustion byproducts 
of fossil fuel, which isn’t hard to believe if you’ve spent any time 
recently in Delhi or Shanghai. And we have the problem exemplified by 
Putin, the way that fossil fuel and autocracy seem to be closely linked.

The good news is we don’t need to be burning stuff anymore. In the last 
decade, engineers have brought down the price of renewable energy about 
90 percent. The cheapest way to generate power on planet Earth is to 
point a sheet of glass at the sun. That’s an extraordinary breakthrough...
- -
Now, there’s no free lunch here. We’re going to go have to mine lithium 
and cobalt to make these things happen. And we should figure out how to 
do that as well as we can and as humanely as we can. And there’s no 
excuse not to do those things. But the difference is that, at the 
moment, the stuff we mine, we immediately consume. If you mine lithium 
and make a solar panel with it, it catches the energy every day for the 
next 25 years when the sun rises above the horizon.

That’s very different from mining coal, which you set on fire and then 
have to go mine again the next day. That’s the reason that this is so 
hopeful. It’s also the reason the fossil fuel industry hates it so much 
and have fought so hard against it, because their business model for a 
hundred years has been making you write a check every time you need some 
more energy. And for them, the idea that the sun would deliver it for 
free is just the stupidest business model there ever was...
- -
BILL MCKIBBEN: Yeah, it’s a good question that we don’t entirely know 
the answer to yet and how it’s going to look. But what people have done 
so far is try to stop a truly dangerous technology — fossil fuel 
combustion — and they figured out lots and lots of ways to do that...
- -
Now we have to figure out how to channel the demand for energy, which 
remains, into clean energy. And we have to do it, as I’ve said 
repeatedly now because it scares me, over the constant efforts of the 
fossil fuel industry to slow that down.

Look, they know that their business model isn’t going to last forever. 
75 years from now, we’re going to run the planet on sun and wind or some 
other clean energy because it’s cheap. But if it takes us anything like 
75 years to get there, the planet we run on sun and wind is going to be 
a broken planet. So our job is to make that transition happen as quickly 
as possible. And it’s going to be hard.

Now, it can’t be done, I think, without real recognition of the fact 
that the fossil fuel industry took a particular toll on Indigenous 
communities, on poor communities, on vulnerable communities. So we have 
to build this new one — the sacrifices that should come should not, 
again, land most heavily on those communities.

And one of the good things about the Inflation Reduction Act is that it 
lays out more explicitly than before in public policy a real effort to 
guide funding to those communities, to let them get some of the good 
things — the jobs and stuff that will come with this transition...
  - -
The most important thing an individual can do is be a little less of an 
individual and join together with others in movements large enough to 
make big changes in the basic political or economic ground rules. So if 
you’re under 30, the Sunrise Movement is a great place to start. If 
you’re over 60, join us at Third Act. I think we’re beginning to do 
really interesting work in bringing that generation huge and politically 
powerful into line here to help.

If you’re in between, there’s lots and lots of places that are in groups 
and movements that are doing all kinds of good work. Look around your 
local community, your local chapter of the Sierra Club or whatever it 
is, it’s probably engaged in all kinds of interesting fights...
- -
That’s what makes this different from other political fights. And it’s 
one of the reasons that it’s hard sometimes, I think, for politicians to 
completely understand it. Because the normal course of political life 
involves lots of compromise. That’s probably how it should be.

You think that having a minimum wage is an absurd liberal affectation. I 
think the minimum wage should be $30 an hour because that’s what it 
really takes to raise a family. We meet in the middle at $15 and come 
back to fight it out again in a few more years and whatever. That’s how 
change necessarily works in a human society.

But in this case, the basic frame of the problem is not between 
different human communities. Yes, there are battles between Republicans 
and Democrats, industry and environmentalists, the global South and the 
global North. But the basic fight is between human beings and physics.

And that’s not a fight we’re going to win. Physics is immature. It 
doesn’t compromise. And so we need to respect its limits, especially 
those of us who produce in our course of our lives and in the places 
where we live, lots and lots and lots of the carbon that’s heating up 
the planet.

EZRA KLEIN: Bill, thank you so much for the time today. It’s such a 
pleasure. And I know you’re coming to us from Egypt and at an odd time 
for you. But always our final question — what are three books that have 
influenced you, you would recommend to the audience?

BILL MCKIBBEN: Well, three recent ones — you’ve talked a good deal with 
my dear friend Kim Stanley Robinson and about his book “Ministry for the 
Future,” which is wonderful. But because I love New York City so much, 
my favorite of his books and my favorite novel about climate change is a 
book called “New York 2140,” which couldn’t be more fun and in a certain 
odd way more cheerful.

Speaking of cheerful, the best writer about realistic hope, it seems to 
me, at the moment is Rebecca Solnit. And her most recent book was about 
one of my greatest literary heroes, George Orwell. But it’s called 
“Orwell’s Roses,” and it was about his relationship with the natural 
world. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful book....
- -
EZRA KLEIN: So something that movements have to do, that people have to 
do to remain influential is to change as the world changes. And so I 
want to close here, before going to books, by asking you about the ways 
you’ve changed.

I’ve heard you talk about an old fight in Vermont around closing a 
nuclear plant that you cheered on and feeling that if that fight came up 
today, you’d actually be on the other side of it. Tell me about how your 
sense of what is needed here has shifted as the structure of the problem 
has shifted.

BILL MCKIBBEN: Sure. And as technology changes and things, you get 
different options and different possibilities. Truthfully, I think I’d 
probably err on the side of letting that, say, the nuclear power plant 
in Vermont stay open, in part because in its wake, Vermonters did not 
rally to make sure that we could replace it with solar power and wind power.

Just the opposite, the state has had a de facto moratorium on wind 
turbine development in all the years since. And that’s not OK, because 
it means that the burden falls on someone else, someone’s mountain who’s 
getting ripped apart for mountaintop coal mining, or, as always, 
somebody in the rest of the world who’s having to deal with the carbon 
that we’re producing in this part of the world.

So yeah, as with all things, new — what is it Lowell said? “New 
occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth. They must 
upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.” But the 
North Star for me hasn’t changed. Our job is to respond to the demands 
of physics.

EZRA KLEIN: So something that movements have to do, that people have to 
do to remain influential is to change as the world changes. And so I 
want to close here, before going to books, by asking you about the ways 
you’ve changed.

I’ve heard you talk about an old fight in Vermont around closing a 
nuclear plant that you cheered on and feeling that if that fight came up 
today, you’d actually be on the other side of it. Tell me about how your 
sense of what is needed here has shifted as the structure of the problem 
has shifted.

BILL MCKIBBEN: Sure. And as technology changes and things, you get 
different options and different possibilities. Truthfully, I think I’d 
probably err on the side of letting that, say, the nuclear power plant 
in Vermont stay open, in part because in its wake, Vermonters did not 
rally to make sure that we could replace it with solar power and wind power.

Just the opposite, the state has had a de facto moratorium on wind 
turbine development in all the years since. And that’s not OK, because 
it means that the burden falls on someone else, someone’s mountain who’s 
getting ripped apart for mountaintop coal mining, or, as always, 
somebody in the rest of the world who’s having to deal with the carbon 
that we’re producing in this part of the world.

So yeah, as with all things, new — what is it Lowell said? “New 
occasions teach new duties. Time makes ancient good uncouth. They must 
upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.” But the 
North Star for me hasn’t changed. Our job is to respond to the demands 
of physics.

And good news for all of us, Wendell Berry has a brand new set of short 
stories tracing his community, “The Port William Membership,” just out. 
It came out on Election Day. And I think the title is “How it Went.” So 
those are mine right now.

EZRA KLEIN: Bill McKibben, thank you very much.

BILL MCKIBBEN: Ezra, thank you enormously...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-bill-mckibben.html 

/[ Bloomberg tweet ]/
*High-resolution satellite data pinpoints a methane plume in 
Turkmenistan that *
@ghgsat
  attributes to the oil and gas sector.
This image is part of an exclusive series of observations being 
published during #COP27 climate talks.
https://twitter.com/business/status/1591289999382773762
This project is free to read. https://trib.al/5E8taw8

/[ Zombie Ice --  video interview ]/
*Prof. Jason Box - Zombie Ice and unforeseen sea level rise*
Nick Breeze ClimateGenn
Nov 13, 2022
ClimateGenn Podcast Series with climate experts: https://genn.cc
In this ClimateGenn episode, I speak with Professor Jason Box about his 
recent research that identifies the amount of Greenland’s ice sheet that 
is committed to melting in the coming decades.
Faster Than Forecast Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYrU...
This so-called Zombie Ice is not included in the mainstream models, and 
when added to other sources such as glaciers and even the Sleeping 
Giant, Antarctica, then sea level rises will far exceed current forecasts.

You can find out more on Jason’s dedicated Faster Than Forecast Youtube 
Channel that I have linked to in the text.

Next week I will be reporting from COP27 in Egypt. It is widely assumed 
that the conference can deliver nothing in the way of meaningful change 
in global emissions. Many are shunning the conference and it is easy to 
see why.

It is worth stating that for billions of people in the Global South, the 
COP is the only forum they have to make a case for climate justice and 
seek help as they try to adapt to the catastrophic impacts they are 
facing today because of our continued sustained burning of coal, oil, 
and gas.

On the flip side, many global south communities are pushing forward with 
adaptation strategies and becoming as resilient as possible. As climate 
chaos spreads, we will need their expertise in order to respond to 
climate extremes that are now arriving in the Global North.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrdMOFXuXlc

/[ The Guardian looks at California drought - video ] /
*Drying up: inside the Californian communities without enough water*
The Guardian
Nov 15, 2022
California's Central Valley grows a large portion of America's food – 
and that requires a huge amount of water.
        Subscribe to The Guardian on YouTube ► http://bit.ly/subscribegdn
But the region is experiencing a drought and drying up the surface water 
that farms rely on. So farms are now pumping water from underground. 
There's a problem, though: it's drying up the wells in vulnerable 
communities that have long relied on underground water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMSLwmMFhag

/[ Republicans say what they plan to do about global warming -- video 2 
mins ]/
*Republicans lay out climate priorities if they control the House l ABC 
News*
ABC News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vclfs71x_ZA

/[  More science presentations at COP27 ]/
*Thresholds of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet*
International Cryosphere Climate Initiative
Nov. 15, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm6LdK2VOfA

/[ Catch up on government reports -- final release in 2023]/
*Call for Public Comment: Fifth National Climate Assessment*
A draft version of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) is now 
available for a 12-week public review and comment period. Additional 
information on this request can be found in the Federal Register Notice.

People who wish to review and comment on the draft report can do so via 
the USGCRP Review and Comment System (registration required). 
Instructions for comment submission are available on that site and in 
this brief recording(link is external) and user guide (en español).

In addition to this public comment period, NCA5 is being reviewed by a 
committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and 
Medicine. All of the feedback received through these reviews will be 
considered by the chapter authors for future drafts of the assessment. 
The final version of NCA5 is expected to be released in late 2023.

This review is free and open to everyone. Please note that this is a 
draft document and it should not be cited, quoted, or distributed for 
purposes beyond this review.

All comments must be submitted by 11:59 PM ET on January 27, 2023 via 
the USGCRP Review and Comment System.

*Informational Webinars*
USGCRP is hosting two free webinars for people interested in learning 
more about NCA5, the importance of public participation, and how to 
submit comments on the draft report. No registration is required.
November 29, 2022 | 12:00–1:00 PM ET

https://www.globalchange.gov/content/call-public-comment-fifth-national-climate-assessment

/[The news archive - looking back at official corruption ]/
/*November 16, 2005*/
November 16, 2005:
The Washington Post reports:

    "A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies
    met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 --
    something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently
    as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress
    .
    “The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that
    officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with
    Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House
    complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy
    policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being
    debated."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501842.html

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