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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>October 28, 2020</b></font></i></p>
<p>[Biden makes ~5 min video]<br>
<b>Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution & Environmental
Justice | Joe Biden for President</b><br>
Jun 4, 2019<br>
Joe Biden<br>
From coastal towns to rural farms to urban centers, climate change
poses an existential threat – not just to our environment, but to
our health, our communities, our national security, and our
economic well-being. Vice President Biden knows there is no
greater challenge facing our country and our world. Today, he is
outlining a bold plan – a Clean Energy Revolution – to address
this grave threat and lead the world in addressing the climate
emergency<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku7uZ0Gok2g&feature=emb_logo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku7uZ0Gok2g&feature=emb_logo</a><br>
</p>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
[Opinion clips from Dave Roberts]<br>
<b>The absurd controversy over Joe Biden's "transition away from the
oil industry"</b><br>
Trump wants to make the shift to clean energy sound abrupt and
scary.<br>
By David Roberts - Oct 27, 2020...<br>
- - <br>
Americans want reform as long as it doesn't negatively affect them<br>
Social science suggests that most people, even most politically
active people, don't have particularly well-considered or coherent
views on public policy issues. They vote based on identities and
social affinities. Their opinions on issues are easily swayed by
elite cues or the phrasing of poll questions...<br>
- -<br>
This is why there's an unending argument over whether America is or
isn't a "center-right nation" -- it depends on how you ask America.
More or less everyone wants to improve the collective welfare, but
not at their own expense. Depending on how they are phrased, these
kinds of questions don't so much uncover preexisting opinions as
they guide and shape opinion formation. Trigger thoughts of things
getting better, you'll get good poll results; trigger thoughts of
sacrifice, privation, or unfair burdens, you'll get bad poll
results.<br>
<br>
Democratic politics isn't much different. Reformers pushing for
change guide attention to the collective good that will come of it.
Reactionaries pushing against change guide attention to the risks
and dangers.<br>
<br>
These are not, unfortunately, parallel endeavors. Asking people to
imagine an alternative future calls upon their thinking and
imagination -- their frontal cortex. Asking people to fear change
calls upon something much deeper and older, their brainstem sense
that it's a dangerous world, they're lucky to have what they have,
and any disruption threatens it. The latter, when invoked, tends to
drown out the former. That's why progressive change is so difficult
to muster and so easy to reverse.<br>
<br>
But that's the game in a democracy: changes that can improve
collective circumstances versus the fear of personal loss.<br>
<br>
Making the clean energy transition seem scary<br>
This brings us back to Biden and energy. The core Republican
approach, which they understand at a gut level even if there is no
particular strategic intelligence at work in the Trump era, is to
make change seem scary. They need to make Biden's climate plan seem
abrupt, alien, and threatening. That's why they have resolutely
ignored all the actual policies involved in the Green New Deal and
instead made it a boogeyman, a repository for every conservative
fear. They're going to take your hamburgers and your SUV!<br>
<br>
That's why Republicans are so delighted to make a fracking ban -- a
policy that no president can pass and no Congress would pass -- the
center of discussion. And that's why they are delighted when Biden
says he will transition away from oil. These changes sound sudden
and disruptive; they draw attention to what will be lost, not to
what will take its place. They define a playing field favorable to
Republicans.<br>
- -<br>
In the meantime, the more specific lesson for climate advocates is
that, in the home stretch of this election, Biden needs room to
maneuver. His election depends on the whims of a few marginal voters
in a few swing states, some of them living in places where fossil
fuel production has unusually high salience. He needs votes from
union households that do some of the very work he's talking about
phasing out.<br>
<br>
He needs to reassure them that the clean energy transition will not
be abrupt and destructive; nothing will be banned or shut down
overnight. It will unfold gradually, and as it does, new investments
will reach their communities and new industries will rise to make
use of their skills.<br>
<br>
The transition will not come at their expense or leave them behind.
They have a place in it.<br>
<br>
This inclusiveness is a foundational part of Biden's plan and, more
broadly, core to the spirit of the Green New Deal and the recent
Democratic alignment on climate policy. It would immeasurably aid
public understanding if more people explained that vision of a
managed, inclusive transition and fewer nitpicked Biden's latest
attempt to articulate it.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21531494/joe-biden-oil-industry-clean-energy-transition-trump">https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21531494/joe-biden-oil-industry-clean-energy-transition-trump</a><br>
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<p><br>
</p>
[be sure to vote]<br>
<b>As Election Nears, Trump Makes a Final Push Against Climate
Science</b><br>
The administration is imposing new limits on the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration that would undercut action against
global warming.<br>
By Christopher Flavelle and Lisa Friedman<br>
Oct. 27, 2020<br>
<br>
WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration has recently removed the
chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the nation's premier scientific agency, installed
new political staff who have questioned accepted facts about climate
change and imposed stricter controls on communications at the
agency.<br>
<br>
The moves threaten to stifle a major source of objective United
States government information about climate change that underpins
federal rules on greenhouse gas emissions and offer an indication of
the direction the agency will take if President Trump wins
re-election.<br>
<br>
An early sign of the shift came last month, when Erik Noble, a
former White House policy adviser who had just been appointed NOAA's
chief of staff, removed Craig McLean, the agency's acting chief
scientist.<br>
<br>
Mr. McLean had sent some of the new political appointees a message
that asked them to acknowledge the agency's scientific integrity
policy, which prohibits manipulating research or presenting
ideologically driven findings...<br>
The request prompted a sharp response from Dr. Noble. "Respectfully,
by what authority are you sending this to me?" he wrote, according
to a person who received a copy of the exchange after it was
circulated within NOAA.<br>
<br>
Mr. McLean answered that his role as acting chief scientist made him
responsible for ensuring that the agency's rules on scientific
integrity were followed.<br>
<br>
The following morning, Dr. Noble responded. "You no longer serve as
the acting chief scientist for NOAA," he informed Mr. McLean, adding
that a new chief scientist had already been appointed. "Thank you
for your service."<br>
<br>
It was not the first time NOAA had drawn the administration's
attention. Last year, the agency's weather forecasters came under
pressure for contradicting Mr. Trump's false statements about the
path of Hurricane Dorian.<br>
<br>
But in an administration where even uttering the words "climate
change" is dangerous, NOAA has, so far, remained remarkably
independent in its ability to conduct research about and publicly
discuss changes to the Earth's climate. It also still maintains
numerous public websites that declare, in direct opposition to Mr.
Trump, that climate change is occurring, is overwhelmingly caused by
humans, and presents a serious threat to the United States.<br>
Replacing Mr. McLean, who remains at the agency, was Ryan Maue, a
former researcher for the libertarian Cato Institute who has
criticized climate scientists for what he has called unnecessarily
dire predictions.<br>
<br>
Dr. Maue, a research meteorologist, and Dr. Noble were joined at
NOAA by David Legates, a professor at the University of Delaware's
geography department who has questioned human-caused global warming.
Dr. Legates was appointed to the position of deputy assistant
secretary, a role that did not previously exist.<br>
<br>
Neil Jacobs, the NOAA administrator, was not involved in the
hirings, according to two people familiar with the selection
process.<br>
<br>
The agency did not respond to requests for comment and a request to
make the new officials available for an interview.<br>
<br>
NOAA officials have tried to get information about what role the new
political staff members would play and what their objectives might
be, with little success. According to people close to the
administration who have questioned climate science, though, their
primary goal is to undercut the National Climate Assessment.<br>
<br>
The assessment, a report from 13 federal agencies and outside
scientists led by NOAA, which the government is required by law to
produce every four years, is the premier American contribution to
knowledge about climate risks and serves as the foundation for
federal regulations to combat global warming. The latest report, in
2018, found that climate change poses an imminent and dire threat to
the United States and its economy...<br>
"The real issue at play is the National Climate Assessment," said
Judith Curry, a former chairwoman of the School of Earth and
Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology who said
she has been in contact with Dr. Maue, the new chief scientist.
"That's what the powers that be are trying to influence."<br>
<br>
In addition to Dr. Curry, the strategy was described by Myron Ebell,
a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a former
member of Mr. Trump's transition team, and John Christy, a professor
of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.<br>
<br>
Dr. Christy, a critic of past National Climate Assessments, said he
was asked by the White House this summer to take on a senior role at
NOAA, according to E&E News, but declined the offer. He said he
understood the role to include changing the agency's approach to the
climate assessment.<br>
<br>
Ms. Curry and the others said that, if Mr. Trump wins re-election,
further changes at NOAA would include removing longtime authors of
the climate assessment and adding new ones who challenge the degree
to which warming is occurring, the extent to which it is caused by
human activities and the danger it poses to human health, national
security and the economy.<br>
<br>
A biased or diminished climate assessment would have wide-ranging
implications.<br>
<br>
It could be used in court to bolster the positions of fossil fuel
companies being sued for climate damages. It could counter
congressional efforts to reduce carbon emissions. And, it ultimately
could weaken what is known as the "endangerment finding," a 2009
scientific finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that said
greenhouse gases endanger public health and thus obliged the federal
government to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air
Act.<br>
<br>
Other changes could include shifting NOAA funding to researchers who
reject the established scientific consensus on climate change and
eliminating the use of certain scientific models that project dire
consequences for the planet if countries do little to reduce carbon
dioxide pollution.<br>
<br>
Dr. Noble, the new chief of staff, has already pushed to install a
new layer of scrutiny on grants that NOAA awards for climate
research, according to people familiar with those discussions.<br>
Meaningfully changing the National Climate Assessment's findings
would be hard to accomplish, according to Brenda Ekwurzel, director
of climate science for the Union of Concerned Scientists and
co-author of a chapter in the latest edition of the report.<br>
<br>
Still, Dr. Ekwurzel said NOAA's role leading the report is vital and
added that any attempt to undermine climate research for political
purposes would threaten public safety and economic growth. "You need
to have a well-functioning scientific enterprise," she said. "The
more we back away from that, the more we erode our democracy."<br>
<br>
Most of the changes at NOAA could be reversed by the next president,
officials say, making next week's election a referendum on the
future of the agency.<br>
<br>
The dissonance between NOAA's work and Mr. Trump's dismissiveness
toward climate change became clear at the end of 2018, with the
publication of the latest installment of the National Climate
Assessment. The report put Mr. Trump in the awkward position of
disavowing the findings of his own government. "I don't believe it,"
the president said of the economic assessment in the report.<br>
<br>
But for the president's advisers, the climate assessment posed a
greater problem than being mildly embarrassing. It threatened the
administration's policy aims, because its conclusions about the
threat of climate change made it harder, from a legal perspective,
for the administration to justify rolling back limits of greenhouse
gas emissions.<br>
<br>
Mr. Ebell and another former member of Mr. Trump's transition team,
Steven J. Milloy, said they expected that Dr. Legates in particular
would steer the next National Climate Assessment in a sharply
different direction. They said Dr. Legates intended to question the
models that NOAA scientists use to predict the future rate of
warming and its effects on precipitation. Climate denialists broadly
say the models used by scientists are flawed.<br>
That could ultimately make the endangerment finding, the scientific
and legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gas emissions,
vulnerable. As recently as July, Mr. Legates explained the
connection himself: In an op-ed for Townhall, a conservative
website, he noted that the science that underpins the endangerment
finding relies primarily on the National Climate Assessment and
claimed the models employed by its authors "systematically
overestimate" warming.<br>
<br>
Officials at NOAA also say they fear that the new staffers will
bring more climate denialists into the agency and push out
scientists who object. They cite an executive order Mr. Trump signed
last week making it easier to hire and fire civil servants involved
in setting policy.<br>
<br>
The spate of new appointees isn't the only example of growing
political constraints.<br>
<br>
In August, a few weeks before the new political staff began arriving
at NOAA, the Commerce Department, which oversees NOAA and a handful
of other agencies, issued a surprise memorandum: All internal and
external communications must be approved by political staff at the
department at least three days before being issued. The restrictions
applied to social media posts, news releases and even agencywide
emails.<br>
<br>
The new policy meant that Dr. Jacobs, the NOAA administrator, could
no longer send messages to his own staff members without having them
cleared from above. The goal of the policy was to make sure all
communications "serve the needs of your employees and mission while
aligning with the over-arching guidance from the White House and
Department," the memo said.<br>
<br>
"I think that until recently NOAA has been mostly spared the
political interference with science that we've seen as a hallmark
across this administration," said Jane Lubchenco, who served as NOAA
administrator in the Obama administration.<br>
<br>
"That integrity and the credibility that it brings are threatened by
these recent appointments," Dr. Lubchenco said. "The positions that
these individuals are in gives them the perfect opportunity to
suppress, distort and cherry-pick information to make it whatever
the party line is."<br>
<br>
Christopher Flavelle focuses on how people, governments and
industries try to cope with the effects of global warming. He
received a 2018 National Press Foundation award for coverage of the
federal government's struggles to deal with flooding. @cflav<br>
<br>
Lisa Friedman reports on federal climate and environmental policy
from Washington. She has broken multiple stories about the Trump
administration's efforts to repeal climate change regulations and
limit the use of science in policymaking. @LFFriedman<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/climate/trump-election-climate-noaa.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/climate/trump-election-climate-noaa.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[August report - negligible impact]<br>
<b>Current and future global climate impacts resulting from COVID-19</b><br>
<b>Abstract</b><br>
The global response to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sudden
reduction of both GHG emissions and air pollutants. Here, using
national mobility data, we estimate global emission reductions for
ten species during the period February to June 2020. We estimate
that global NOx emissions declined by as much as 30% in April,
contributing a short-term cooling since the start of the year. This
cooling trend is offset by ~20% reduction in global SO2 emissions
that weakens the aerosol cooling effect, causing short-term warming.
As a result, we estimate that the direct effect of the
pandemic-driven response will be negligible, with a cooling of
around 0.01 ± 0.005 °C by 2030 compared to a baseline scenario that
follows current national policies. In contrast, with an economic
recovery tilted towards green stimulus and reductions in fossil fuel
investments, it is possible to avoid future warming of 0.3 °C by
2050.<br>
image graph -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0883-0/figures/2">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0883-0/figures/2</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0883-0">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0883-0</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[difficult opinion - animated video]<br>
<b>Geoengineering: A Horrible Idea We Might Have to Do</b><br>
Oct 27, 2020<br>
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSu5sXmsur4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSu5sXmsur4</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[audio interview with Mike Roddy]<br>
<b>Rethinking How We Build Homes In Fire-Prone Areas</b><br>
We can trim forests, regulate activities that cause sparks and
flames, and clean out the underbrush around our houses. But we can't
stop the wind from blowing, and that turned out to be a huge factor
in the devastating fires of September.<br>
<br>
With thousands of homes destroyed, it's time for a chat about how we
build our houses. Mike Roddy at Butte Built Better advocates
building homes with steel studs, not wood, and making homes
fire-resistant in other ways.<br>
<br>
He is making the case alongside Dominick DellaSalla, forest expert
and chief scientist at Wild Heritage, who has studied wildfire
extensively. They visit to talk about not repeating the practices of
the past.<br>
<br>
Mike says you are welcome to contact him: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:mike.greenframe@gmail.com">mike.greenframe@gmail.com</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.ijpr.org/show/the-jefferson-exchange/2020-10-15/fri-8-am-rethinking-how-we-build-homes-in-fire-prone-areas">https://www.ijpr.org/show/the-jefferson-exchange/2020-10-15/fri-8-am-rethinking-how-we-build-homes-in-fire-prone-areas</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
October 28, 2006 </b></font><br>
<p>Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) urge
ExxonMobil to stop funding climate-change-denying think tanks.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20130303200905/http://www.rockefeller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=87f3ae3b-0f0d-44ee-af03-9080592901a4">http://web.archive.org/web/20130303200905/http://www.rockefeller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=87f3ae3b-0f0d-44ee-af03-9080592901a4</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
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