[✔️] Jan 31, 2024 Global Warming News | Risk evidence since 1954, Climate journalist info, Jan storm 104 years ago, Climate reality comedy, 1998 President Clinton radio address C-SPAN

[Richard Pauli]

/*January*//*31, 2024*/

/[ Evidence found of clear risk ]/
*‘Smoking gun proof’: fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as 
early as 1954, documents show
*Oliver Milman
@olliemilman
Tue 30 Jan 2024*/
/**Documents show industry-backed Air Pollution Foundation uncovered the 
severe harm climate change would wreak
*
The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational 
climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, 
including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the 
so-called “Keeling curve” that has charted the upward march of the 
Earth’s carbon dioxide levels.

A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 
(about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s 
earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the 
documents reveal.

Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global 
CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This “Keeling curve” has 
tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon that drives the 
climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important 
scientific works of modern times.*/
/*
The fossil fuel interests backed a group, known as the Air Pollution 
Foundation, that issued funding to Keeling to measure CO2 alongside a 
related effort to research the smog that regularly blighted Los Angeles 
at the time. This is earlier than any previously known climate research 
funded by oil companies.

In the research proposal for the money – uncovered by Rebecca John, a 
researcher at the Climate Investigations Center, and published by the 
climate website DeSmog – Keeling’s research director, Samuel Epstein, 
wrote about a new carbon isotope analysis that could identify “changes 
in the atmosphere” caused by the burning of coal and petroleum.

“The possible consequences of a changing concentration of the CO2 in the 
atmosphere with reference to climate, rates of photosynthesis, and rates 
of equilibration with carbonate of the oceans may ultimately prove of 
considerable significance to civilization,” Epstein, a researcher at the 
California Institute of Technology (or Caltech), wrote to the group in 
November 1954.

Experts say the documents show the fossil fuel industry had intimate 
involvement in the inception of modern climate science, along with its 
warnings of the severe harm climate change will wreak, only to then 
publicly deny this science for decades and fund ongoing efforts to delay 
action on the climate crisis.

“They contain smoking gun proof that by at least 1954, the fossil fuel 
industry was on notice about the potential for its products to disrupt 
Earth’s climate on a scale significant to human civilization,” said 
Geoffrey Supran, an expert in historic climate disinformation at the 
University of Miami.

“These findings are a startling confirmation that big oil has had its 
finger on the pulse of academic climate science for 70 years – for twice 
my lifetime – and a reminder that it continues to do so to this day. 
They make a mockery of the oil industry’s denial of basic climate 
science decades later.”

Previous investigations of public and private records have found that 
major oil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the 
consequences of burning their product, often to an uncannily accurate 
degree – a study last year found that Exxon scientists made 
“breathtakingly” accurate predictions of global heating in the 1970s and 
1980s.

The newly discovered documents now show the industry knew of CO2’s 
potential climate impact as early as 1954 via, strikingly, the work of 
Keeling, then a 26-year-old Caltech researcher conducting formative work 
measuring CO2 levels across California and the waters of the Pacific 
ocean. There is no suggestion that oil and gas funding distorted his 
research in any way.

The findings of this work would lead the US scientist to further 
experiments upon the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii that were to provide a 
continual status report of the world’s dangerously-rising carbon dioxide 
composition.

Keeling died in 2005 but his seminal work lives on. Currently, the 
Earth’s atmospheric CO2 level is 422 parts per million, which is nearly 
a third higher than the first reading taken in 1958, and a 50% jump on 
pre-industrial levels.

This essential tracking of the primary heat-trapping gas that has pushed 
global temperatures to higher than ever previously experienced in human 
civilization was born, in part, due to the backing of the Air Pollution 
Foundation.

A total of 18 automotive companies, including Ford, Chrysler and General 
Motors, gave money to the foundation. Other entities, including banks 
and retailers, also contributed funding.

Separately, a 1959 memo identifies the American Petroleum Institute 
(API), the US’s leading oil and gas lobbying body, and the Western Oil 
and Gas Association, now known as the Western States Petroleum 
Association, as “major contributors to the funds of the Air Pollution 
Foundation”. It’s not clear exactly when API started funding the 
foundation but it had a representative on a research committee from 
mid-1955 onwards.

A policy statement of the Air Pollution Foundation from 1955 calls the 
problem of air pollution, which is caused by the emissions of cars, 
trucks and industrial facilities, “one of the most serious confronting 
urban areas in California and elsewhere” and that the issue will be 
addressed via “diligent and honest fact finding, by wise and effective 
action”.

The unearthed documents come from the Caltech archives, the US National 
Archives, the University of California at San Diego and Los Angeles 
newspapers from the 1950s, and represent what may be the first instance 
of the fossil fuel industry being informed of the potentially dire 
consequences of its business model.

The oil and gas industry was initially concerned with research related 
to smog and other direct air pollutants before branching out into 
related climate change impacts, according to Carroll Muffett, chief 
executive of the Center for International Environmental Law.

“You just come back to the oil and gas industry again and again, they 
were omnipresent in this space,” he said. “The industry was not just on 
notice but deeply aware of the potential climate implications of its 
products for going on 70 years.”

Muffett said the documents add further impetus to efforts in various 
jurisdictions to hold oil and gas firms legally liable for the damages 
caused by the climate crisis.

“These documents talk about CO2 emissions having planetary implications, 
meaning this industry understood extraordinarily early on that fossil 
fuel combustion was profound on a planetary scale,” he said.

“There is overwhelming evidence the oil and gas industry has been 
misleading the public and regulators around the climate risks of their 
product for 70 years. Trusting them to be part of the solutions is 
foolhardy. We’ve now moved into an era of accountability.”

API and Ralph Keeling, Charles’s son who is also a scientist, were 
contacted for comment about the documents but did not respond.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/30/fossil-fuel-industry-air-pollution-fund-research-caltech-climate-change-denial

*/
/*

/
/

/[ briefing on climate ]/
*Press Briefing: The Climate Story in 2024*
Covering Climate Now
Jan 30, 2024
To cover climate change well in 2024, journalists need clarity on the 
most significant forces affecting the world’s ability to address the 
climate emergency in time. Among them: the biggest election year in 
history in which roughly 4 billion people have the chance to vote; key 
factors hindering a phaseout of fossil fuels and expansion of green 
energy; and the dangers of proliferating disinformation.
PANELISTS:

    Mustafa Santiago Ali, Executive Vice President of Conservation &
    Justice at the National Wildlife Federation
    Bill McKibben, journalist and activist
    Amy Westervelt, investigative climate journalist and founder of
    Critical Frequency
    Mark Hertsgaard, CCNow's executive director, moderated.

Covering Climate Now is a global journalism collaboration, co-founded by 
Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation magazine, encouraging more and 
better climate coverage. Learn more: https://coveringclimatenow.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L25zi3D6CPc



/[ 104 years ago a January storm blew down more trees than the eruption 
of Mt St Helens - winds of 150 mph ]/
*The "Big Blow" of 1921*
The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Jan 29, 2024  #history #thehistoryguy #Weather
The event called “The Big Blow” or “The Great Olympic Blowdown” felled 
eight times as many trees as the eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980.
- -
This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in 
the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration.  As 
very few images of the actual event are available in the Public Domain, 
images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.
- -
All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational 
purposes. No images or content are primarily intended to shock and 
disgust. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. 
Non censuram.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEp9Rj2RfVY



/[ Professor professes ]/
*Climate scientist Mark Maslin: ‘We have all the technology we need to 
move to a cleaner, renewable world’*
Shaoni Bhattacharya
The professor of Earth system science on the hottest year on record, 
using humour – with a little help from Jo Brand – to get his message 
across, and why there are reasons to be positive
Sun 28 Jan 2024
Prof Mark Maslin studies climate change and human impacts as professor 
of Earth system science at University College London (UCL) and the 
Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. He recently partnered 
with the comedian Jo Brand in an online film to “translate” climate 
science for a wider audience. He is one of the lead organisers of Love 
Your Planet with Al Gore’s charity, the Climate Reality Project, and the 
Climate Cafe at UCL on 14 February.

*We’ve just heard officially that 2023 was the world’s hottest year, and 
that we are likely to breach the temperature rise limit of 1.5C warming 
above pre-industrial levels in the next 12 months. What are your 
thoughts on that?*
Last year being the hottest on record was something we knew was going to 
happen at the end of 2023. Two hundred of the 365 days last year were 
the hottest ever recorded for that particular day, which gives some idea 
of how huge this was. The temperature is 1.48C above the pre-industrial 
– close to the 1.5C limit [for this century] that was set up by the 
Paris agreement in 2016 – so we are worryingly close to it. We also know 
that El Niño [a natural weather pattern] is starting in the Pacific 
Ocean and always adds some warming. So in 2024, we could break the 1.5C 
limit temporarily.
*Last year we saw many extreme weather events: heatwaves, wildfires and 
floods – can we expect more of the same in 2024?*
In 2023, there were over 220 extreme climate events. There was a 30% 
increase in fatalities caused by climate events on the previous year. We 
saw massive heatwaves in North America, southern Europe, China and Asia. 
We also saw wildfires. And lots of underreported events. For example, 
east Africa had huge long droughts and catastrophic flooding. There was 
no continent that was not affected by extreme weather events – and our 
ability to cope with them is getting less. A lot of people have said to 
me: “Oh it was a rubbish summer in the UK.” We had the hottest July on 
record. We had a slightly warmer than average August, and it was the 
second hottest year ever recorded in the UK. But because people are now 
expecting southern England to be like the French Riviera, if we don’t 
have 30C weather in August they go: “Ooh it’s not a good summer.” No. We 
shouldn’t be having summers like that. Ever. Two years ago we had a 40C 
heatwave in London, which had us climatologists with our jaws on the 
ground. We were predicting [40C] for the 2040s… The expectation of many 
climatologists, including myself, is that 2024 could be hotter than 
2023, and with more extreme weather events as El Niño really takes hold.
*You’re a professor of Earth system science at UCL – tell me about your 
main research?*
I study climate change in the past, present and future. My research is 
incredibly wide ranging: I study early human evolution in east Africa, 
the evolution of the Anthropocene and how human impact has changed 
through history, and the impacts of climate change on society now and in 
the future. I also look at resource crises in the future.

*You and your colleagues released a study on private jet flights and the 
carbon footprint estimates of travel to the Cop climate meetings just 
before Cop28 in Dubai last month. What were your findings?*
We looked at all private jet flights to Cop26 and 27. We are working on 
Cop28 now and will be releasing that at the end of this year. What we’re 
not trying to say is world leaders have to go on commercial jets – 
because we want them to turn up to Cop meetings – but what we are saying 
is maybe all 100,000 people at Cop28 didn’t need to be there. Please 
don’t get me wrong: Cops are really important. This is a place where 198 
countries come together as equals. So when you have a statement that 
says we are going to transition away from fossil fuels – which is signed 
by everybody – it has real weight.
*You recently featured in a short online film for Climate Science 
Breakthrough with comedian Jo Brand – who translated your words to get 
the message across. For example, her interpretation of governments 
giving subsidies to fossil fuel companies was: “Even the dinosaurs 
didn’t subsidise their own extinctions; who’s the stupid species now?”*
Jo Brand is an amazing person. We have very similar views and 
backgrounds. She worked for the NHS; most of my family work in the NHS… 
We have similar political views. When my mother was alive she loved 
telling the story of when she was pregnant with me and she had to drag 
the coal home because they couldn’t afford to have it delivered. That 
tells you, one: that we were poor. And two: we had a coal fire, not 
central heating. So growing up in that sort of austerity means that Jo 
and I have a connection. There’s one point in the film where we’d been 
chatting about how we could make Britain better and Jo turned and said: 
“Oh Mark, I really think you should be prime minister.” And I said: “Jo, 
do I really want that job?” And she went: “Yeah, maybe not.” I said: 
“How about we do it together?” And she said: “Oh that’s a good idea!” 
And it was that comedy gold, that lovely rapport, which I think comes over.

*Might you be looking at a career in comedy?*
No, I’m very happy to be the straight man! This communication of climate 
change, human impact on the world etc is incredibly depressing and can 
make people feel powerless. So there is always a little bit of humour 
running through everything I do. Also I try to talk about positives. 
Because in climate change there are so many solutions: things that we 
should be doing anyway. So renewable energy, guess what? We get much 
cleaner air, which means that we have less loss of life due to things 
like asthma and chest infections. Yes, tick, tick, tick. We have energy 
security because it’s our own energy so we don’t have all these 
incredible price rises. Fossil fuels are 19th- and 20th-century 
technologies. We have incredible technology now. Therefore, why don’t we 
move into the 21st century and make things better?

*Is there room for climate optimism then?*
We have all the technology we need to move to a cleaner, renewable 
world. All the stats are showing incredible growth: we have exponential 
growth in solar, wind, EV batteries, which is all fantastic. We also 
have politics – 90% of the world’s economy says it will be net zero some 
time this century. That’s huge. We are transitioning away from fossil 
fuels. It should have been 30 years ago, but it’s now. The signalling is 
great, but we have to do it faster.

*You’re organising a “Love Your Planet” event at UCL next month. What 
does it involve?*
The Climate Reality Project has got together with UCL to produce a day 
of panels, talks and networking on the green transition. How do we get 
business, politicians, academics and activists all working together to 
make this happen quicker? We also have hopefully a few positive words 
from Al Gore himself, in a short video introduction. It’s on Valentine’s 
Day. If you have a loved one and you’ve forgotten, I will be reminding 
you that you should at least text – even without Jo Brand, I’m using 
humour to try to engage people, and to think about their relationship 
with their loved ones, but also with their planet, which is their home. 
And it’s the only one we have. Just like we nurture our relationships 
with other people, we really should be nurturing our relationship with 
our own planet.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/28/climate-scientist-mark-maslin-we-have-all-the-technology-we-need-to-move-to-a-cleaner-renewable-world
-- -
/[ Here they are -- YouTube videos ]/
*Jo Brand translates Prof Mark Maslin's climate speak*
Mark Maslin
Dec 3, 2023  #climatechange #environment #greenhousegases
Climate Science Breakthrough presents Jo Brand, famous comedian, 
traslating Prof. Mark Maslin's climate change science for the masses
#climatechange #environment #greenhousegases
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyrJzWVefpQ

- -

*Mark Maslin x Jo Brand | Climate Science Translated NSFW*
Climate Science Breakthrough
  Nov 23, 2023
Comedian Jo Brand helps Professor Mark Maslin spell out the actual risks 
of climate change, pulling zero punches, and using highly unscientific 
language throughout. The film is part of an ongoing project to help the 
climate science cut through to the public.
climatesciencebreakthrough.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxLvTF_9jv4



/[The news archive - President Clinton    ]/
/*January 31, 1998 */
January 31, 1998: In his weekly radio address, President Clinton declares:

    "The world's leading climate scientists have concluded,
    unequivocally, that if we don't reduce the emissions of greenhouse
    gases into the atmosphere all across the Earth, then the temperature
    of the Earth will heat up, seas will rise, and increasingly severe
    floods and droughts will occur, disrupting life in low coastal
    areas, disrupting agricultural production, and causing other
    difficulties for the generations of the 21st century. Fortunately,
    we can avert these dangers and do it while keeping our economy going
    strong."

http://www.c-span.org/video/?99478-1/PresidentialRadioAddress172


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