[✔️] Jan 28. 2024 Global Warming News | Sabine now worried, Michael Mann defamed, New denial, Tidal vulnerability, 4 in discussion, Fiction considered, Climate fiction, 1969 Oil spill. Spill documentary
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Sun Jan 28 12:27:16 EST 2024
/*January*//*28, 2024*/
/[See this 21 min video - Sabine has good words for a difficult message ]/
*I wasn't worried about climate change. Now I am.*
Sabine Hossenfelder
Jan 27, 2024 #science #climate
Want to restore the planet's ecosystems and see your impact in monthly
videos? The first 200 people to join Planet Wild with my code will get
the first month for free at https://www.planetwild.com/sabinehoss...
If you want to get to know them better first, check out their latest
video: How 3 Dogs Saved 100,000 Turtles
https://www.planetwild.com/sabinehoss...
In this video I explain what climate sensitivity is and why it is
important. Climate sensitivity is a number that roughly speaking tells
us how fast climate change will get worse. A few years ago, after
various software improvements, a bunch of climate models began having a
much higher climate sensitivity than previously. Climate scientists have
come up with reasons for why to ignore this. I think it's a bad idea to
ignore this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S9sDyooxf4
- -
/[ A slow moving disinformation court case ]/
*Michael Mann’s Defamation Case Against Deniers Finally Reaches Trial*
After a 12-year journey through the courts, the climate scientist behind
the ‘Hockey Stick’ graph tells a jury that bloggers sullied his name
with a crass comparison.
By Marianne Lavelle
January 25, 2024
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25012024/michael-mann-defamation-case-reaches-trial/
- -
/[ disinformation battles - audio and text reports ]/
*The New Climate Denial*
Air Date: Week of January 26, 2024
A recent report finds that social media platforms like YouTube are
amplifying and sometimes profiting from new forms of climate denial that
falsely claim it’s too late to act on the climate crisis. Imran Ahmed is
the CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate and joins
Host Steve Curwood to talk about how climate disinformation has evolved
from attacking science to attacking solutions.
[ audio play ] https://megaphone.link/LOE9287945965
[ clips from the transcript ]
- -
URWOOD: So what kind of money are we talking about, with the millions of
dollars of ads in social media?
AHMED: So just looking at the 100 channels that we studied, and there
are thousands more, of course, but the 100 that we studied, which was
12,000 videos, 4,000 hours of content that we studied, that's worth
around $13.4 million, we estimated, a year. Now that's using figures
which are freely available, you know, on how much an ad costs, how often
those ads appear, et cetera, et cetera. We don't know precisely what the
split is, but it's about 55 to 45, 60 to 40, for the content creator and
the platform. So both of them are profiting lavishly from this kind of
content. What we will find, though, is that there'll be other channels
around as well. So actually, these numbers are a very, very small
estimate of the channels we looked at. We could be talking about $100,
$200 million industry in total.
CURWOOD: Yeah, I was going to ask, did you look at the advertisements
that happened on Facebook, and other social media that's out there?
AHMED: You know, this initial study was based on YouTube because it's a
platform that we were able to study using this tool very easily.
However, we are absolutely certain that this is happening not just on
Meta platforms, so on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok*, but also on X,
which is owned by Elon Musk, a man who recently claimed that no human
being on earth has done more for the planet than he has, but at the same
time runs a platform that is rife with disinformation about climate, and
that is helping to undermine the consensus that we need for action to be
taken to mitigate climate change.
CURWOOD: What about the issue of censorship, though? I mean, everyone
does have a right to free speech, not the right to shout "fire" in a
crowded theater, but we have pretty strong free speech rights. Where do
you think the limits should be set on this kind of information?
AHMED: Everyone has absolutely the right to hold opinions, no matter how
ridiculous or counterfactual they are. People can post it if they want
to. But not everyone has a constitutional right to profit from it, nor
do they have a right to have a megaphone handed to them so that they can
scream it to a billion people. And that's the issue here. Censorship is
about the government saying that you're not allowed to say something. A
private company has every right to say, I'm not gonna give you money for
the content that you've just produced. That's not censorship. That's
just not paying people for what they say. And so this isn't a question
of censorship. This is a question of rewards. Look, in the past what
YouTube has said, and this is their own rules, not my rules, their own
rules, that they've said that they will not put ads on, nor will they
amplify climate denial content that goes against the scientific
consensus on climate change. Now, what we found was, first of all, that
they're not sufficiently enforcing that policy anyway. And they
responded to our study by saying, whoops, you're right, we'd better take
the ads off these videos that you found. But second, we've said they
should extend their policy, which only applies to the old denial, to the
new denial, too. You simply cannot be calling yourself a green company,
and then commit the stultifying hypocrisy of both profiting from and
amplifying to billions, climate denial content.
CURWOOD: To what extent can government play a role here in cleaning up
social media? And to what extent is this just something that the free
market is going to have to do?
AHMED: I think governments can mandate transparency of companies, so
they explain how their algorithms work. They explain how their content
enforcement rules work. I think they can explain how their economics
work, how the advertising works, so we have more understanding of that
as well. And you know, one of the biggest problems that advertisers
have, is they often don't know where adverts are appearing. Do you know
what sorts of organizations were appearing on these climate denial
videos? The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Save the
Children, the International Rescue Committee. Three bodies which are
dedicated to dealing with climate change were accidentally having their
ads appearing on these climate denial videos. And they will be furious.
And I think that when the market has more transparency, when people
identify problems, as our research does, then I think that people will
take action.
O’NEILL: That’s Imran Ahmed, CEO and founder of the Center for
Countering Digital Hate. He spoke with Living on Earth host Steve
Curwood. We reached out to YouTube for comment and received a response
from a YouTube spokesperson that reads in part: “Our climate change
policy prohibits ads from running on content that contradicts
well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of
climate change.” The full statement is on the Living on Earth website,
loe.org, where you can also find the rest of our climate disinformation
series.
Full YouTube Statement: “Our climate change policy prohibits ads
from running on content that contradicts well-established scientific
consensus around the existence and causes of climate change. Debate
or discussions of climate change topics, including around public
policy or research, is allowed. However, when content crosses the
line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos.
We also display information panels under relevant videos to provide
additional information on climate change and context from third
parties.” - YouTube Spokesperson
https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00004&segmentID=3
/[ Well established service - a few new fields ]/
*National Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Sea-Level Rise:
Preliminary Results for the U.S. Atlantic Coast
Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI)*
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1999/of99-593/pages/cvi.html
/[ a few well-informed adults and climate scientists in conversation ]/
*Energy vs 1.5°C - Breaking Down the 1.5C Warming Target | Energy vs
Climate S5E2*
Energy vs Climate
Oct 5, 2023 Energy vs Climate Podcast
Energy vs 1.5°C - Breaking Down the 1.5C Warming Target | Energy vs
Climate S5E2
The overall goal of the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on
climate change adopted by 196 Parties at COP21 in Paris, is to hold “the
increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above
pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature
increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” Since coming into force
in 2016, world leaders have increasingly emphasized the need to keep
warming to the 1.5°C target by the end of this century, in order to
avoid more dangerous impacts from climate change.
Yet temperature readings around the globe show that the world has
already warmed by roughly 1°C on average above pre-industrial levels.
Many models suggest we will very likely exceed 1.5°C of warming,
possibly in the next 5-10 years, in the absence of aggressive worldwide
action to reduce emissions and (perhaps) engineer the climate. While we
have made much progress, unfortunately the world is nowhere close to
that level of action.
So does the 1.5°C target still make sense if overshoot seems almost
certain? Is it a science-based target or a political target - and even a
reasonable and just target in the first place? Is the target about
holding the line at 1.5°C or getting it back down to 1.5°C by 2100? When
are we likely to exceed it, how will we know, and what will be the
physical and political consequences of missing it?
David, Sara, Ed, and climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of Stripe and
Berkeley Earth discuss all things 1.5°C on Season 5 Episode 2 of Energy
vs Climate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0k_cIsr4OI&
- -
/[ more thoughtful content, more discussion ]/
*Stranger than (climate) fiction?*
Energy vs Climate
29. Nov. 2023
In The Ministry for the Future, sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson
approaches the question of how the world might tackle dangerous climate
change through presenting what The Guardian calls a “chilling yet
hopeful vision of how the next few decades might unfold.” Its harrowing
opening chapter has already achieved legendary status for Robinson’s
portrayal of the devastating effects of an extreme heat event.
What is the role of literature in the climate policy and technology
discussion? How does the genre allow us to explore uncomfortable climate
scenarios, including those to do with heat death and direct action?
While ultimately successful, the path laid out in the book is very
bumpy, volatile, and rife with violence – strikingly different from the
smooth and orderly transition often offered up by politicians and
techno-optimists.
On Season Five, Episode Seven of Energy vs Climate, David, Sara, Ed, and
New York Times bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson as they discuss
how science fiction can help us explore different climate scenarios and
solutions.
https://www.energyvsclimate.com/
/[ Disinformation battles ]/
*Q&A: How YouTube Climate Denialism Is Morphing*
The message may be evolving, but the company and YouTubers are still
making millions off of it.
Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth
January 27, 2024
Climate science has been under attack for decades. But some climate
deniers are no longer refuting the fact that Earth is warming because of
human activity. Now, their message focuses on doom: They admit our
planet is running a fever, but shrug and say there’s not much we can do
about it.
A new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate takes a close
look at this new form of climate denial and how it shows up in videos on
one of the internet’s most popular content sharing platforms, YouTube.
When ads run on those videos, the climate deniers and YouTube often
pocket the profits.
STEVE CURWOOD: How long did you work on this study looking at how social
media is, in some cases—maybe many cases—promoting disinformation about
climate change?
*IMRAN AHMED: This has actually been one of the longest and most complex
studies we’ve ever done. We worked with university researchers who
developed an AI model that allows them to identify what type of climate
denial claim is being made in this piece of text.
We used that tool to analyze thousands of hours of YouTube videos
produced by prominent climate deniers, and study the evolution of the
types of claims they’ve been making between 2018 and 2023. And what we
saw was startling: a real collapse in the volume of claims being made
that anthropogenic—man-made—climate change is not happening at all or
that it’s not man-made; and an explosion in the volume of claims that
climate change may be happening, but the solutions don’t work.
Climate deniers have transitioned from the old climate denial, which is
rejecting anthropogenic climate change, to a new climate denial, which
is casting doubt on solutions.*
CURWOOD: Talk to me more about this question of old denial and new
denialism. Your report says that climate denial folks have moved beyond
trying to say that climate change isn’t happening and humans aren’t
related to this. But moving into the area that the solutions won’t
work—why is that new? Because from day one, people opposed to climate
action said, oh, it costs too much, that won’t work, the technology is
too expensive, and you know, we’re gambling way too much on “iffy”
technology. What’s new about what you call “new denial?”
*AHMED: As solutions have developed to become more sophisticated, as the
world has become more convinced of the dangers of climate change, as
political actors and companies and as others have taken action, what you
have seen is the battleground shifting.
In 2018, over two-thirds of all the claims made were rejecting the
reality, the scientific consensus, on climate change. Now, that’s less
than 3 in 10. So less than a third. What is now two-thirds of all claims
made are these other forms of denial.
The three major families in the new denial are: that climate solutions
won’t work, that the impacts of global warming are beneficial or
harmless, or that the climate science and the climate movement are
unreliable. Because let’s be absolutely frank about this: This has never
been a debate about the science. This has been a debate between
scientists and those who want to stop action being taken on climate
change because that would destroy the oil and gas industry.
They are implacably opposed to climate solutions being put in place.
They don’t care whether it is by persuading people that climate change
isn’t real, or even more cynically, by dashing their hope that climate
change can be dealt with.*
CURWOOD: How do they sell this notion that nothing can be done about
climate through social media? How do they tell that story?
*AHMED: One of the things that you learn after studying disinformation
and conspiracy theories and this kind of content over years and years,
as my team has, not just in climate, but also public health, is that
underpinning every conspiracy theory, every bit of misinformation, is
fundamentally a lie.
The lie is that there’s nothing we can do about it. The lie is that
solar power, wind power, tidal power, switching to electric vehicles
couldn’t substantially help to mitigate the worst ravages of climate
change.
What they then claim is that well, sure, you might want to switch to an
EV. But did you know that throughout the supply chain of an EV, that EV
actually uses more CO2? Now, that’s actually nonsense. It’s been shown
by the EPA and by a raft of scientists that actually the lifetime
emissions of an electric vehicle is significantly lower. But what
they’re doing is, they’re selling a lie, which is don’t buy an EV
because it’s worse for the environment.
*
CURWOOD: Let’s talk about how this works in part to appeal to a sense of
“doomerism” among young people, that, yeah, well, climate’s a problem,
but hey, we’re over the edge. So we might as well party until the
asteroid or whatever hits.
*AHMED: I can’t think of anything more cynical than telling young people
that, yes, the world’s climate is changing in potentially catastrophic
ways, but there’s no hope, and nothing that you can do could help, so
may as well live with it.
We did some polling to go alongside this study, just to check what the
acceptance levels are of different types of climate denial with young
people. What we found is that acceptance of the old climate denial is
incredibly low. What’s been replacing it is more acceptance of the new
climate denial.
There is a really important message. Science won that first battle.
Scientists, journalists, politicians, communicators have persuaded and
explained to the public and young people that climate change is real.
But the opponents of action on climate change have opened a new front.
It’s vital that this message is heard by the climate advocacy movement,
because we’re going to have to refocus our efforts, our counter
narratives, our resources on explaining why climate solutions are
viable, how we can save our planet and save our ecosystems.
*
CURWOOD: What do these videos look like; how do they feel? What kind of
strategies are these YouTubers using to make their information seem legit?
*AHMED: They bring on “experts.” They have the appearance of academic or
research neutrality, they have visuals, graphs. Sometimes the presenters
even wear a tweed jacket to make it look as though they’re erudite—it’s
a trick I have used in the past myself. And cherry-picked data, which is
not representative of the whole. So all the tricks that you expect from
shysters and snake oil salesmen.
It’s a toxic melange of lies and truth that make it very difficult to
discern what on earth is going on, often delivered at a fevered pace
that, if you’re trying to fact check it, you’re overwhelmed by the next
lie before you’ve even managed to consume or work out the truth behind
the last lie.
It’s a sophisticated industry, and they learn from each other. They
learn from other sectors. There is an enormous amount of disinformation
around public health, around vaccines. One of the things that we always
find with this is that there is an asymmetry when it comes to
disinformation. It takes no effort at all. It takes no science, it takes
no education, it takes no thinking to actually come up with a lie. The
problem is that debunking that lie often requires effort, expertise and
resources.
And so you get this asymmetric tidal wave of disinformation, in
particular on social media, because social media is the environment
where bad actors can promulgate, can spread this disinformation, these
lies, very easily. But also, ironically, they get amplification, and
they get economic reward for it. So they get amplification because
people engage with that content, often in anger, saying this is
nonsense. But that actually signals to the platform, this is
high-engagement material, and they publish it to more and more people
and more and more timelines.
Second, the platforms like YouTube in our study, place ads on this
content. Those ads make money for YouTube, millions of dollars a year,
in spreading disinformation about climate, but also for the producers as
well, who get a take of all of that. So actually, there is this sick
industry that is profiting from making people feel there is no hope on
climate change.
*
CURWOOD: What kind of money are we talking about, with the millions of
dollars of ads in social media?
*AHMED: Just looking at the 100 channels that we studied—and there are
thousands more, of course—but of the 100 that we studied, which was
12,000 videos and 4,000 hours of content, that’s worth around $13.4
million, we estimated, a year. That’s using figures which are freely
available—how much an ad costs, how often those ads appear, et cetera,
et cetera. We don’t know precisely what the split is, but it’s about
55-45, 60-40, for the content creator and the platform. So both of them
are profiting lavishly from this kind of content. These numbers are a
very, very small estimate of the channels we looked at. We could be
talking about a $100 million to $200 million industry in total.
*
CURWOOD: Did you look at the advertising on Facebook or other social
media that’s out there?
*AHMED: This initial study was based on YouTube because it’s a platform
that we were able to study using this tool very easily. However, we are
absolutely certain that this is happening not just on Meta platforms, so
on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok—but also on X, which is owned by
Elon Musk, a man who recently claimed that no human being on Earth has
done more for the planet than he has, but at the same time runs a
platform that is rife with disinformation about climate, and that is
helping to undermine the consensus that we need for action to be taken
to mitigate climate change.*
CURWOOD: What about the issue of censorship? I mean, everyone does have
a right to free speech, not the right to shout “fire” in a crowded
theater, but we have pretty strong free speech rights. Where do you
think the limits should be set on this kind of information?
*AHMED: Everyone has absolutely the right to hold opinions, no matter
how ridiculous or counterfactual they are. People can post it if they
want to. But not everyone has a constitutional right to profit from it,
nor do they have a right to have a megaphone handed to them so that they
can scream it to a billion people.
And that’s the issue here. Censorship is about the government saying
that you’re not allowed to say something. A private company has every
right to say, ‘I’m not gonna give you money for the content that you’ve
just produced.’ That’s not censorship. That’s just not paying people for
what they say. And so this isn’t a question of censorship. This is a
question of rewards.
In the past, what YouTube has said—and this is their own rules, not my
rules—is that they will not put ads on, nor will they amplify climate
denial content that goes against the scientific consensus on climate
change.
What we found was, first of all, that they’re not sufficiently enforcing
that policy. And they responded to our study by saying, whoops, you’re
right, we’d better take the ads off these videos that you found.
Second, we’ve said they should extend their policy, which only applies
to the old denial, to the new denial, too. You simply cannot be calling
yourself a green company, and then commit the stultifying hypocrisy of
both profiting from and amplifying to billions [of users] climate denial
content.
*
CURWOOD: To what extent can government play a role here in cleaning up
social media? And to what extent is this just something that the free
market is going to have to do?
*AHMED: Governments can mandate transparency of companies, so they
explain how their algorithms and content enforcement rules work. They
can explain how their economics work, how the advertising works, so we
have more understanding of that as well. Advertisers often don’t know
where ads are appearing. Do you know what sorts of organizations were
appearing on these climate denial videos? The United Nations High
Commission for Refugees, Save the Children, the International Rescue
Committee. Three bodies which are dedicated to dealing with climate
change were accidentally having their ads appearing on these climate
denial videos. And they will be furious. I think that when the market
has more transparency, when people identify problems, as our research
does, then I think that people will take action.
Living on Earth reached out to YouTube for comment and received a
response from a YouTube spokesperson that reads in part: “Our climate
change policy prohibits ads from running on content that contradicts
well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of
climate change.” The full statement is on the Living on Earth website.
*https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27012024/youtube-climate-denialism/
/[The news archive - BIG Calif oil spill ]/
/*January 28, 1969 */
January 28, 1969: *The notorious Santa Barbara, California oil spill
takes place.*
http://youtu.be/jqd_VTADHzM
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/30/3453277/oil-spill-heard-round-the-world/
- --
*1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill (Stories of the Spill - Documentary, Full
Length)*
Our Story Your Story
2012 Stories of the Spill
How Santa Barbara's Beach Catastrophe
Became a Lesson in Democracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqd_VTADHzM
=== Other climate news sources ===========================================
**Inside Climate News*
Newsletters
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or
once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines
deliver the full story, for free.
https://insideclimatenews.org/
---------------------------------------
**Climate Nexus* https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News summarizes the
most important climate and energy news of the day, delivering an
unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant reporting. It also provides
original reporting and commentary on climate denial and pro-polluter
activity that would otherwise remain largely unexposed. 5 weekday
=================================
*Carbon Brief Daily https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up*
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief
sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of
subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours
of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our
pick of the key studies published in the peer-reviewed journals.
more at https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief
==================================
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