[✔️] October 11, 2023- Global Warming News Digest | Not all trees, Worst places, Disinformation combatants leaving, typical, Instagram influencer, Glaciers in Washington State, Year 2000 debate

[Richard Pauli]

/*October 11*//*, 2023*/

/[ Yale Says ]/
*In a Hotter Climate, Some Trees Could Make Air Pollution Worse
*OCTOBER 9, 2023
As temperatures rise, warmer weather will spur some trees to release a 
chemical known to worsen air quality, a new study finds.

In hot weather, trees such as oaks and poplars produce isoprene, a 
compound that helps plants cope with heat stress. In cities, isoprene 
reacts with car exhaust to form ozone, a pollutant that, at ground 
level, can cause lung damage.

Until now, it was unclear if climate change would cause trees to 
generate more isoprene or less. In warmer weather, isoprene production 
speeds up, but at higher levels of CO2, it slows down. To gauge the 
potential impact of climate change, scientists at Michigan State 
University exposed young poplars to both high heat and high levels of CO2.

Heat was the clear winner. At 95 degrees F (35 degrees C), CO2 does 
almost nothing to dampen isoprene production, scientists found. At that 
temperature, “isoprene is pouring out like crazy,” lead author Abira 
Sahux said in a statement. “With that, we can say the temperature effect 
trumps the CO2 effect.”

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of 
Sciences, will help scientists predict how much isoprene trees could 
produce in the future and the potential impact on air pollution.
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/trees-isoprene-climate-change



/[ worst-of-the-worst says PBS video 12 mins //PBS - 
www.wren.com/WEATHERED//]/
*We Found the WORST Weather on Earth*
PBS Terra
Oct 10, 2023

As viewers of our show and most inhabitants of planet earth probably 
already know, the weather down here can get pretty crazy. But we got 
curious and asked: just HOW EXTREME can weather actually get on earth? 
So we decided to travel the world in search of answers and discovered 
not only some fascinating answers, but some pretty interesting questions 
along the way. Like, how do you even measure the most extreme weather 
anyway? Is it according to precipitation? Or wind? Or temperature? Some 
combination of these elements? Or something else entirely?

Well, in this episode of Weathered, we dig into all of these questions. 
And we actually found a place that many experts agree is, indeed, home 
to the world’s worst weather. And it’s not where we expected at all.

Weathered is a show hosted by weather expert Maiya May and produced by 
Balance Media that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what 
causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hXSgRSIHMU



/[ Disinformation troops leaving their battlements ]/
*'It's a Moral Issue': Creatives Are Quitting Agencies Over Fossil Fuel 
Clients*
Adweek spoke with five people who've left jobs due, at least in part, to 
climate convictions

When wildfire smoke turned New York skies orange this summer, Lane 
Cooper* holed up in their Brooklyn apartment with multiple air filters 
on high blast, working remotely for PR firm Edelman. Their asthma means 
air quality indexes above 200 are extremely dangerous. Then, a resource 
manager asked them to work on the Shell account. They quit a month later.

Cooper is one of many ad and PR industry staffers who have left their 
jobs in recent years due, at least in part, to their employer’s work 
with fossil fuel companies...

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/creatives-quitting-agencies-fossil-fuel-clients/ 
/$ subscription required /

- -

/[ tactic for example ]
/*SHELL USING FORTNITE TO PROMOTE GASOLINE TO YOUTHS*
HOW DO YOU DO, FELLOW KIDS?

OCT 5
by VICTOR TANGERMANN
Shell Corporation
When was the last time you dreamed of hitting the road and going on an 
epic road trip in your internal combustion engine vehicle?

Giant oil corporation and major climate change contributor Shell has 
begun targeting the youth by polluting their video game experiences with 
a "Shell Ultimate Road Trips" campaign baked into — what else? — Epic's 
hit videogame Fortnite.

As Media Matters reports, the campaign is part of a broader initiative 
to sell the younger generations on Shell's new premium-grade gasoline. 
Outside of the uber-popular battle royale game, the corporation is also 
promoting the product on Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
In many ways, it's a thinly-veiled attempt to win younger demographics 
over by one of the biggest oil companies in the world — at exactly the 
time that we should instead be promoting any viable alternative.

*Gassed Up*
Despite humanity facing a climate change-driven calamity facilitated by 
the burning of fossil fuels — a reality that certainly hasn't flown over 
the heads of younger folks — Shell has doubled down on natural gas and 
oil production this year, which already led to record profits for the 
company last year, according to Bloomberg.

As part of pushing its allegedly "new and improved" premium gasoline, 
Shell sponsored popular gamers on Fortnite to try out a new map. And no, 
we're not making this up: the new experience involves players filling up 
their tanks at virtual Shell gas stations before embarking on their 
#Shellroadtrips.

"Conquer new roads and go to places you've never been before," an 
official description reads. "From Grotto Point, Cyber City, and Mystical 
Castle to Frozen Town, Canyon Edge, and Gravity Gateway."

But whether the initiative will end up actually winning over players 
remains to be seen. Research has shown that most youth are massively 
concerned about climate change, in a phenomenon increasingly being 
dubbed "climate anxiety."

Of course, these fears are far from unfounded, with global temperatures 
rising at an accelerating and unrelenting pace.

Still, not every child playing Fortnite out there will be fully 
informed. Shell's latest propaganda isn't only ill-advised, it's a 
shameful marketing tactic intentionally targeting malleable minds.

Sure, the US still heavily relies on gas-guzzling cars to get around — 
but that doesn't mean we should continue glorifying the environmentally 
harmful practice.
*Death, Taxes, Branding*
The irony, of course, is that the Joshua Trees Almonte photographed were 
declared endangered specifically because of climate change, Earther 
reports, making Shell squarely responsible for the problems mentioned in 
its new eco-tourism sponcon.

But oil companies aren't letting that irony get in the way of their 
marketing ­— not while there's potential goodwill to manufacture! These 
companies are already framing themselves as part of the answer to global 
climate change in carefully crafted advertisements, and going directly 
to social media personalities is simply the next obvious manifestation 
of that big marketing push.

"My gut would be, they’re probably going to lean into the [corporate 
social responsibility]-focused stuff as a way in to generate some 
goodwill, versus being like, 'we've got great gas!'" Brendan Gahan, the 
chief social officer at an ad agency called Mekanism, told Earther.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/oil-companies-paying-social-media-influencers

- -

/[ another battleground -- "No matter how cynical you become, it's never 
enough"  Lilly Tomlin]
/*The Big Oil Instagram Influencers Are Here*
Big Oil has made small forays into the world of Instagram influencer 
marketing—but if history is any indication, they're just getting started.
By Molly Taft
Published June 15, 2021
Comments (23) Cherrie Lynn Almonte is an influencer with 192,000 
Instagram followers and a bio that includes the phrase “Travel | 
Lifestyle | Good vibes.” Her posts follow standard travel-influencer 
protocols, with perfectly framed photos of stunning vistas and 
cityscapes, lots of saturated colors, and allocations for most shots as 
well as prominently tagged brands. An October 2020 post of Almonte’s 
fits this vibe perfectly with a vintage-style video of a trip to Joshua 
Tree. There’s dreamy warm-toned footage of Almonte, her ash-blonde hair 
visible under a big hat, wandering among cacti, and the dazzling sunset 
in the desert. There’s just one thing off. It’s all interspersed with 
shots of her and her fellow road tripper filling up at a Shell gas station.

The post was sponsored by Shell, which Almonte notes at the top of her 
caption, before launching into a list of things she learned from her 
trip. Point number one: “check your destination before you go,” she 
wrote. “Especially with the fires that are happening in California, we 
had to make sure it was safe for us to go to Joshua Tree.” In fall 2020, 
while Almonte was filming in Joshua Tree, California was in the midst of 
its biggest fire season in history, supercharged by the West’s 
devastating drought conditions and the heat of the climate crisis. Just 
a month prior to her Joshua Tree video, the trees themselves became the 
first species to be listed as endangered due to climate change.

Compared to some other brands, Big Oil has made relatively small forays 
into the world of Instagram marketing—but if history is any indication, 
they’re just getting started. Almonte’s post—with the accompanying 
whiplash of seeing a company partly responsible for the climate crisis 
sponsoring a trip to a place greatly endangered by climate change–could 
become the norm. History has shown that fossil fuel companies have 
mastered the art of quiet persuasion, and they’ll almost certainly join 
in the battle for our time and attention on social media.

Earther has found at least two oil and gas companies—Shell and Phillips 
66—have launched campaigns with different types of Instagram 
influencers. Shell is the second-largest investor-owned source of 
historical carbon pollution on the planet. Phillips 66 doesn’t have 
quite that historic footprint, but a staggering 80% shareholders 
recently voted for the company to address its carbon emissions tied to 
users. Clearly both companies could use a little image boost in the 
public’s eyes.

Since at least 2018, Phillips 66 has worked with a handful of accounts 
as part of a campaign called “Live to the Full,” which, per the Phillips 
66 Facebook page, the company calls “an anthology of middle America.” 
The accounts we were able to find posts from all appear to be clustered 
around St. Louis and Kansas City; all are parenting-focused accounts 
whose Phillips 66-sponsored posts tend to center around their kids. (A 
post from October by Liz Rotz, who describes herself as a “St. Louis 
Family Blogger,” is pretty standard fare: The image shows Rotz and her 
two kids snacking on pastries out of the back of her car, with the 
caption thanking Phillips 66 for sending them on the “ultimate adventure 
to eat out in St. Louis.”)

Shell, meanwhile, appears to have launched multiple different campaigns 
over the past few years with lots of different influencers in several 
different locations. We found several clustered under the hashtag 
“#ShellPartner,” which influencers use to tag their sponsored posts with 
the company. Many of the posts are pretty obviously ads; several are 
just influencers posing in front of a Shell gas pump. But some posts, 
like Almonte’s, are basically unrecognizable from other types of 
standard aspirational social media fare. Eileen Lazazzera, who goes by 
@yesmissy and has a beauty and wellness account with nearly 30,000 
followers, posted a set of photos in 2019 posing with chocolate pretzel 
thins and water—no pumps or logos in sight—while giving props to Shell 
stations for providing “healthy snack options while on the go” in the 
caption.
- -
Even for heavy Instagram users, the details behind these kinds of deals 
can be murky. Does the social media manager of Shell just slide into a 
bunch of influencers’ DMs hoping a few will bite? Brendan Gahan, the 
chief social officer at ad agency Mekanism, said that there’s no 
hard-and-fast rule for brokering an influencer-brand deal, but usually 
big brands like Shell and Phillips 66 will hire social agencies that 
will help them develop a strategy and then figure out influencers to 
work with.

“There’s a ton of tools you can use to cross-reference and get 
demographic and geographic data around an influencer’s audience,” he 
explained.

Gahan said a lot of brands are still trying to figure out how to best 
use Instagram; while more social-savvy brands are developing ongoing 
relationships with top influencers, he still sees a lot of 
“one-and-done” deals with brands dipping their toes into brokering deals 
with accounts of all sizes. But that looks poised to change very soon. 
When covid-19 closed production offices unexpectedly in 2020, it was 
“like gasoline on the fire” of Instagram marketing, Gahan said. A recent 
survey found that the number of sponsored posts by influencers for 
brands on Black Friday last year nearly doubled from the number in 2019.

Shell seems to recognize the power of celebrity more than any other 
fossil company. In 2019, the company tapped “Criminal Minds” actor Brent 
Bailey as a spokesperson (Bailey ran a social media campaign encouraging 
people to take a “#Shellfie,” which, ouch). A couple of years ago, Shell 
launched ads featuring Jennifer Hudson and other international stars 
covering Imagine Dragons and American Authors’ songs to promote its 
#makethefuture campaign. While Instagram influencers may not have the 
traditional star power of a singer or actor, Gahan said the medium can 
still be extremely powerful.

“With a digital ad, you’re lucky if people watch 3 seconds,” Gahan said. 
“People just keep scrolling. But influencers—people will stop, and 
they’ll watch a full 15-, 20-minute vlog of their favorite creator, all 
the way through, and they’ll listen to every single word. You can 
actually communicate some stuff with real depth.”

Recently, Shell seems to have branched off from using Instagram to 
promote road trips and gas station stops, and into what the company 
claims it’s doing to save the environment. As part of a new campaign 
called “Drive Carbon Neutral,” several influencers have recently created 
outdoors-centric posts to promote how Shell is selling options for 
customers to choose to add a small price to their gas at the pump, which 
the company then uses to purchase carbon offsets.

“Thanks to Shell, there’s a way to explore nature and reduce our carbon 
footprint at the same time,” Erik McRitchie, a photographer from Alberta 
with more than 74,000 followers, narrates over a reel of kids playing in 
the snow and shots of beautiful mountains.

Earther emailed more than a dozen influencers who worked on the Phillips 
66 or Shell campaigns described in this article. Most did not respond; 
the few who did get back to us declined to talk about the partnership. 
(One said they sign NDAs with the companies they work for, presumably 
including Phillips 66, while another said they weren’t comfortable 
disclosing details because they’d “hate to ruin” their relationship with 
a partner.)

Doing a sponsored post for a company with a dirty reputation can have 
serious consequences for rising social stars’ careers. One Instagram 
influencer that partnered with Shell and agreed to speak to Earther on 
the condition of anonymity, said they “didn’t expect” the negative 
comments from their followers. “The negative backlash I received will 
definitely shape how I choose to do partnerships in the future,” they 
said. But there are always more influencers.

Oil companies working with influencers is actually part of a tradition 
they helped create decades ago. A lot of the way modern advertising 
works—including Instagram—is thanks to the work of brands like Shell and 
Exxon.

“The oil industry has been essential to the invention and perfection of 
propaganda techniques for 100 years,” said Geoffrey Supran, a researcher 
at the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and 
director of Climate Accountability Communication at the Climate Social 
Science Network at Brown University. “Since the very beginning, they’ve 
been using advertising in various ways, especially since the rise of 
environmentalism and then climate change from the 1970s through the 1990s.”

The genesis of many of Big Oil’s modern propaganda techniques can be 
traced back to the 1970s oil crisis. Herb Schmertz, ExxonMobil’s head of 
public relations in the 1970s and 1980s who guided the company through 
the crisis, is recognized by much of the advertising industry as a 
pioneer in the business. He elevated the company from just something 
that sells a product to a cultural and political force. Schmertz 
invented many advertising techniques that are still used today, like 
brands sponsoring cultural programming (under his leadership, Exxon 
underwrote several seasons of PBS’s “Masterpiece Theatre” program) and 
creating what he called “advertorials,” or what’s commonly referred to 
today as “paid media”–ads in newspapers and on websites that look like 
traditional articles. Much of Schmertz’s work helped set Exxon up to 
successfully wage its decades-long PR battle against climate science, 
planting the seeds for Big Oil to influence politicians and the public 
into not paying attention to what its product was doing.

A central idea of Schmertz’s was to bypass traditional gatekeepers, like 
journalists and analysts, to reach consumers directly. The goal wasn’t 
necessarily to sell them a specific product, but to establish positive 
associations with the company itself as an entity, which could help head 
off PR crises or problems in the future (like, say, the fact that a 
company is actively helping burn down the planet). Supran said Schmertz 
particularly recognized the power of celebrities, politicians, religious 
leaders, and educators to sway opinions about a company through what he 
called a “ripple effect,” like throwing a stone into a pond. In 
Schmertz’s era, the power of the New York Times op-ed page or an episode 
of a prestigious TV show could be the most effective way of changing 
opinion.

Were Schmertz alive and in charge of Exxon’s ad department today, he may 
have seen the value in getting a post from a user’s favorite Instagram 
influencer to create that ripple. Oil companies “have gone digital, and 
they’ve gone more subtle, but there’s no denying the fact that these 
messages are not simple product advertising,” Supran said. “These are 
the modern manifestations of the PR techniques Big Oil helped create.”

I wanted to get a sense of what a modern-day Schmertz might dream up for 
Exxon (or Shell, or Phillips 66) today. So, I asked Gahan how he would 
advise an oil and gas company looking for a social campaign, 
particularly as public opinion—especially from social native generations 
Gen Z and millennials—turns increasingly toward climate action. Gahan 
said he’d hammer home on the good the company says it’s doing to bond 
with its audience.

“My gut would be, they’re probably going to lean into the [corporate 
social responsibility]-focused stuff as a way in to generate some 
goodwill, versus being like, ‘we’ve got great gas!’” he said. “These 
conglomerates, they’re almost so polished, there’s no humanity there. I 
think they could benefit from humanity, even if some of it’s pointing 
out their flaws.”

Gahan’s on the money here. Big Oil has already started trying to sell 
itself as part of the climate solution, though their own climate plans 
along with volumes of research show they’re anything but. Many are 
rebranding themselves as “energy companies” to avoid dirty labels, even 
as they continue to expand fossil fuel production and exploration. Last 
week, Shell’s CEO penned a LinkedIn blog responding to a Dutch court’s 
historic ruling that the company needs to cut emissions 45% by 2030.

“We all know we must urgently tackle climate change and achieve the goal 
of the Paris Agreement for countries to limit global warming to 1.5 
degrees Celsius,” Ben van Beurden, the CEO wrote, after questioning 
whether or not it was fair for a court to single out his company and 
partially blaming consumer demand for Shell’s continued production of 
oil. “The court ruling has not changed the fact that Shell is more 
determined than ever to play its part and lead in this global challenge.”

It’s clear that the social strategy on Instagram and beyond for oil and 
gas companies has turned to talking up their role in the coming energy 
revolution. Meanwhile, they’re hiding the dirty work they plan on 
continuing to do in opaque reports.

“There’s a social media loophole the size of an oil tanker in terms of 
how the fossil fuel industry gets away with brazen political 
advertising, hidden behind the veil of corporate green talk,” said Supran.

Even if regulators figure out a way to crack down on online 
greenwashing, the industry is not likely to stop. Rather, it seems, 
they’re just getting started. In December, Mother Jones reported that 
the natural gas lobby was paying Instagram influencers to promote gas 
stoves in response to the increasing wave of legislation banning natural 
gas hookups across the country. Supran pointed out that studies have 
shown that negative media attention is one of the key indicators of oil 
and gas advertising. In May, Big Oil suffered a three-tier punch: On the 
same day Shell got handed its court ruling, both Exxon and Chevron 
suffered climate-related shareholder revolts at their annual meetings. 
Given the international headlines about Big Oil’s “bad week,” it’s 
reasonable to expect a fresh wave of PR in the aftermath.

“I feel as though we’re going to see a doubling down on efforts to 
protect social, political, and legal legitimacy,” said Supran.

And even if advertising directly to dubious consumers becomes 
increasingly tricky, turning to influencers could be an incredibly 
effective way to get Big Oil’s messages across.

“A great influencer campaign, it’s shocking the outcomes you can 
generate,” said Gahan. “I’ve worked campaigns where we’ve crashed 
websites, had so many fans show up we’ve had to shut things down. It’s 
really surprising what they can do. I think people generally 
underestimate the impact that they have.”

https://gizmodo.com/the-big-oil-instagram-influencers-are-here-1847091004

- -

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGaG2jQDf3a/

- -

/[  irony is agile   ]
/

*OH NO, OIL COMPANIES ARE PAYING SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS NOW*
THIS ROAD TRIP BROUGHT TO YOU BY, UH, GASOLINE.

"These conglomerates, they're almost so polished, there's no humanity 
there," he added. "I think they could benefit from humanity, even if 
some of it's pointing out their flaws."

Meanwhile, a peek behind the curtain shows that these companies are fare 
more interested in cleaning up their image than cleaning up their actual 
operations, Earther reports, meaning that the goal isn't to actually 
fight climate change as much as it is to stop looking like the bad guys 
that they are.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/oil-companies-paying-social-media-influencers



/[ a nicely produced video of Washington State glaciers - filmmaker 
based in North Carolina  ]/
*Melting Glaciers Are More Important Than You Think*
Aidin Robbins
Oct 8, 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R29u6-6dqkw



/[The news archive - looking back Al Gore debate ]/
/*October 11, 2000 */
October 11, 2000: In the second Presidential debate between Vice 
President Al Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush, Gore says the US 
needs to take the lead in confronting the climate crisis and embracing 
clean energy. Bush claims that his environmental record as governor of 
Texas is not as bad as has been alleged; Bush also attacks the concept 
of a carbon tax and endorses "clean coal" and natural gas as energy 
solutions. Gore denies that he supports a carbon tax, but endorses 
clean-energy tax incentives. Bush tries to suggest that there's still a 
dispute in the scientific community about the causes and severity of 
climate change, and denounces the Kyoto Protocol. Gore defends the 
scientific consensus on climate, and points out that we need to do right 
by future generations; in response, Bush again suggests that there isn't 
a real consensus.

(65:00-85:25)

https://www.c-span.org/video/?159296-1/presidential-candidates-debate





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