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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>November 28, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[Wall Street Journal $]<br>
<b>States Explored Litigation to Challenge U.S. Policy on Climate
Change</b><br>
Options included getting courts to require federal action to reduce
emissions of greenhouse gases, documents show<br>
By Timothy Puko - Nov. 28, 2020 <br>
WASHINGTON—Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states at odds with the
Trump administration on climate-change policy joined forces last
year to explore using the courts to secure federal mandates on
greenhouse-gas emissions, according to records and interviews.<br>
<br>
The coalition agreed to cooperate in planning litigation against the
federal government and consulted with former Environmental
Protection Agency officials as part of the discussions, according to
documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people involved in
the...<br>
- -<br>
The initiative lost momentum in recent months, some of these people
said, amid fears of an uphill fight in federal court and because
state leaders wanted to await results of the Nov. 3 election , which
saw Democrat Joe Biden defeat President Trump. Some lawyers and
people involved expect that these states are now more likely to
focus on advancing their own policies rather than launching federal
litigation. Even so, the plans speak to how aggressive state
governments have become in their efforts to sway Washington.
Presidents have faced increasing opposition from state attorneys
general from the opposite political party, and many expect
Republican-led states to continue the trend with challenges to
President-elect Biden's agenda. How actively do you want your
state's attorney general to be trying to influence federal
policy?... <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/states-explored-litigation-to-challenge-u-s-policy-on-climate-change-11606559400">https://www.wsj.com/articles/states-explored-litigation-to-challenge-u-s-policy-on-climate-change-11606559400</a><br>
- - <br>
[other documents]<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/greenhousegovernance_chapter.pdf">https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/greenhousegovernance_chapter.pdf</a><br>
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<p><br>
</p>
[glimpses of a battlefield of misinformation]<br>
<b>How the oil industry made us doubt climate change</b><br>
By Phoebe Keane<br>
BBC News<br>
Published19 September<br>
- -<br>
To understand what's happening today, we need to go back nearly 40
years.<br>
<br>
Marty Hoffert leaned closer to his computer screen. He couldn't
quite believe what he was seeing. It was 1981, and he was working in
an area of science considered niche.<br>
<br>
"We were just a group of geeks with some great computers," he says
now, recalling that moment.<br>
<br>
But his findings were alarming.<br>
<br>
"I created a model that showed the Earth would be warming very
significantly. And the warming would introduce climatic changes that
would be unprecedented in human history. That blew my mind."<br>
Marty Hoffert was one of the first scientists to create a model
which predicted the effects of man-made climate change. And he did
so while working for Exxon, one of the world's largest oil
companies, which would later merge with another, Mobil.<br>
<br>
At the time Exxon was spending millions of dollars on
ground-breaking research. It wanted to lead the charge as scientists
grappled with the emerging understanding that the warming planet
could cause the climate to change in ways that could make life
pretty difficult for humans.<br>
<br>
Hoffert shared his predictions with his managers, showing them what
might happen if we continued burning fossil fuels in our cars,
trucks and planes...<br>
- -<br>
The tobacco companies may have eventually lost their battle to hide
the harms of smoking, but the blueprint drawn up by John Hill and
his colleagues proved to be very effective.<br>
<br>
"What he wrote is the same memo we have seen in multiple industries
subsequently," says David Michaels, professor of public health at
George Washington University, and author of The Triumph of Doubt,
which details how the pesticides, plastics and sugar industries have
also used these tactics.<br>
<br>
"We called it 'the tobacco playbook', because the tobacco industry
was so successful.<br>
<br>
"They made a product that killed millions of people across the
world, and the science has been very strong [about that] for many
years, but through this campaign to manufacture uncertainty, they
were able to delay first, formal recognition of the terrible impact
of tobacco, and then delay regulation and defeat litigation for
decades, with obviously terrible consequences."<br>
<br>
We asked Hill and Knowlton about its work for the tobacco companies,
but it did not respond.<br>
<br>
In a statement, ExxonMobil told the BBC that "allegations about the
company's climate research are inaccurate and deliberately
misleading".<br>
<br>
"For more than 40 years, we have supported development of climate
science in partnership with governments and academic institutions.
That work continues today in an open and transparent way.<br>
<br>
"Deliberately cherry-picked statements attributed to a small number
of employees wrongly suggest definitive conclusions were reached
decades ago."<br>
<br>
ExxonMobil added that it recently won the court case brought by the
New York Attorney General which had accused the company of
fraudulently accounting for the costs of climate change regulation.<br>
<br>
But academics like David Michaels fear the use of uncertainty in the
past to confuse the public and undermine science has contributed to
a dangerous erosion of trust in facts and experts across the globe
today, far beyond climate science or the dangers of tobacco.<br>
<br>
He cites public attitudes to modern issues like the safety of 5G,
vaccinations - and coronavirus.<br>
<br>
"By cynically manipulating and distorting scientific evidence, the
manufacturers of doubt have seeded in much of the public a cynicism
about science, making it far more difficult to convince people that
science provides useful - in some cases, vitally important -
information.<br>
<br>
"There is no question that this distrust of science and scientists
is making it more difficult to stem the coronavirus pandemic."<br>
<br>
It seems the legacy of "the tobacco playbook" lives on.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382">https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382</a>
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<p><br>
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[2 videos] <br>
<b>Given Abrupt Climate System Change, can we keep our Earth
habitable? Part 1 and 2</b><br>
Nov 26, 2020<br>
Paul Beckwith<br>
We risk an uninhabitable Earth if we allow abrupt climate change to
continue unchecked, at its ever accelerating (even exponential)
pace.<br>
<br>
How do we stabilize our climate? Can we stabilize our planet, or are
we too far gone, as more and more people think?<br>
<br>
Years ago I brought up the concept of a three-legged barstool
approach to stabilize climate. To recap, we need to:<br>
1) Slash fossil-fuelled Greenhouse Gas emissions to zero<br>
2) Pull carbon out of the atmosphere/ocean system. This includes CH4
as well as CO2.<br>
3) Deploy Solar Radiation Management methods to reduce surface
heating to buy us time to do the first two steps. <br>
<br>
There are all kinds of ideas for doing these three steps, and I will
discuss them in detail in future videos. They include things like:
cloud brightening; Iron Salt Aerosols (ISA) which simultaneously
reduces CH4, increases cloud reflectivity, and seeds the ocean with
iron stimulating carbon sucking phytoplankton; injecting sulphur
dioxide in the stratosphere to block some sunlight; regrowing sea
ice in the Arctic (using wind-turbine powered pumps to put sea water
on top of the ice to accelerate freezing, distributing glass
nano-beads onto the ice surface to reduce surface melt, increasing
cloud reflectivity over the Arctic); etc.<br>
<br>
I chat about a recent paper claiming that we have already passed the
tipping point with thawing Arctic permafrost, and even with zeroed
emissions in 2020 (obviously not feasible) we would get additional
warming for centuries.<br>
Part 1 - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbLzWBOyFX0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbLzWBOyFX0</a><br>
Part 2 - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ZQEKnaSL0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ZQEKnaSL0</a><br>
<br>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
November 28, 2014 </b></font><br>
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman observes:<br>
<blockquote>"Of course, polluters will defend their right to
pollute, but why can they count on Republican support? When and
why did the Republican Party become the party of pollution?<br>
<br>
"For it wasn't always thus. The Clean Air Act of 1970, the legal
basis for the Obama administration's environmental actions, passed
the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 73 to 0, and was signed into
law by Richard Nixon. (I've heard veterans of the E.P.A. describe
the Nixon years as a golden age.) A major amendment of the law,
which among other things made possible the cap-and-trade system
that limits acid rain, was signed in 1990 by former President
George H.W. Bush.<br>
<br>
"But that was then. Today's Republican Party is putting a
conspiracy theorist who views climate science as a 'gigantic hoax'
in charge of the Senate's environment committee. And this isn't an
isolated case. Pollution has become a deeply divisive partisan
issue.<br>
<br>
"And the reason pollution has become partisan is that Republicans
have moved right. A generation ago, it turns out, environment
wasn't a partisan issue: according to Pew Research, in 1992 an
overwhelming majority in both parties favored stricter laws and
regulation. Since then, Democratic views haven't changed, but
Republican support for environmental protection has collapsed.<br>
<br>
"So what explains this anti-environmental shift?<br>
<br>
"You might be tempted simply to blame money in politics, and
there's no question that gushers of cash from polluters fuel the
anti-environmental movement at all levels. But this doesn't
explain why money from the most environmentally damaging
industries, which used to flow to both parties, now goes
overwhelmingly in one direction. Take, for example, coal mining.
In the early 1990s, according to the Center for Responsive
Politics, the industry favored Republicans by a modest margin,
giving around 40 percent of its money to Democrats. Today that
number is just 5 percent. Political spending by the oil and gas
industry has followed a similar trajectory. Again, what changed?<br>
<br>
"One answer could be ideology. Textbook economics isn't
anti-environment; it says that pollution should be limited, albeit
in market-friendly ways when possible. But the modern conservative
movement insists that government is always the problem, never the
solution, which creates the will to believe that environmental
problems are fake and environmental policy will tank the economy.<br>
<br>
"My guess, however, is that ideology is only part of the story —
or, more accurately, it's a symptom of the underlying cause of the
divide: rising inequality."<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/opinion/paul-krugman-pollution-and-politics.html?ref=opinion&_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/opinion/paul-krugman-pollution-and-politics.html?ref=opinion&_r=0</a><br>
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