[✔️] March 29, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Swizz Courts lawsuit, Tornadoes and Clime Change, XR talks about IPCC report, Exxon invades Princeton, PaleoExtinctions, Callapseology

[R.Pauli]

/*March 29, 2023*/

/[  It's about time ] /
*Swiss court case ties human rights to climate change*
BBC News
More than 2,000 women are taking the Swiss government to court claiming 
its policy on climate change is violating their right to life and health.

The case is the first time the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) 
will hear a case on the impact of climate change on human rights.

It follows six years of unsuccessful battles through the Swiss courts.

Temperatures in Switzerland are rising faster than the global average 
and there are ever more frequent heatwaves.
The Swiss women - who call themselves the Club of Climate Seniors and 
have an average age of 73 - say climate change is putting their human 
rights, their health and even their lives at risk. Their evidence to the 
court includes their medical records...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65107800



/[ Tornadoes and Climate Change - video 59 min]/
*Death from the Sky in Grand Fork, Mississippi: Latest Science on 
Climate Changing Tornado Behaviour**
*Paul Beckwith
Mar 28, 2023
Please donate at http://PaulBeckwith.net to support my research and 
videos as I connect the dots on abrupt climate system change.

Up to about 8 pm last Friday night (March 24th, 2023) the small town of 
Grand Fork in Mississippi went about its business as normal. Then death 
came from the skies in the form of a massive wedge tornado, which was 
hidden by the darkness of night, and not tornado warmed by any sirens. 
Life for everybody in the town was irreversibly changed, within a few 
minutes, as most of the town was destroyed. Grand Fork became the latest 
place on our planet to have terrible luck in our climate casino world, 
which we all live in.

Over two dozen people lost their lives; please have a moment of silence 
to reflect on them and this catastrophe.

Like just about everything else, the very nature of tornadoes is being 
changed by the abrupt climate system change consequences of our fossil 
fuel emissions. I don’t see much difference between a town being 
levelled by these extreme weather events, or a town being levelled by 
paid mercenaries hired by fossil fuel companies. The result is 
essentially the same.

I chat about this latest catastrophe in the USA, and about all the 
connections we know about scientifically between anthropogenic climate 
change and tornadoes.

In a nutshell, here is how climate change changes tornadoes.

    1) The actual number of tornado days (any day when there is at least
    one tornado in the continental USA) has decreased by about 33% since
    the 1970s

    2) The average number of tornadoes that occur on tornado days has
    increased substantially, and there are for more tornado days with
    30+ or even 50+ tornadoes occurring. Thus, tornadoes are clustering
    much more on certain days, in tornado swarms, if you like

    3) The centroid of tornadoes in the USA has shifted substantially
    from what is known as Tornado Alley to the eastward

    4) With climate change, the Convective Available Potential Energy
    (CAPE) has increased, increasing the likelihood of tornados.

    5) Wind shear, changing wind directions with height has increased,
    making it more likely for strong rotation in storms to break off and
    spawn tornadoes

    6) The storm “cap(e)” has increased, making it less likely for
    tornadoes to occur.

    7) When you combine these effects (4, 5, and 6) the net result is
    fewer tornado days and more tornado clusters on the days that they
    do occur.

A few years ago while in tornado alley chasing storms, I came across 
what I thought was a junkyard at the side of the road. Upon 
investigating, it was all that was left of several farms and houses that 
had just been shredded to pieces by an EF3 tornado a couple days 
earlier. I have a show-and-tell for you at the beginning of this video 
on some of the pieces of the houses.

Although this recent Grand Fork Friday night tornado has a preliminary 
rating of EF4, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was even stronger, based on 
the huge catastrophic damage that can be seen in the drone overflight 
videos on the web.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47_1joG0FNE



/[  XR offers a serious and fairly interesting discussion about the 
recent IPCC report -  live video recorded  ]/
*IPCC Synthesis Report: What does it say? What does it mean? | IPCC 
FINAL REPORT 2023*
Extinction Rebellion UK
March 28, 2023 #UniteToSurvive #extinctionrebellion #climatechange
JOIN XRUK THIS APRIL 21-24 AT THE HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT

Dr Charlie Gardner and Clare Farrell discuss the latest IPCC synthesis 
report, the final report in the most recent series. They discuss the 
contents, media representation, multiple flaws and problems around the 
failing international approach to the climate crisis, and finally why a 
broad and large scale people powered response is needed.

#UniteToSurvive

    1. Tell The Truth
    2. Act Now
    3. Decide Together

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ChQ6C6E7UA



/[ Given fiduciary responsibility, Exxon stockholders must think this 
increases profits  ]/
*Exxon in the classroom: how big oil money influences US universities*
Students at Princeton describe unease that Exxon employee had an office 
on campus, while dozens of universities have big oil links
Oliver Milman
Mon 27 Mar 2023

“It’s hard for me to figure out who wins [from divestment],” Barckholtz 
told the class, a recording of it shows. “There are, like, 10 people who 
win. They are sleeping better at night, but technology is the loser.” 
Barckholtz then noted that Exxon makes the type of rubber that goes into 
most car tires. “Are all of the Princeton security cars going to go back 
to the Flintstones and have no tires?” he asked. “There are some parts 
of this they didn’t think through completely.”

Asked by a student about the Paris climate agreement, Barckholtz 
expressed doubt that it could be met, as it was too hard to ditch fossil 
fuels. “I’m not optimistic, I’m going to call it the way I see it,” he 
said. “The system is just too big to be flipped.”

“A few of the students thought it was weird he was in the class and that 
he then taught the class,” said Claire Kaufman, a second year master’s 
student in public affairs who said she started talking to Barckholtz 
during one of the first negative emissions technology classes and was 
“quite shocked” to discover he was an Exxon employee.

Dozens of US universities, however, retain links with the fossil-fuel 
industry in a variety of ways, despite the growing pressure on them to 
cut them. Several host Exxon representatives on campus and even provide 
them with office space, similar to Princeton’s previous arrangement, a 
Guardian investigation has found.

According to Kaufman, Barckholtz told her Exxon had no interest in 
renewable energy – aside from, perhaps, offshore wind – beyond using it 
as a public relations exercise, and that he was looking to fund the work 
of the professor whose class he sat in. He showed her his Princeton 
office space, which included a list of a dozen Exxon-funded research 
projects on a whiteboard.

He later told the class that he was there to “scout out” useful things 
for Exxon’s nearby research center in New Jersey, and that the company 
has had someone, like him, monitoring Princeton classes for the previous 
five years. (In 2015, Princeton said it was “delighted” to forge a new 
“e-filliates” partnership with Exxon). Barckholtz did not respond to 
questions from the Guardian over his role at Princeton.

“The fact there was an Exxon employee in this undergrad class blew my 
mind,” said Kaufman, who is also an organizer at the Divest Princeton 
group. “It’s weird and problematic he then took the class, but the 
biggest issue is that public opinion is against Exxon so they are 
looking to install themselves as impartial-looking bodies in classrooms.

“This is not a neutral industry. It has an agenda, it wants to shape the 
conversation around climate change and energy. They aren’t putting 
people in classrooms for fun.”

Barckholtz has since vacated his office, following Princeton’s 
announcement on 29 September that 90 companies, including Exxon, would 
not only be divested from its endowment but also would have research 
funding ties cut, following years of pressure from students for 
Princeton to follow other major universities in dropping fossil-fuel 
investments.

But Exxon, which is among a group of oil and gas companies that have 
funneled more than $700m into research partnerships with leading US 
universities since 2010, still maintains close ties to dozens of 
universities, and has a regular on-campus presence at a clutch of 
prestigious colleges.

At MIT, Exxon is provided office space through its funding of the MIT 
Energy Initiative research collaboration, and company representatives 
“come to campus from time to time to meet with principal investigators 
who are doing sponsored research and student fellows they sponsor”, a 
university spokesperson said...
- -
Exxon researchers do not have their own office space at Stanford, a 
university Exxon has given $120m to over the past two decades for 
climate and energy research, although the company’s researchers are 
often seen on campus. At other universities, Exxon employees are present 
at jobs fairs, or as guest speakers or to treat students to meals.

“I see something with Exxon on it once a week, at least. They have a 
very evident presence on campus,” said Evan Montoya, a third-year 
student at Georgia Tech. “They definitely have a substantial influence 
here.”

Even as elite American universes such as Harvard have bowed to pressure 
to divest their multibillion-dollar endowments from fossil fuels, and 
student activists take recalcitrant holdouts to court, oil and gas 
companies continue to exert a grip upon campus life, through funded 
research and the physical presence of oil and gas industry employees in 
lectures and meetings with faculty.

Fossil-fuel firms have purposely sought to “colonize” academia with 
industry-friendly science, rather than seed overt climate denial, 
according to Ben Franta, a senior research fellow at the University of 
Oxford who has studied industry’s influence over universities.

Their research dollars, he said, have effectively discouraged academic 
endeavors that challenge the core business model of burning oil and gas, 
instead shifting the focus to favored topics such as capturing carbon 
emissions from polluting facilities, a still niche technology that would 
allow industry to continue business as usual...

“When you have these companies in class and on campus, it’s like an 
audition for academics to get research grants,” Franta said. “Sometimes 
a researcher who’s funded by industry does drift into an anti-industry 
posture, and then they just cut off their funding. You have professors 
who will quietly say: ‘I think divestment is a great idea, but I can’t 
support it because I’ll lose my research funding from oil companies.’

“A standard strategy that industries under threat try is to influence 
what gets studied and what doesn’t get studied, and how the problem is 
framed. The tobacco industry did the same thing. For Exxon to have 
someone with an office at Princeton, and for that person to teach a 
class, is a shocking example of this.”

The reach of fossil fuels into academia “never ceases to amaze me”, said 
Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Brown University. “You 
can barely study climate change at elite universities and not be funded 
by fossil-fuel companies,” he added. “They drive all this study into 
carbon capture, so that influences policy and becomes a part of the 
Biden administration’s agenda. The influence is profound, and the 
students are right to be wondering what kind of education they are 
getting here.”

Researchers have stressed that proper academic guardrails ensure no 
funder dictates outcomes they desire and that important, scientifically 
sound studies have come from work backed by arm’s-length fossil-fuel 
interests. Exxon has financed studies and research groups into areas 
such as carbon capture and dangerous chemical exposures, often alongside 
other independent researchers...

Princeton denies Exxon has had an undue influence over the university’s 
Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, which has received 
fossil-fuel funding and has produced annual reports in which Exxon 
expresses gratitude for “access to extraordinary talent and facilities”. 
Barckholtz sat in some class meetings but “did not play a role in 
developing the course or its learning objectives”, a Princeton 
spokesperson said.

Barckholtz was a “fun and productive collaborator” on a project to burn 
biomass such as forests for energy and capture and bury the resulting 
emissions, said Eric Larson, a senior researcher at the Andlinger 
Center. More than a dozen Exxon-funded research projects at Princeton, 
including work on technologies to offset or capture carbon emissions, 
will have to be funded by other means itself following the 
disassociation, a move that Larson considers unnecessary and potentially 
counterproductive.

“We chose the project, and Exxon was interested enough to support it. My 
research agenda isn’t impacted at all by who is funding it,” Larson 
said. “I’m OK with taking Exxon stock out from the Princeton endowment – 
that’s a way to make a statement – but this was taking research money 
away from work designed to decarbonize our society as rapidly as 
possible. We need everyone inside the tent to solve this problem, 
including the fossil-fuel industry.”

An Exxon spokesperson said that the company “enjoyed a long and fruitful 
relationship with Princeton, but it has become clear that there are 
individuals associated with the university who are choosing to put their 
individual views above the opportunity to accelerate the energy 
transition we all seek”...

Exxon, which has provided more than $10.7m in research funding to 
Princeton over the past 10 years, had more than 25 research projects 
with the university, the company spokesperson added.

But even Princeton has not jettisoned all fossil-fuel partners. Its 
Carbon Mitigation Initiative will continue to be financed by BP, which 
has given $26.4m to the university over the past decade and does not 
fall under the precise terms of the divestment, which was only aimed at 
companies with coal or tar sands assets, rather than all oil firms.

Other oil and gas companies, such as Shell, may even join as partners 
under these terms in a new “energy research fund”. Princeton’s ties to 
the industry are deep and historical – letters buried in the 
university’s library archive show its leadership aggressively courted 
Exxon in the 1970s, complaining in one instance it has “not received its 
fair share from Exxon”. One PhD student told the Guardian she was almost 
certain her work was being funded by fossil fuels, but that she had not 
received a straight answer from the university over this.

Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton climate scientist, said he was 
disappointed the university’s trustees did not enact a divestment broad 
enough to also evict businesses such as BP, but that it is difficult to 
criticize researchers for getting funding where they can...
- -
“They have to live with whatever decisions they make. I try to not judge 
others,” he said. “Personally, I would never take a penny from Exxon due 
to their disinformation on climate change. You can talk to the devil 
sometimes, but you don’t have to take to take money from the devil, and 
the devil is Exxon.”

The presence of carbon-intensive industries in Princeton classrooms has 
not dissipated, either. Two weeks ago, a class called Oil, Energy and 
the Middle East featured a guest appearance from Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al 
Sabah, chief executive of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, who told the 
gathered students that “we are never going to get out of fossil fuels: 
we need them for plastics and medicine … we are too reliant upon them”, 
according to Frida Ruiz, a sophomore in mechanical engineering who took 
the class.

Just prior to the class, Ruiz was perusing the shared class materials on 
a Princeton phone app, and saw a professor had posted a cartoon mocking 
supporters of fossil-fuel divestment, showing them near-naked and 
befuddled without any of the modern appliances that require fossil fuels.

“I thought, ‘Huh, I guess I now have a sense of what this class is going 
to be like,’” Ruiz said, adding she heard later it was meant as an 
example of industry propaganda.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/27/fossil-fuel-firms-us-universities-colonize-academia 




/[Hopium is Irrational or unwarranted optimism. [YourDictionary.Com]]/
*The Demise of Hopium*
January 23, 2022  Eliot Jacobson, Ph.D.
  "/Watching the World Go Bye" //-- Eliot Jacobson's Collapse of 
Everything Blog///
That deranged condition in which a person is deluded into thinking 
humanity will survive omnicide. [DoomforDummies.blogspot.com]
I am not here to re-litigate the inevitability of the near-term collapse 
of global industrial civilization and the obvious consequence that 
billions of humans will suffer terribly as a result. Collapse is the 
endpoint of overshoot and overpopulation and it has already begun. While 
the speed of this collapse may be altered by various projects, plans and 
efforts, the end result will not change. Exponential growth on a finite 
planet is unsustainable, period. (If you need a reminder of what’s 
coming, review this article.)

Hopium pervades the climate change and environmental movements. It 
festers in every green industry, boils in the rhetorical language of 
world bodies like the UN and IPCC, is demanded in academic journal 
articles and grants, and lands like a heavy-handed thud as a tool of 
suppression by the media and popular authors. Hopium is a psychoactive 
medication, an addiction, a coping mechanism and a group therapy 
session. Hopium offers escape from the nightmarish reality the planet is 
plummeting towards. Hopium is a delusional distraction, fostered by mass 
media, politicians and academics. And hopium is harming us by creating 
more suffering and restricting free choice.
- -
The rhetorical catalog for hopium includes the use of a phrase like “we 
need to …” or “we must …”  or “if we don’t …”. These phrases divide 
humanity into “we” (good) and “others” (bad).  The point is to identify 
a goal or policy that if achieved will mitigate collapse, a group who 
are willing to pursue the goal and a group who are obstructing the goal. 
Implicit in all such rhetoric is the belief that mitigating collapse is 
possible. That if “we” do this thing then humanity will be better 
positioned to continue on its merry way, basking in eternal sunshine, 
rainbows and unicorns. That’s the hopium part...
- -
So what’s actually wrong with hopium?  What damage does it really do?

The suffering brought on by overshoot and collapse is evident 
everywhere. Species in record numbers are going extinct. Our fellow 
humans are dying from heat, starvation, thirst, floods, fires and 
disease. Human culture and legacy are becoming historical relics. Quite 
simply, many of us would make different choices if we knew with absolute 
certainty that this shit was coming down soon to where we live, our 
home, our life.

The constant drumbeat of the hopium big lie is keeping people from 
taking actions they might otherwise take. On being told the truth about 
our collective future, some folks might clear the air with family 
members, others might find themselves having deeper conversations and 
connections with friends. Some might volunteer to help those in greatest 
need or make substantial donations. Some would quit their jobs, cash in 
their savings and party as much as they could in the time remaining.  
Some would continue their efforts to delay collapse and lessen the full 
impact of the ongoing sixth great extinction. Some may join adaptive 
communities or survivalist cults.  Some may commit suicide. Some will 
still have hope. And one person will be the last person to plant a tree....
- -
But most of all, the demise of hopium will allow humans to regain their 
agency, even if it happens at a time of great suffering. This 
brainwashing, greenwashing f**king lie that pervades every aspect of 
culture, media and politics will be gone. Yes, some people will go down 
a path of disengagement, as Mann says, but that will be their choice. 
And disengagement will not be wrong just because it doesn’t fit Mann’s 
agenda for what they should be doing.

The truth will allow every one of us to be free to think and talk about 
our near future unencumbered by hopium-laced falsehoods, to re-evaluate 
life and re-assess our values and plans. Contrary to what hopium 
peddlers believe, most people are capable of having competent moments of 
rational thought. The demise of hopium will be the beginning of the 
freedom to regain our critical judgment about the most important moment 
in our lives and in the history of humanity and the planet. It can’t 
come soon enough.

Be kind.  Be generous.  Be of service.
https://climatecasino.net/2022/01/the-demise-of-hopium/



/[Yes, there have been many extinctions -- video from Geology Girl - 
video academic ]/
*Mass Extinction Events from the Devonian to Jurassic that Nobody Talks 
about! GEO GIRL*
GEO GIRL
2,264 views  Mar 26, 2023
PART 2 to 'Extinction Events Nobody Talks About'
I've extensively discussed the ‘Big 5’ Mass Extinctions on my channel, 
but there have been MANY other mass extinctions through Earth’s history, 
and in this video, I go over all the major mass extinctions in earth’s 
past that rival the big 5 mass extinctions in terms of magnitude or 
species lost and ecological severity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IEFkiQFY7o



/[ Collapsology is now a word - this is an open-minded overview -  15 
min video]/
*the weird world of collapsology*
Alice Cappelle
67,902 views  Jan 4, 2023
SOURCES/RESSOURCES 📚
Cairn's dossier on the age of collapse: 
https://www.cairn-int.info/dossiers-2...
Pierre Charbonnier's article on collapsology: "The splendor and squalor 
of collapsology. What the survivalists of the left fail to consider", 
Revue du Crieur, vol. a, no. 2, 2019 : 
https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_...
Pierre Charbonnier, Affluence and Freedom, 2021.
Podcast episode on 'why billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse': 
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1cS6...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_wg3HDO01o



/[The news archive - looking back --  this looks interesting ]/
/*March 29, 2016 */
March 29, 2016:

The New York Times reports:

"Deadly summer heat waves in the eastern United States may be 
predictable nearly two months before they occur, giving emergency 
planners and farmers more time to prepare, scientists reported on Monday."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/science/heat-wave-predictions-weather.html


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