[✔️] April 19, 2023- Global Warming News Digest |Media analysis, 1989 Shell memo, Permafrost to mud, Doom Seer in UK, new book, Tipping point 2008, IPCC. Boehner

Wed Apr 19 08:16:23 EDT 2023

/*April*//*19, 2023*/

/[  denial slowly evaporates  ]
/*Climate change: multi-country media analysis shows scepticism of the 
basic science is dying out*
Published: April 18, 2023
Any regular viewer of BBC’s Question Time could be forgiven for thinking 
that old-fashioned climate science denialism is alive and kicking. In a 
recent edition, panellist Julia Hartley-Brewer called the IPCC’s climate 
models “complete nonsense”, and dismissed the 2022 record UK heatwave 
and the floods in Pakistan by saying: “It’s called weather.”

But for some time now, researchers have suggested that the balance of 
arguments propagated by climate sceptics or denialists has shifted from 
denying or undermining climate science to challenging policy solutions 
designed to reduce emissions.

For example, computer-assisted methods applied to thousands of 
contrarian blogs or websites have found that since the year 2000, 
“evidence scepticism” which argues that climate change is not happening, 
or is not caused by humans or the effects won’t be too bad, has been on 
the decline, while “response” or “solutions scepticism” has been on the 
rise.
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-multi-country-media-analysis-shows-scepticism-of-the-basic-science-is-dying-out-198303

/[ Shell sought shills down by the rising sea shores...]/
*‘Bombshell’ 1989 Shell Memo Features in New Court Filing Alleging 
Climate Deception*
Document warning that civilisation could prove a "fragile thing" is used 
to bolster District of Columbia lawsuit against Big Oil.
By Matthew Greenon
Apr 13, 2023
In October 1989, Shell researchers wrote a confidential report warning 
that climate-fuelled migration could swamp borders in the United States, 
Soviet Union, Europe, and Australia. “Conflict would abound,” the 
document said. “Civilisation could prove a fragile thing.”

Now, that memo — first reported by DeSmog and Dutch investigative 
journalism platform Follow The Money — features in a new court brief 
alleging that Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP knowingly concealed the 
climate hazards of their fossil fuel products for decades.
A group of climate disinformation researchers and nonprofits filed the 
brief on April 7 in support of a 2020  lawsuit brought by the District 
of Columbia, part of a wave of litigation by at least 20 U.S. states and 
cities seeking to hold the oil industry to account for climate damages.

The 50-page brief cites academic studies and media reports to show how 
the oil industry was warned about the risks posed by a build-up of 
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels in the late 
1950s. Companies such as Shell and ExxonMobil went on to develop 
detailed internal knowledge of the problem, while backing industry 
associations waging sophisticated campaigns to cast doubt on climate 
science, the brief argues.

“While their tactics have changed, Defendants’ overall strategy of 
deception continues to this day,” the brief said. “Defendants now 
acknowledge that the climate is changing and claim to be leaders in 
efforts to combat climate change. However, they continue to run 
marketing and lobbying campaigns intended to mislead policymakers and 
the public about climate change and Defendants’ role in causing it.”

A Shell spokesperson said the company’s position on climate change had 
been a matter of public record for decades, and that it was reducing its 
own emissions, and working closely with customers to help them reduce 
theirs.

“We do not believe the courtroom is the right place to address climate 
change as litigation does not enable the global cooperation needed,” the 
spokesperson said. “It is for government to determine the right 
trade-offs for society and put in place smart policy to enable 
fundamental change in the way society consumes energy.”

BP, ExxonMobil, and Chevron did not immediately respond to requests for 
comment.

‘No Place To Go’

The brief marks the first time that documents obtained through a 
14-month congressional investigation into allegations of climate 
misinformation by Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP have been cited in 
a climate accountability lawsuit.

The confidential Shell document is from a separate source, however: a 
dossier of 201 company publications, official correspondence, reports, 
academic studies, and other materials compiled by Dutch researcher and 
climate activist Vatan Hüzeir. Documents from the collection, reviewed 
by DeSmog, can be viewed at Climate Files, a project of the nonprofit 
Climate Investigations Center.

Titled “SCENARIOS 1989 – 2010,” the Shell memo outlines a high-emissions 
“global mercantilism” scenario in which average global temperatures rise 
by “considerably more” than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23735737-1989-oct-confidential-shell-group-planning-scenarios-1989-2010-challenge-and-response-disc-climate-refugees-and-shift-to-non-fossil-fuels

/[ Permafrost Ice melting into muddy ground ]/
*Thawing permafrost may release industrial pollutants at Arctic sites: 
study*
There are thousands of contaminated sites in the Arctic, and as 
permafrost thaws, increased pollutants from these areas could be 
released, says a recent study.
Eye on the Arctic
April 09, 2023
By Eilís Quinn
“Traditionally, [permafrost has] also been considered a natural barrier 
that prevents the spread of pollutants,” said Moritz Langer, one of the 
authors and a researcher at  the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz 
Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), said.

“Consequently, industrial waste from defunct or active facilities was 
often simply left on-site, instead of investing the considerable effort 
and expense needed to remove it.”

The paper, “Thawing permafrost poses environmental threat to thousands 
of sites with legacy industrial contamination” appeared in the journal 
Nature Communications.

Climate affecting permafrost barriers
During the Cold War, industrial expansion took place across the Arctic, 
the researchers said.

Matter left behind ranged from mining debris to old military 
installations to toxic sludge from oil and gas exploration.

Some of this was poured into lakes, the authors said.

Permafrost was seen as both a stable and reliable foundation to build 
infrastructure as well as an effective bulwark against toxins and 
pollution from spreading.

“In many cases, the assumption was that the permafrost would reliably 
and permanently seal off these toxic substances, which meant there was 
no need for costly disposal efforts,” Guido Grosse, and author and 
researcher who also heads the AWI’s Permafrost Research Section, said in 
a news release...
- -
But as the climate warms in the North, and permafrost melts threatening 
both the integrity of the infrastructure and its ability to contain 
pollutants.

To do their paper, the researchers examined data from OpenStreetMap and 
from the Atlas of Population, Society and Economy in the Arctic. Using 
those sources, they identified 4,500 industrial sites either using or 
storing potentially harmful pollutants.

Outside of North America, the researchers were unable to access detailed 
information on the types of facilities or potential severity of 
environmental pollution they could create...
- -
As international commercial interest in the North continues to increase, 
the researchers recommend more data collection and the development of a 
monitoring system for industrial activities in the Arctic.

“As a result, more and more industrial facilities are being constructed, 
which could also release toxic substances into nearby ecosystems,” the 
news release said.

“ Further, this is happening at a time when removing such environmental 
hazards is getting harder and harder – after all, doing so often 
requires vehicles and heavy gear, which can hardly be used on vulnerable 
tundra soils that are increasingly affected by thaw.”

Grosse says the unpredictability ahead requires a definitive strategy.

“In a nutshell, what we’re seeing here is a serious environmental 
problem that is sure to get worse,”  he said.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/climate-crisis/2023/04/thawing-permafrost-may-release-industrial-pollutants-arctic-sites-study

- -

/[ see the research paper ]/
28 March 2023
*Thawing permafrost poses environmental threat to thousands of sites 
with legacy industrial contamination*
Abstract

    Industrial contaminants accumulated in Arctic permafrost regions
    have been largely neglected in existing climate impact analyses.
    Here we identify about 4500 industrial sites where potentially
    hazardous substances are actively handled or stored in the
    permafrost-dominated regions of the Arctic. Furthermore, we estimate
    that between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites are related to
    these industrial sites. Ongoing climate warming will increase the
    risk of contamination and mobilization of toxic substances since
    about 1100 industrial sites and 3500 to 5200 contaminated sites
    located in regions of stable permafrost will start to thaw before
    the end of this century. This poses a serious environmental threat,
    which is exacerbated by climate change in the near future. To avoid
    future environmental hazards, reliable long-term planning strategies
    for industrial and contaminated sites are needed that take into
    account the impacts of cimate change..

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-37276-4

/[  Michael Dowd reads article from GQ magazine (UK edition)]/
*Jem Bendell - The Doom Seer Of Climate Chaos - GQ April - May 2023*
Apr-May 2023 GQ (UK) article on Jem Bendell, "The doom seer of climate 
chaos"*
*https://soundcloud.com/michael-dowd-grace-limits/jem-bendell-the-doom-seer-of-climate-chaos-gq-april-may-2023 

*- -*

[ inevitable ]*
*

Professor Jem Bendell Strategist & educator on social change, focused on 
Deep Adaptation to societal breakdown*
*

*I was wrong to conclude collapse is inevitable…*
Posted on April 17, 2023by jembendell
I was wrong to conclude collapse is inevitable… because when I was 
concluding that, it had already begun.

When I concluded that societal collapse is inevitable, nearly 5 years 
ago, it may have been one of the reasons my Deep Adaptation paper 
attracted unusual attention. Many people agreed and thanked me for 
expressing that conclusion publicly. They said it helped validate what 
they already felt, and so enabled their emotional processing and to 
change their lives accordingly. Other people chose a variety of ways to 
disagree. Some claimed I was not being scientific to claim an inevitable 
outcome, and instead language like “near certain” or “very likely” would 
be more appropriate. Others preferred to regard societal collapse as a 
possibility, as they wanted to hope for a managed transition to a new 
form of society. Unfortunately, other people misrepresented what I 
wrote. To recap: in the paper I did not claim that we faced inevitable 
near-term human extinction and did not claim that the inevitable 
collapse would happen by 2028. Instead, in that paper in 2018 I wrote: 
“Recent research suggests that human societies will experience 
disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to 
climate stress. Such disruptions include increased levels of 
malnutrition, starvation, disease, civil conflict and war – and will not 
avoid affluent nations.” In 2023 many experts and UN officials are 
saying similar.

I summarised my position thus: “Currently, I have chosen to interpret 
the information as indicating inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe 
and possible extinction.” I then warned against the trap of concluding 
inevitable human extinction: “I have witnessed how people who doubt 
extinction is either inevitable or coming soon are disparaged by some 
participants for being weak and deluded. This could reflect how some of 
us may find it easier to believe in a certain than uncertain story, 
especially when the uncertain future would be so different to today that 
it is difficult to comprehend.”

Unfortunately, the misrepresentations of the original Deep Adaptation 
paper within mainstream publications and by participants in 
environmental professions and movements has distorted understanding, 
even for people who welcomed the analysis and concept in the first 
instance. Such misrepresentation has been helpful for those people who 
wanted to side-line a discussion of collapse or, perhaps, to own the 
agenda for themselves. It is an open question how much crucial time and 
public money has been lost due to people pursuing such tactics.

The valid criticisms were that I had not sufficiently defined either 
collapse or what would be collapsing. I was new to the topic of societal 
collapse at that time. So when in early 2021 I embarked on a couple of 
years of research on the topic, with an interdisciplinary team, I was 
open to finding analysis that would nuance my conclusions. The result of 
that process is contained in my new book, Breaking Together. What I 
discovered is that the breakdown of societies had already begun when I 
was researching the Deep Adaptation paper in 2017/18. Collapse is a 
process, not an event, and because the changes already observed appear 
to be irreversible, collapse is a reasonable term to describe that process.

In the book I go into great depth on the evidence base for this 
perspective. I also explain why it is not one that we hear so often from 
experts. Chapter 1 is available for free as an audio file on soundcloud. 
In it I describe some of the socio-economic evidence and theory for the 
view that the collapse of industrial consumer societies has already 
begun. Chapter 4 on global food system breakdown is also available as an 
Occasional Paper from my University. Commenting on it, Dr Katja Hujo 
from the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) notes:

“Jem Bendell’s paper (and forthcoming book) is a wake-up call that our 
global food systems are approaching global breakdown due to a number of 
interlinked hard trends, from biophysical limits of food production and 
climate change to growing demand and the destructive implications of our 
profit-oriented capitalist system. The application of interdisciplinary 
integrative analysis and the emphasis on economic, social, technological 
and ecological dimensions of the challenge ahead helps to grapple with 
the complexity of the issue and to avoid simplistic solutions. It is an 
analysis that motivates the reader to act at multiple fronts and 
critically engage with a topic that has a huge bearing on the future of 
humanity.”

I spoke with GQ Magazine about the process of writing the book (one 
image from their article is shown above). The research process was not 
fun for any of us involved, due to the fact we were analysing so many 
interconnecting problems and discovering the limitations of so many 
proposed solutions. However, the second half of the book offers a 
positive way of making sense of this situation and celebrates the people 
who are responding creatively and courageously. I am hoping it will help 
more people to move into a ‘post-doom’ mindset and experiment with 
different ways of living as a result.

I will launch the paperback of Breaking Together in the UK in 
Glastonbury Town Hall on June 18th. Then on July 10th 2023, the book 
will become free as an epub download on the website of the Schumacher 
Institute. That is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Small is 
Beautiful by EF Schumacher. I now regard that classic text as offering a 
coherent analysis that the environmental movement and profession became 
better at ignoring as it became more compromised and self-serving. That 
day I will participate in an online Q&A with participants from the Deep 
Adaptation Leadership group on LinkedIn. You could sign up here. To be 
updated on my presentations in other locations over the next 12 months, 
subscribe to my blog.

You can read more about the book, including a range of endorsements, 
from people including Charles Eisenstein, Clare Farrell and Satish 
Kumar, on my blog. The obtain the book on kindle on May 9th 2023, you 
can pre-order here.

https://jembendell.com/2023/04/17/i-was-wrong-to-conclude-collapse-is-inevitable/

- -

/[ His book can be pre-ordered ]/
*Breaking Together: A freedom-loving response to collapse Kindle Edition*
by Jem Bendell (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition
#1 New Release in Political Freedom
See all formats and editions
Kindle $8.88
Read with Our Free App
“This is a prophetic book” Satish Kumar, founder, Schumacher College

The collapse of modern societies has begun. That is the conclusion of 
two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind Breaking 
Together. How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to 
harm each other & nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of 
our societies. So what should we do? This book describes people allowing 
the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more 
courageously & creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, 
not apart, in this era of collapse. Jem Bendell argues that reclaiming 
our freedoms is essential to soften the fall & regenerate the natural 
world. Escaping the efforts of panicking elites, we can advance an 
ecolibertarian agenda for both politics & practical action in a broken 
world.

"This book is part of a healing movement that extends beyond what we 
normally think of as ecological" Charles Eisenstein, author, Climate: A 
New Story

"This book shows that instead of imposing elitist schemes and scams, 
regenerating nature and culture together is the only way forward" Dr 
Stella Nyambura Mbau, Loabowa Kenya

"A signpost for people made politically homeless by the craziness of the 
last few years" Aaron Vandiver, author, Under a Poacher's Moon

“The mother of all 'mic drops' on the myth of sustainable development” 
Katie Carr, Deep Adaptation Forum

"A new compass for navigating collapse” Pablo Servigne & Raphael 
Stevens, authors, Another End of the World is Possible

"If you want to save some of the world but hate being told what to do, 
this book is for you.” Clare Farrell, co-founder, Extinction Rebellion

    Contents
    Introduction
    1 Economic collapse
    2 Monetary collapse
    3 Energy collapse
    4 Biosphere collapse
    5 Climate collapse
    6 Food collapse
    7 Societal collapse
    8 Freedom to know
    9 Freedom from progress
    10 Freedom from banking
    11 Freedom in nature
    12 Freedom to collapse & grow
    13 Freedom from fake green globalists
    Conclusion

"Breaking Together constructs a comprehensive, compelling yet nuanced 
argument that societal collapse is well underway. Professor Bendell 
skillfully and seamlessly integrates personal reflection and hard data 
from virtually every domain to provide a unique vision of catagenesis - 
the creative renewal of post collapse society. He advocates for an 
ecolibertarian rather than the ecoauthoritarian world that is beginning 
to emerge. While It’s often a cliché if the reader has but one book to 
choose to read this year, it should be Breaking Together. That said, 
please center yourself as you engage with this brilliant, heartfelt, 
disturbing and often heartbreaking story of the possible futures that 
will touch everyone of the 8 billion of us." Herb Simmens, author, A 
Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“Our societies are breaking because of damage to the living systems of 
our planet. It's time to face this reality and this book helps us do 
just that. As further collapse unfolds we need a practical alternative 
to global panic. Jem Bendell has got one - restoring community 
self-reliance as a global effort." Pooran Desai OBE, CEO, OnePlanet

"Breaking Together provides an impressive and sobering analysis of what 
is happening in societies and the biosphere, why ‘we’ (in modern 
cultures) didn’t know sooner, and what realistic choices remain, both 
individually and collectively. Jem and his team didn't just stare into 
the abyss - they spent two years mapping it for us. This book provides 
essential wisdom on the necessity of staying engaged politically and 
socially, whilst attending to the toxic psycho-social patterns that need 
healing if we are to retain dignity and justice in the coming years." 
Katie Carr, Deep Adaptation Forum
Epub from 17/6/2023
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C1JLL45V?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420

/[ "first use of "tipping point" in an academic paper" 2008 ]/
*The scariest climate science paper I've ever read?*
Simon Clark
Sep 19, 2022
Learn more about how the natural world works with Brilliant: 
https://www.brilliant.org/simonclark

This month a paper came out that honestly chilled me. It was about 
tipping points in climate - a well-known concept that the climate can 
change abruptly if certain conditions are met in certain elements of the 
climate system, such as excess melting of the Greenland ice sheet. That 
wasn't new. What was new was the threshold these tipping elements could 
flip - according to this research, we could be triggering some tipping 
elements already - and if we warm the planet by just 1.5°C then we are 
likely to do so.

The climate is still within our control. But if we keep emitting as we 
are, that isn't always going to be the case.
Every. Tenth. Of. A. Degree. Counts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxoyaCSWFGs&

/[ all this is right on schedule ... ]/
*The rotten core of the new IPCC report*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOd-Jgly9Us

/[The news archive - looking back at a bumbling Boehner -- he forgot to 
read the memos - from Greenman3610 ]/
/*April 19, 2009*/
April 19, 2009: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) stumbles 
through an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week," 
shamelessly attempting to dismiss concerns about carbon pollution.

http://youtu.be/tAHSm6Wt1W8

http://youtu.be/WPA-8A4zf2c

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