[✔️] February 18, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | action, stopping wildfires, Naomi Klein, Vega Film , Time's up, information,

[Richard Pauli]

/*February 18, 2023*/
/
//[ as we may know already ]/
*World to face wars over food and water without climate action, EU green 
deal chief says*
PUBLISHED FRI, FEB 17 2023
Karen Gilchrist

    *KEY POINTS*
    - The European Commission’s climate chief warned Friday that society
    will be “fighting wars” over food and water in the future, if
    serious action is not taken on climate change.
    - Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Frans Timmermans said
    global warming posed one of the greatest risks to security worldwide.
    - Without action, Timmermans said that “there is no doubt in my mind
    that my kids, my grandkids will be fighting wars over water and food.”

Timmermans said that there was a “nascent” sense of urgency within 
society, which needs to be harnessed by industry and government in order 
to implement change.

“If we don’t do this, there is no doubt in my mind that my kids, my 
grandkids will be fighting wars over water and food,” said Timmermans.

“How many millions of refugees are we willing to take because some parts 
of the planet become uninhabitable? How many hunger epidemics will we 
tolerate because parts of the world can no longer cultivate agriculture 
production? Think about that,” Timmermans said...

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/17/world-to-face-wars-over-food-and-water-without-climate-action-eu-green-deal-chief-says.html



/[ Latest technology explained... video lecture with slides and graphs  
50 min ]/
*How to Use Big Data to Prevent Wildfires*
University of California Television (UCTV)
Jan 30, 2023
Increasingly frequent and intense wildfires in California and the 
western US are impacting communities across the state. Even areas not 
prone to fires suffer from degraded air and water quality – direct 
consequences of these extreme events. ALERTCalifornia combines a 
state-wide fire camera network with state-of-the-art sensor technology 
to support data-driven decision making before, during, and after 
wildfires. Join Dr. Neal Driscoll as he describes the scientific and 
technological expertise at UCSD that is being brought to bear on making 
California more resilient to climate change.  [2/2023] [Show ID: 38459]
How to Use Big Data to Prevent Wildfires
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5_dgoaN1DU
https://www.uctv.tv/shows/38459



/[ Interview with Naomi Klein - update on her thinking  ]/
*‘It’s inequality that kills’: Naomi Klein on the future of climate justice*
Madeleine de Trenqualye
Canadian author and professor of climate justice cautiously hails loss 
and damage agreements at Cop27
Mon 13 Feb 2023
Naomi Klein published her first book on the climate crisis, This Changes 
Everything, almost a decade ago. She was one of the organisers and 
authors of Canada’s Leap manifesto, a blueprint for a rapid and 
justice-based transition off fossil fuels. In 2021, she joined the 
University of British Columbia as professor of climate justice in the 
Department of Geography and co-director of Canada’s first Centre for 
Climate Justice.

*What is climate justice?*

I always think about climate justice as multitasking. We live in a time 
of multiple overlapping crises: we have a health emergency; we have a 
housing emergency; we have an inequality emergency; we have a racial 
injustice emergency; and we have a climate emergency, so we’re not going 
to get anywhere if we try to address them one at a time. We need 
responses that are truly intersectional. So how about as we decarbonise 
and create a less polluted world, we also build a much fairer society on 
multiple fronts?...
- -
*So do you think evoking hope is ultimately more effective in inspiring 
people to take climate action?*

I have an ambivalent relationship with the word hope these days. We have 
to be realistic about the fact that we’ve locked in a very difficult 
future for a lot of people. We’ve screwed things up badly enough that 
even if we do everything right from here on out, we’re still looking at 
a future of staccato climate disasters.

But I don’t believe we have the luxury of throwing up our hands and 
saying: “We’re doomed, let’s just go Mad Max on this.” I think there are 
ways of preparing for those shocks, that build a way of living with one 
another that is significantly kinder and more generous than the way we 
currently live with one another, which is really quite brutal. That 
requires investing in the labour of care at every level, and 
guaranteeing basic economic rights, like the right to housing, food and 
clean water. If we build out that infrastructure, we can weather shocks 
with far greater grace. That’s where I place my hope...
- -
*What are you watching out for in 2023 that will affect climate justice?*

In Canada, I’m watching to see if Ottawa gives in to pressure from 
Alberta to drop its nascent and long overdue just transition plans for 
fossil fuel workers. Relatedly, I’m watching the ways that the war in 
Ukraine is both accelerating renewable energy transitions and making it 
more profitable to dig up the last remaining fossil fuels (because the 
price is so high), with dire impact on Indigenous lands and ways of 
life. I’m watching with growing concern the ways that Covid denialism 
and climate change denialism are intersecting and reinforcing each 
other. And I’m watching to see whether we, as a climate movement, do a 
better job of connecting human rights with climate action during the 
next Cop, which is scheduled to be held in the highly repressive United 
Arab Emirates.
*
**You’re co-teaching an undergraduate course this term on the climate 
emergency. What advice do you give students and young people who want to 
advance climate justice in their own lives and work?*

I think the most important thing is to just find other people. Trying to 
think through this by yourself is a recipe for feeling like a failure 
and getting dispirited very, very quickly. The benefit of being part of 
a broader movement is knowing that some people are doing some things, 
and other people are doing other things, and nobody has to do everything.

I always tell students to find a movement you feel comfortable in, make 
sure it’s interlinked with other movements, and then work in coalition 
as broadly as you possibly can.

And then marry your passion with need. Whatever you want to do, find a 
way to connect it with the climate crisis. Maybe it’s art, maybe it’s 
engineering, maybe it’s planning – it’s all needed. I don’t think people 
need to give up what they’re passionate about to tackle climate change. 
I think they need to figure out how to connect what they’re passionate 
about with the climate crisis. Because this is the work of our lifetimes.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/13/its-inequality-that-kills-naomi-klein-on-the-future-of-climate-justice



/[brief animated cartoon - ]/
*Vega_Film_ClimateHealers*
Introducing Vega, the Cow in the Room...
https://vimeo.com/639434716?cmid=0bfa8373-8141-4c28-a92f-7e3a6b7001da

- -

/[ Specifics about what we can do  - vimeo 3 min video ]/
*Sailesh-Rao-Summit-Consciences*
A 3-min speech to the assembled delegates at the Summit of the 
Consciences in Paris, July 2014.
https://vimeo.com/144873983



/[ published in Salt Lake City Weekly ]/
*Time's Up *
*It's the End of the World, and We Know It.*
Commentary by Jim Catano
September 15, 2021
Picture six friends chatting about the environment.

"There's no such thing as global warming," the first says. "Climate 
change is fake news."

"No, the planet is warming," says another, "but in a gradual, natural 
cycle that's repeated itself throughout Earth's history. Higher 
temperatures may even benefit some places."

"What we're experiencing is not natural," counters a third. "It's caused 
by human activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels. But 
luckily, we've got time to get it under control."

"On the contrary," the fourth person suggests, "climate change is 
entering a critical stage. We need to keep lobbying Congress because if 
we don't get emissions under control within the next couple of decades, 
we may experience big problems."

"Sorry, but Congress—or any other political entity—isn't doing anything 
close to what could make a difference in time," the fifth says. "There 
will be huge consequences in most parts of the world, but hopefully our 
species will soon wake up and take drastic steps to avert total 
environmental and societal collapse. We must end our reliance on fossil 
fuels and pursue new technologies for removing carbon from the air."

The sixth friend lets out a heavy sigh, then speaks. "I hate to be the 
bearer of bad news," he says, "but we've simply gone too far down the 
hole. Rapid conversion to a renewably fueled society and carbon capture 
are technologically and logistically impossible for several reasons. 
Even if we were to immediately stop using fossil fuels today—which we 
won't—there is already too much heat-trapping greenhouse gas in the 
atmosphere to stop the rise in global temperatures. A cascade of tipping 
points—many already in the rear-view mirror—will almost certainly make 
the Earth's climate inhospitable for humans and most mammals. The best, 
long-shot case would be if small pockets of habitability can continue to 
sustain human existence."

That hypothetical conversation demonstrates what I consider to be the 
six major schools of thought on climate change. And I should know—over 
the past 30 years, I've personally enrolled in five of those schools. 
But as updated information has poured in and times have changed, 
however, so has my awareness of the threat humanity faces.

*The End is Near*
Recent environmental news reports have made the first two schools of 
thought simply impossible to defend. Even the third—the idea that we 
have lots of time to correct the problem—has seen its credibility 
plummet in light of increasing record-setting extreme temperatures 
worldwide, severe and destructive storms, massive flooding in some 
areas, prolonged droughts in others, accelerating glacial and ice cap 
melting, sea level rise and devastating wildfires. At long last, public 
opinion is coming in line with what science has been warning us about 
for decades.

But as it is increasingly apparent that the way we've lived on this 
planet has tragically altered its chemistry, biology and ecology, the 
question then becomes how bad things will get. Is it possible that our 
world could become uninhabitable for humans and most other species? A 
growing number of scientists and laypersons who choose to be guided by 
facts and observable trends—as opposed to forming their opinions around 
hopes and wishes—say such a scenario is very likely, if not inevitable.

The end of the world as we know it has been debated, discussed and 
predicted by intellectuals, mystics and prophets for millennia. What 
will happen to our planet and its inhabitants has also been considered 
by science, in fiction writing and cinema, and at around-the-campfire 
discussions since time immemorial. Potential catalysts bringing about 
the end have included plagues, asteroids, super-volcanoes, alien 
invasions, nuclear war, an energy burst from a quasar, a deity declaring 
"time's up" on the human drama or the death of our sun in a few billion 
years. By comparison, catastrophic, abrupt climate change is the 
relatively new kid on the block.

Mainstream science is gradually narrowing in on the final two scenarios 
described by the six friends as possibilities. The United Nation's 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a chilling 
report in August that's far less hopeful than the previous five 
assessments published by the IPCC since 1990.

The organization has been criticized for being overly optimistic. Its 
latest report, however, contains dire warnings of imminent, catastrophic 
and irreversible climate impacts given the quantity of greenhouse gasses 
(CO2, methane and others mostly released by industrial activities) that 
are already in the atmosphere and oceans and that continue to be 
released relatively unabated.

Three terms are useful in discussions about abrupt climate change. The 
first is "overshoot," when a society surpasses in population and 
consumption the capacity of its environment to sustainably support it. 
The second is "tipping point," which is when a condition reaches a 
critical stage and can no longer be stopped. The third is "feedback 
loop," which is when a condition deepens as a result of itself. (One 
example is how Arctic ice shrinks each year, allowing more sunlight to 
penetrate ocean water instead of reflecting back into space, which heats 
the oceans and contributes to further ice melt.)

Humans began leaving a carbon footprint about 10,000 years ago with the 
dawn of agriculture. Things went into overdrive three centuries ago when 
societies started mining large quantities of carbon that had been 
deposited over hundreds of millions of years as decaying plant and 
animal life sank to the bottoms of oceans, seas and swamps, becoming 
oil, coal and natural gas.

Our ancestors started burning these fossil fuels to power their lives, 
and carbon dioxide was released as its waste. Since the Industrial 
Revolution in the 18th century, we've spewed more than a half-trillion 
tons of CO2 into the air. By weight, that amount of carbon dioxide would 
roughly equal two Mount Everests.

*An Invisible Killer*
Unfortunately, carbon dioxide appears "clean." Despite coming from 
mostly pitch-black sources, CO2 is invisible, odorless and toxic to 
humans only in high concentrations. Unlike soot and other emissions that 
exit smokestacks and tailpipes—and which humanity has done a better job 
capturing—excess CO2 gave the appearance of being relatively harmless 
until quite recently. Even though CO2 was identified as a heat-trapping 
atmospheric gas in 1859 by Irish physicist John Tyndall, the cheap, 
concentrated energy that burning fossil fuels provides has been too 
tempting and too addictive to spark the motivation to adequately address 
its downsides.

Carbon dioxide's cousin, methane or CH4, is initially 84 times more 
potent as a heat-holding greenhouse gas, and billions of tons of it lie 
just below the Earth's surface in the frozen northern tundra and seabed. 
As temperatures climb, this natural gas is being released in 
ever-increasing amounts to the point that there is now more than twice 
as much in the atmosphere as there was in pre-industrial times. Some 
scholars predict that an upcoming, rapid release of methane will be the 
trigger for a large and catastrophic spike in global temperatures.

We've created an entire society and economy based on fossil-fuel use 
and, so far, our species has shown little resolve to significantly 
change its ways, due in large part to centuries of self-centered 
thinking and decades of misinformation disseminated by fossil-fuel 
companies and the government officials who back them. Many individuals 
in industrialized societies simply resist change.

"I can't give up my [big house/car/RV/boat/motorized 
toys/vacations/cruises or even a clothes dryer]," the First World 
opines, while at the same time, less-wealthy societies aspire to our 
profligate lifestyle. Our lack of will to abandon biosphere-killing ways 
is why a growing number of experts see humanity as simply too addicted 
to have ever averted disaster.

There's also a world population that has swelled from 2.5 billion when I 
was born in 1950 to nearly 8 billion today. The global population could 
reach 10 billion, but some researchers have calculated that even if 
humans were doing everything right in terms of living simply and using 
alternative and renewable energy, the planet could support, at most, 
about 2 billion of us in perpetuity.

*In This Together*
I'm aware this may be the biggest downer that City Weekly readers have 
ever encountered in these pages. Many will reject it as inaccurate and 
overly pessimistic, and that's a perfectly normal human response. Denial 
is the first of psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's classic five stages 
of grief, and some never move beyond denial even when contemplating 
their own death—let alone that of all of humankind within a relatively 
short time frame.

As I've passed backward and forward through Kubler-Ross's five stages 
while contemplating what all this means for me, my partner, children, 
grandchildren and recently-arrived first great grandchild, I've mostly 
carried the burden alone without asking others to help shoulder it. 
Fortunately, resources and support groups exist to help people first get 
their minds around these horrific possibilities and then turn anxiety 
and fear about them into courage and resolve to live nobly and well in 
whatever time we have left.

I reached out to four thought leaders on abrupt climate change. As you 
will see, these scholars differ in their views, but each wishes they 
were wrong about what they see coming. So do I.

The following responses were provided individually via email, but are 
presented in the form of a panel discussion.

Climate change scientist Guy McPherson believes humanity’s days are 
numbered.

*When did you realize climate change would be inevitably catastrophic?**
**Guy McPherson* (an internationally recognized speaker and 
award-winning scientist who specializes in abrupt climate change): In 
2002, it seemed we had already triggered self-reinforcing feedback 
loops, any one of which make climate change irreversible. As a typically 
conservative academic, I kept my conclusion to myself. I finally went 
fully public with an essay I posted on my blog in June of 2012.
*
**Max Wilbert* (an organizer, wilderness guide and author of "Bright 
Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can 
Do About It"): In 2010, I traveled to the Russian Arctic to document a 
National Science Foundation climate science expedition. In Siberia, we 
walked on thawing permafrost and saw "drunken forests," which look like 
a game of pick-up-sticks as the soil melts underneath the trees. That 
year was the hottest year on record in Russia at the time.

*Michael Dowd *(a bestselling eco-theologian, TEDx speaker and 
environmental advocate): It was in 2012 after watching David Roberts' 
TEDx talk, "Climate Change Is Simple (Remix)"
*When will the climate disaster become so intense nobody will deny it?**
**McPherson: *Denying reality will continue until the last person draws 
his or her last breath. COVID-19 serves as a recent example.

*Wilbert: *It's already that way. If you live in a small island nation, 
or in New York, or along the Gulf Coast, or in the wildfire-ravaged 
West, climate crisis is not something in the future.
*
**Dowd:* Most will go to their grave in one form of denial or another.

*Erik Michaels* (a researcher of ecological overshoot, its symptoms and 
the human denial of them): Those who deny it now will most likely 
continue denying it. Facts don't often change people's beliefs, 
unfortunately.
*Will civilizational collapse occur?*
*Wilbert: *Every civilization that has ever existed has destroyed its 
own ecological foundations and then collapsed. Collapse is not an event, 
it's a process. We're already in the early stages of collapse. Aquifers 
are shrinking, increasing disease and civil conflict, droughts and 
extreme weather. It's here.

And in places like Syria, or Pakistan, or Columbia, collapse is already 
well underway. It's well underway here in the United States, too. Just 
look at the homeless encampments in your city. The consumerist 
"prosperity" of the post-war 1950s is gone and is never coming back.
*
**Michaels: *Civilizational collapse is already happening and 
deepening—it's a very slow process, however, and it really affects the 
most complex societies first.

*Will humans survive?*
*McPherson:* No life on Earth will survive abrupt, irreversible climate 
change.

*Wilbert: *Humans will eventually go extinct, but who knows when? With 
nearly 8 billion of us on the planet, we're nowhere close to extinction 
now. I'm more concerned about the 100-200 other species that are being 
driven extinct every day. If we can't halt that trend, the future for 
humanity is bleak.

*Dowd:* The stability of the biosphere has been in decline for centuries 
and in unstoppable, out-of-control mode for decades. This "Great 
Acceleration"—just Google it—of biospheric collapse is an easily 
verifiable fact. The scientific evidence is overwhelming, but the vast 
majority of people will deny this, especially those still benefiting 
from the existing order, those understandably concerned about the 
effects of collapse, and those who fear that "accepting reality" means 
"giving up." And, yes, that means most of us.

*Michaels: *A quote from Carl Sagan: "Extinction is the rule. Survival 
is the exception." So, yes, we will go extinct—the only question is 
when, not if. I find it hard to believe that humans will still populate 
the planet by 2100. If there are still groups alive at that point, the 
likelihood that they will be functionally extinct is very high. Most 
likely, six or seven people out of every eight will die over the next 
two decades as energy and resource decline deepens.

*As conditions deteriorate and social institutions breakdown, will 
individuals and groups be able to offer assistance to others?**
**Wilbert: *We've already seen governments increasingly unable to 
provide meaningful aid in disasters, whether they be economic or 
natural. The future—if there is going to be one—is local.

*Dowd: *There will always be compassionate and generous people, 
especially in super hard times. Nevertheless, I think half or more of 
the human population—3 to 5 billion—will likely starve within 16 months 
of the first multi-bread-basket failure, most likely this decade.
*
**Michaels:* One will see all ranges of social responses unfolding as 
time moves forward. People will do good things to help and to provide 
assistance where they can and people will do nasty, selfish and brutish 
things as well as everything in between. Fewer people will have the 
resources and abilities to help as time moves forward and resiliency is 
removed from location after location.

As collapse deepens and unfolds, fewer people will be able to help as 
their own conditions deteriorate. There will also be those who decide to 
be competitive and take whatever they can. So, there will be moments of 
beauty and moments of depravity.
*
**Will American climate refugees from flooded coasts or drought-plagued 
areas be welcomed elsewhere?*
*Michaels: *Many of us suffer greatly from a sense of privilege and what 
the Indigenous Americans call "wetiko," a form of colonialism. Because 
everyone alive today grew up with the culture of always having "more," 
very few people will know how to handle a life of constantly having less.

*Do some religious millennialists see catastrophic climate change as 
fulfillment of the prophesied, fiery end of the world and even welcome it?**
**Dowd:* Yes, of course! Fundamentalist and evangelical Christians are 
likely to interpret all this as God's will, not climate change.
*
**Michaels: *I have met individuals who talked about these claims. They 
are troubled by their beliefs and denial of reality. The bottom line is 
that the world is not really ending. A new world will unfold and new 
species will fill niches once held by species going extinct.
*Between now and the end, what's the best way to live?**
**McPherson: *Treat family, friends, and others with whom you interact 
frequently as you would treat your beloved, dying grandmother. Would you 
lie to your grandmother as she is dying? Would you disrespect her?

Once you've mastered this way of treating your friends and family, 
extend the relevant behaviors to everyone. Work in your community to 
overcome the ills associated with every civilization, including racism, 
misogyny and monetary disparity. And work to safely decommission all 
nuclear facilities. Failure to do so likely spells the loss of all life 
on Earth.

*Wilbert:* It's not too late. Yes, a lot of change is already baked into 
the climate and ecological system. A lot of bad things are going to 
happen. But the Earth is incredibly resilient, and so are human beings. 
If you're in love with your family, your partner, your kids, how can you 
give up?

When you see a wild river, or an old-growth forest, or an alpine meadow, 
or a herd of elk, how could you not want to protect the future? 
Resisting the destruction of the planet is the most normal and natural 
thing we could do.

*Dowd:* Live fully, trustingly, courageously, compassionately and with 
deep and profound gratitude for the gift of being alive and conscious 
and in love with life.

*Michaels:* Live now. It sounds so simple but can be quite difficult for 
many people because of our cultural programming and indoctrination.

/Jim Catano lives and fights for the environment in Salt Lake City. 
Readers looking for support dealing with the emotional impact of abrupt 
climate change can find resources through the Good Grief Network./
https://www.cityweekly.net/utah/times-up/Content?oid=17298723



/[ This short video was popular 8 years ago ]/
*Toby ruins it for everyone*
Mickey Charley
1,408,687 views  Nov 24, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1vrO6iL0U



/[ dis-information, Mis-information technology for lease  ]/
*‘Aims’: the software for hire that can control 30,000 fake online profiles*
Exclusive: Team Jorge disinformation unit controls vast army of avatars 
with fake profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, Amazon and Airbnb

Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
Manisha Ganguly
@manisha_bot
Tue 14 Feb 2023
At first glance, the Twitter user “Canaelan” looks ordinary enough. He 
has tweeted on everything from basketball to Taylor Swift, Tottenham 
Hotspur football club to the price of a KitKat. The profile shows a 
friendly-looking blond man with a stubbly beard and glasses who, it 
indicates, lives in Sheffield. The background: a winking owl.

Canaelan is, in fact, a non-human bot linked to a vast army of fake 
social media profiles controlled by a software designed to spread 
“propaganda”.

Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 
30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation 
at scale and at speed. It is sold by “Team Jorge”, a unit of 
disinformation operatives based in Israel.

Tal Hanan, who runs the covert group using the pseudonym “Jorge”, told 
undercover reporters that they sold access to their software to unnamed 
intelligence agencies, political parties and corporate clients. One 
appears to have been sold to a client who wanted to discredit the UK’s 
Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), a statutory watchdog.

On 18 October 2020, the ICO ruled that the government should reveal 
which companies were awarded multimillion-pound contracts to supply PPE 
after being entered into a “VIP” lane for politically connected 
companies. “This is politically motivated, it’s clear!” Canaelan 
lamented on Twitter two days later...

    'Team Jorge' unmasked: the secret disinformation team who distort
    reality – video
    https://youtu.be/UheOilps2zQ
      “The difference between fiction and reality?’ Fiction has to make
    sense.”

That comment was part of a chorus of disapproval generated by the bots, 
who seemed aghast. “Information Commissioner tries everything to destroy 
the government,” one said, while another described the ruling as a 
“desperate act”...

All of the “replies” under that and other tweets were united in their 
outrage at the ICO, which they described as “a waste of time” and 
“lame”. As the replies continued, they became more trenchant, making 
wild and false accusations against the ICO about bribes, corruption and 
links to the far right.

Others just seemed nonplussed by the ICO’s insistence on transparency 
over the government’s pandemic procurement. “This is so typical from the 
UK …” one bot opined, “focusing on the wrong things.”

It is not known who commissioned Team Jorge to unleash the bots on the 
ICO, or why. Hanan did not respond to detailed requests for comment but 
said: “To be clear, I deny any wrongdoing.”

The ICO campaign appears to have been relatively short-lived compared 
with others around the world that reporters have been able to link to 
Team Jorge’s Aims software, which is much more than a bot-controlling 
programme.

Each avatar, according to a demonstration Hanan gave the undercover 
reporters, is given a multifaceted digital backstory.

Aims enables the creation of accounts on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, 
Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some even have Amazon accounts 
with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.

Hanan told the undercover reporters his avatars mimicked human behaviour 
and their posts were powered by artificial intelligence.

Using the Aims-linked avatars revealed by Team Jorge in presentations 
and videos, reporters at the Guardian, Le Monde and Der Spiegel were 
able to identify a much wider network of 2,000 Aims-linked bots on 
Facebook and Twitter.

We then traced their activity across the internet, identifying their 
involvement in what appeared to be mostly commercial disputes in about 
20 countries including the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, 
Panama, Senegal, Mexico, Morocco, India, the United Arab Emirates, 
Zimbabwe, Belarus and Ecuador.

The analysis revealed a vast array of bot activity, with Aims’ fake 
social media profiles getting involved in a dispute in California over 
nuclear power; a #MeToo controversy in Canada; a campaign in France 
involving a Qatari UN official; and an election in Senegal.

One of the Aims-backed campaigns targeted a Monaco-based superyacht 
company, accusing it of having direct links to several Russian oligarchs 
who were subject to sanctions.

We also identified real-world events that appeared to have been staged 
to provide ammunition that could be leveraged in social media campaigns. 
One case involved a fake protest staged outside a company headquarters 
on Regent Street, central London.

Three masked activists in baseball caps, sunglasses and masks filmed 
themselves waving placards. A similar leafletting campaign was staged 
near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, before being circulated on social media 
by Aims bots. It is not possible to know who the clients were in any of 
the campaigns, or even what their objective was.

However, what seems clear is that the avatars peddling propaganda are 
doing so with the help of stolen photographs of real people.

The photo of a beaming man on Canaelan’s Twitter bio, the Guardian has 
established, was taken from the real Twitter page of Tom Van Rooijen, 
25, a freelance Dutch journalist living in the Netherlands.

“This latest activity is an attempt by some of the same individuals to 
come back and we removed them for violating our policies,” the 
spokesperson said. “The group’s latest activity appears to have centred 
around running fake petitions on the internet or seeding fabricated 
stories in mainstream media outlets.”

For all of their apparent sophistication, some Aims avatars betrayed 
giveaways. One of the Twitter bots involved in UK campaigns alongside 
Canaelan was “Alexander”, whose profile picture showed a young man with 
a sculpted beard in a white beanie hat. The background: orange tulips 
beside a chirpy slogan “Be happy”.

And his profile bio consisted of two short sentences that hinted at an 
interest in falsehoods – and how to make them convincing: “The 
difference between fiction and reality?’ Fiction has to make sense.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/aims-software-avatars-team-jorge-disinformation-fake-profiles


/
//[ a classic AOC shares her breathless positivism - video ]/
*A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez*
The Intercept
980,223 views  Apr 17, 2019
What if we actually pulled off a Green New Deal? What would the future 
look like? The Intercept presents a film narrated by Alexandria 
Ocasio-Cortez and illustrated by Molly Crabapple.

Set a couple of decades from now, the film is a flat-out rejection of 
the idea that a dystopian future is a forgone conclusion. Instead, it 
offers a thought experiment: What if we decided not to drive off the 
climate cliff? What if we chose to radically change course and save both 
our habitat and ourselves?

We realized that the biggest obstacle to the kind of transformative 
change the Green New Deal envisions is overcoming the skepticism that 
humanity could ever pull off something at this scale and speed. That’s 
the message we’ve been hearing from the “serious” center for four months 
straight: that it’s too big, too ambitious, that our Twitter-addled 
brains are incapable of it, and that we are destined to just watch 
walruses fall to their deaths on Netflix until it’s too late.

This film flips the script. It’s about how, in the nick of time, a 
critical mass of humanity in the largest economy on earth came to 
believe that we were actually worth saving. Because, as Ocasio-Cortez 
says in the film, our future has not been written yet and “we can be 
whatever we have the courage to see.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ


/[The news archive - looking back]/
/*February 18, 2004*/
February 18, 2004: Sixty scientists, including several Nobel laureates, 
issue a joint statement denouncing the George W. Bush administration for 
distorting, downplaying and disregarding scientific findings on such 
issues as human-caused climate change.

        Across a broad range of policy areas, the administration has
        undermined the quality and independence of the scientific
        advisory system and the morale of the government’s outstanding
        scientific personnel:

        Highly qualified scientists have been dropped from advisory
        committees dealing with childhood lead poisoning, environmental
        and reproductive health, and drug abuse, while individuals
        associated with or working for industries subject to regulation
        have been appointed to these bodies.
        Censorship and political oversight of government scientists is
        not restricted to the EPA, but has also occurred at the
        Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and
        Interior, when scientific findings are in conflict with the
        administration's policies or with the views of its political
        supporters.
        The administration is supporting revisions to the Endangered
        Species Act that would greatly constrain scientific input into
        the process of identifying endangered species and critical
        habitats for their protection.
        Existing scientific advisory committees to the Department of
        Energy on nuclear weapons, and to the State Department on arms
        control, have been disbanded.
        In making the invalid claim that Iraq had sought to acquire
        aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges, the
        administration disregarded the contrary assessment by experts at
        Livermore, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
        The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political
        ends must cease if the public is to be properly informed about
        issues central to its well being, and the nation is to benefit
        fully from its heavy investment in scientific research and
        education. To elevate the ethic that governs the relationship
        between science and government, Congress and the Executive
        should establish legislation and regulations that would:

        Forbid censorship of scientific studies unless there is a
        reasonable national security concern;
        Require all scientists on scientific advisory panels to meet
        high professional standards; and
        Ensure public access to government studies and the findings of
        scientific advisory panels.
        To maintain public trust in the credibility of the scientific,
        engineering and medical professions, and to restore scientific
        integrity in the formation and implementation of public policy,
        we call on our colleagues to:

        Bring the current situation to public attention;
        Request that the government return to the ethic and code of
        conduct which once fostered independent and objective scientific
        input into policy formation; and
        Advocate legislative, regulatory and administrative reforms that
        would ensure the acquisition and dissemination of independent
        and objective scientific analysis and advice.
        Statement signers included 52 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal
        of Science recipients, and 195 members of the National Academies.

http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/scientists-sign-on-statement.html 


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