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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>February 23, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[Watch the money - many billion$]<br>
<b>Texas Losses May be Greater than Hurricane Harvey</b><br>
The recent Blackout catastrophe in Texas may be a more expensive
disaster than Hurricane Harvey, which cost 20 billion.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbNVRiUAzw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbNVRiUAzw</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
[risk report to come in October]<br>
<b>Climate Threats Could Mean Big Jumps in Insurance Costs This Year</b><br>
The federal government is revising rates for flood coverage on April
1. New data suggests premiums need to increase sharply for some
homes.<br>
By Christopher Flavelle<br>
Feb. 22, 2021<br>
WASHINGTON — The cost of federal flood insurance will need to
increase significantly in much of the country to meet the growing
risks of climate change, new data suggests, creating a political
headache for the Biden administration.<br>
<br>
The National Flood Insurance Program, which provides the vast
majority of United States flood insurance policies, would have to
quadruple premiums on high-risk homes inside floodplains to reflect
the risks they already face, according to data issued on Monday by
the First Street Foundation, a group of academics and experts that
models flood risks.<br>
<br>
By 2050, First Street projected, increased flooding tied to climate
change will require a sevenfold increase.<br>
<br>
The new data could point to higher flood insurance costs this year
for homes at risk. On April 1, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, which runs the flood program, is set to announce new
premiums, using modern flood-modeling techniques that more closely
reflect the actual risks facing individual properties — the same
approach that First Street said it had used in its calculations.<br>
<br>
“If they took a purely risk-based approach, it would look like our
numbers,” said Jeremy Porter, head of research and development at
First Street and director of the Quantitative Methods in the Social
Sciences program at the City University of New York. Several U.S.
agencies, including the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, use First Street’s data.<br>
<br>
FEMA has issued a statement warning people not to assume that its
new system for setting premiums, which it calls Risk Rating 2.0,
will produce rate increases that match those modeled by First
Street.<br>
<br>
“Any entity claiming that they can provide insight or comparison to
the Risk Rating 2.0 initiative, including premium amounts, is
misinformed and setting public expectations that are not based in
fact,” said David I. Maurstad, who runs the flood insurance program
for FEMA.<br>
<br>
Still, most experts agree that a closer analysis of flood risks will
lead to costlier insurance for owners of high-risk homes than what
they already pay. That presents a challenge for President Biden, who
has promised to pursue a climate agenda guided by science and data,
but has also said he is focused on addressing the economic concerns
of middle-class households.<br>
Climate and disaster experts argue the cost of flood insurance
should reflect the full risk of living in flood-prone areas, as a
warning to prospective home buyers and a signal to local officials
to limit development in those places. Because the federal government
has no control over land-use planning or building codes, which are
set by state and local governments, the flood insurance program is
one of its most powerful tools to influence how and where Americans
build homes.<br>
But a big jump in rates may put more pressure on the household
budgets of people who already live in vulnerable areas, and also
cause home values to fall.<br>
“FEMA recognizes and shares concerns about flood insurance
affordability,” Mr. Maurstad said, adding that rates for some people
would fall under the new system and stay the same for others. “The
number of policies that will see large annual increases is a
minority of all policyholders.”<br>
<br>
Any jump in costs for current customers would be spread out over
years or decades, because Congress prevents FEMA from raising
individual homeowners’ premiums by more than 18 percent annually. So
even if FEMA’s new system meant that ultimate rates doubled on paper
for some people, those who already had coverage would be protected
from paying the full increase all at once.<br>
<br>
But when a home that’s covered by flood insurance changes owners,
the new buyer must pay the full rate right away. So big increases in
flood insurance rates could scare off buyers for flood-prone homes,
reducing their value or even making them hard to sell.<br>
<br>
“We want people to know the risks they face,” said Rebecca Elliott,
an assistant professor at the London School of Economics and
Political Science and author of a book about flood insurance and
climate change. At the same time, she said, many people rely on
steady or rising home values as the foundation of their financial
health.<br>
<br>
Previous efforts to increase flood insurance rates have been delayed
or rolled back in the face of public pressure. In 2012, Congress
passed a law that would have brought rates in line with the full
risk people faced; two years later, lawmakers backed down, replacing
those changes with more modest increases.<br>
<br>
FEMA’s new flood insurance system has prompted similar concerns. The
new rates were initially supposed to take effect last October, but
members of Congress warned FEMA about the effect that increases
would have on their constituents. The Trump administration delayed
the new rates until this year, worried in part that increasing
premiums shortly before the election would hurt President Trump
politically, according to a person familiar with the discussions.<br>
<br>
The agency could theoretically find ways to further blunt those rate
increases, according to Roy Wright, who ran the insurance program
until 2018. For example, FEMA could decide that insurance premiums
should be tied to a structure rather than a homeowner, so that
annual limits on price increases would still be in effect even if
the house changed owners.<br>
<br>
And experience suggests that home values keep increasing in the most
desirable coastal areas despite rising insurance costs, Mr. Wright
said, because people’s desire to live near water is often unaffected
by whether it makes financial sense.<br>
<br>
“Is it going to depress property values?” said Mr. Wright, who now
heads the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, a
research group. “In attractive real estate markets, we haven’t seen
that.”<br>
<br>
Eli Lehrer, president of the R Street Institute, a research
organization in Washington that advocates for market-based policies,
said the government could not ignore the financial burden facing
people who already live in flood-prone homes.<br>
<br>
But rather than shielding those people by keeping insurance rates
low, Mr. Lehrer argued that Congress should offer direct subsidies,
and only for people with modest incomes who would otherwise struggle
to stay in their homes. Everyone else, he said, should face the full
cost of the risk they face.<br>
<br>
“We’ve been subsidizing people to live in areas that were dangerous
when they moved there, and have become more dangerous,” Mr. Lehrer
said.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/climate/flood-insurance-fema.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/climate/flood-insurance-fema.html</a>
<p><br>
</p>
[FEMA]<br>
<b>Risk Rating 2.0</b><br>
The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is redesigning its risk
rating by leveraging industry best practices and current technology,
FEMA will deliver rates that are fair, make sense, are easier to
understand and better reflect a property’s unique flood risk. FEMA
calls this effort Risk Rating 2.0.<br>
- -<br>
<b>alert </b><br>
Risk Rating 2.0 implementation has been deferred To October 1, 2021.<br>
- -<br>
<b>Changes Under Risk Rating 2.0</b><br>
Risk Rating 2.0 will fundamentally change the way FEMA rates a
property’s flood risk and prices insurance. The current rating
methodology has not changed since it was first developed in the
1970s. But since then, technology has evolved and so has FEMA’s
understanding of flood risk.<br>
- -<br>
<b>New rates for all NFIP-insured properties will go into effect
nationwide on October 1, 2021.</b><br>
- -<br>
<b>Benefits Of Risk Rating 2.0</b><br>
The NFIP is developing Risk Rating 2.0 to deliver the following key
benefits to policyholders, communities, and the flood insurance
industry:<br>
<br>
Creates an individualized picture of a property’s risk<br>
Provides rates that are easier to understand for agents and
policyholders<br>
Reflects more types of flood risk in rates<br>
Uses the latest actuarial practices to set risk-based rates<br>
Reduces complexity for agents to generate a quote...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.fema.gov/flood-insurance/work-with-nfip/risk-rating">https://www.fema.gov/flood-insurance/work-with-nfip/risk-rating</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[recently in The Economist]<br>
<b>How America can rid itself of both carbon and blackouts</b><br>
This is the moment for an ambitious attempt to deal with climate
change<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/20/how-america-can-rid-itself-of-both-carbon-and-blackouts">https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/20/how-america-can-rid-itself-of-both-carbon-and-blackouts</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[follow the money]<br>
<b>What’s Really Behind Corporate Promises on Climate Change?</b><br>
Many big businesses have not set targets for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. Others have weak goals.<br>
By Peter Eavis and Clifford Krauss<br>
Feb. 22, 2021<br>
For the past several years, BlackRock, the giant investment firm,
has cast itself as a champion of the transition to clean energy.<br>
<br>
Last month, Laurence D. Fink, BlackRock’s chief executive, wrote
that the coronavirus pandemic had “driven us to confront the global
threat of climate change more forcefully,” and the company said it
wants businesses it invests in to remove as much carbon dioxide from
the environment as they emit by 2050 at the latest.<br>
<br>
But crucial details were missing from that widely read pledge,
including what proportion of the companies BlackRock invests in will
be zero-emission businesses in 2050. Setting such a goal and earlier
targets would demonstrate the seriousness of the company’s
commitment and could force all sorts of industries to step up their
efforts. On Saturday, in response to questions from The New York
Times, a BlackRock spokesman said for the first time that the
company’s “ambition” was to have “net zero emissions across our
entire assets under management by 2050.”<br>
<br>
As the biggest companies strive to trumpet their environmental
activism, the need to match words with deeds is becoming
increasingly important...<br>
- -<br>
“You can look at a company’s website and see their sustainability
report and it will look great,” said Alberto Carrillo Pineda, a
founder of Science Based Targets, a global initiative to assess
corporate plans to reduce emissions. “But then when you look at what
is behind it, you’ll see there is not a lot of substance behind
those commitments or the commitments are not comprehensive
enough.”...<br>
- -<br>
There has been some progress by companies that have rigorous
targets. In a report last month, Science Based Targets, which was
started by the environmental groups and hundreds of businesses
brought together by the United Nations, said the 338 large companies
around the world for which it had sufficient emissions data
collectively reduced their emissions by 25 percent between 2015 and
2019.<br>
<br>
Often large companies in the same industry have very different
records.<br>
<br>
For example, Walmart discloses its targets for emissions reductions
and the progress it has made to the Carbon Disclosure Project,
including a goal for emissions from its suppliers, and its plan has
been vetted by Science Based Targets. But Costco doesn’t expect to
have commitments to reduce emissions until the end of next year.
Costco executives declined to comment...<br>
- -<br>
And for all these ambitious targets, even some executives argue that
the current voluntary approach won’t ensure the required reduction
in emissions.<br>
<br>
“If we are going to achieve a net-zero carbon economy for real, we
will need everyone to act,” said Lucas Joppa, Microsoft’s chief
environmental officer. “And that means action can’t be voluntary. We
need requirements and standards that everyone is expected to meet.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/energy-environment/corporations-climate-change.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/business/energy-environment/corporations-climate-change.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[video interview 1:00 answers many questions]<b><br>
</b><b>Noam Chomsky – Neoliberalism, Democracy and the Climate
Crisis</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ81-McOgdM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZ81-McOgdM</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[video interview ]<br>
<b>Kurt Anderson: “Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America" |
Amanpour and Company</b><br>
Aug 12, 2020<br>
Amanpour and Company<br>
As the pandemic lays bare social, legal, racial and financial
injustice in America, it is vital to examine how the system got its
start. Kurt Andersen is a best-selling author and journalist whose
latest book examines the origins of America’s hyper-capitalism. He
speaks with Walter Isaacson about the genesis and propagation of the
system--and the need to take a step back. <br>
Originally aired on August 12, 2020.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BgGCu5N--I">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BgGCu5N--I</a><br>
- -<br>
[Yes there has been a conspiracy - book review]<br>
<b>Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History</b><br>
by Kurt Andersen (Author)<br>
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - When did America give up on fairness?
The author of Fantasyland tells the epic history of how America
decided that big business gets whatever it wants, only the rich get
richer, and nothing should ever change—and charts a way back to the
future.<br>
<br>
“The one book everyone must read as we figure out how to rebuild our
country.”—Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and Leonardo da
Vinci<br>
<br>
During the twentieth century, America managed to make its economic
and social systems both more and more fair and more and more
prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All
boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal.
Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of
and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich,
and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American
middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was
turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good,
workers powerless, and the market all-powerful while weaponizing
nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own
interests, and leaving the huge majority of Americans with dwindling
economic prospects and hope.<br>
<br>
Why and how did America take such a wrong turn? In this deeply
researched and brilliantly woven cultural, economic, and political
chronicle, Kurt Andersen offers a fresh, provocative, and
eye-opening history of America’s undoing, naming names, showing
receipts, and unsparingly assigning blame—to the radical right in
economics and the law, the high priests of high finance, a
complacent and complicit Establishment, and liberal “useful idiots,”
among whom he includes himself.<br>
<br>
Only a writer with Andersen’s crackling energy, deep insight, and
ability to connect disparate dots and see complex systems with
clarity could make such a book both intellectually formidable and
vastly entertaining. And only a writer of Andersen’s vision could
reckon with our current high-stakes inflection point, and show the
way out of this man-made disaster.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Geniuses-Unmaking-America-History/dp/1984801341/ref=sr_1_1">https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Geniuses-Unmaking-America-History/dp/1984801341/ref=sr_1_1</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[information battleground - bad news bares]<br>
<b>Memes and fake climate news are a bad combination</b><br>
By Cameron Oglesby on Feb 22, 2021<br>
There are many ways to go about getting your news. But memes
probably shouldn’t be one of them.<br>
<br>
Picture this: You’re feeling Zoom-fatigued after a long, stressful
day of remote work. Looking for something funny to offset a
difficult day, you pick up your phone and open up the meme-sharing
app iFunny. But instead of being met with a playful pet video or a
witty ATLA reference, you’re bombarded with post after post bashing
Joe Biden, Greta Thunberg, and the Green New Deal.<br>
<br>
Those politically-charged iFunny memes aren’t just a blip. The
Russian-owned meme-sharing site, which has an estimated 10 million
monthly active users, has received criticism in the past for its
heavily conservative, at times racist, and occasionally pro-violence
posts. But especially since Joe Biden was elected, there looks to
have been a surge in user-generated content taking aim at
left-leaning climate policy.<br>
<br>
Take the Keystone XL Pipeline, for example. That controversial piece
of infrastructure may not sound like the best meme fodder, but
Biden’s decision to cancel the project inspired a barrage of iFunny
posts. Using screengrabs of a stony-faced Biden, users typed out
rants about how the move had come at the cost of 57,000 U.S. jobs
and oil independence. Others created memes saying that investing in
electric vehicles would lead to big holes in the Earth as a result
of lithium mining.<br>
<br>
To be fair, these memes contain some kernels of a more complicated
truth — Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline will
result in job losses, though only around 1,000 for the company’s
U.S. and Canadian workers; and even though the environmental impacts
of lithium mining are serious, electric vehicles are still better
for the planet (emissions-wise) than gas-powered cars. The posts’
missing pieces, misleading claims, and incorrect visuals (several
lithium mine posts actually showed pictures of copper mines) place
them squarely on the wrong side of the fake vs. real news divide.<br>
<br>
To be clear, it’s not iFunny’s CEO who is creating these memes.
Anyone can use the site to throw text on a screenshot or video, or
upvote others’ posts by adding a “like” in the form of iFunny’s
classic smiley face. But the site’s haphazard community moderator
system makes it hard to weed out, for instance, posts threatening
mass shootings. And while dumping on recent climate action isn’t a
violation of the site’s terms of use, experts say memes still pose a
kind of media literacy threat given how many people treat memes and
social posts as a legitimate news source.<br>
<br>
“Getting all of your news from memes is not a great way to stay
informed,” said Daniel Funke from the Poynter Institute for Media
Studies. “Because memes are easy to make and highly shareable, they
are ideal vehicles for spreading misinformation. Unlike the majority
of news, they don’t require an editing or fact-checking process.
Plus, memes don’t make room for context or nuance, which are often
central to understanding major news stories.”<br>
<br>
According to a 2020 Pew Research report, 18 percent of Americans
said they use social media as their primary source for political and
election news. Those respondents tended to skew younger and whiter,
and had lower political knowledge compared to people who got their
information directly from news outlets. Part of the problem is that
social media users were more likely to encounter unproven claims and
conspiracy theories. And according to a study conducted last year,
sites that blend news and satire make it more difficult for users to
distinguish real news from fake news.<br>
<br>
Grist reached out to iFunny for comment on the political and climate
memes. We received a statement from their parent company referring
us to iFunny’s 2020 politics community guidelines. These ask users
not to post content that “calls for support of any political party
or candidate,” though political satire and opinion are listed as
acceptable.<br>
<br>
Let’s remember what memes are. They’re flashes of ideas. They’re
satire. They aren’t designed to tell the whole story. Much of the
time, that’s not a problem because the message they’re spreading is
all in good fun. But when they skew into fake news territory, be
wary — it’s no longer a laughing matter.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://grist.org/politics/ifunny-memes-fake-news-biden-climate-plan/">https://grist.org/politics/ifunny-memes-fake-news-biden-climate-plan/</a><br>
- -<br>
[study from 2020]<br>
<b>People who use social media for news are less knowledgeable than
other news consumers, study says</b><br>
They are also more likely to see and believe misinformation, and are
not as concerned about it as people who consume news elsewhere.<br>
<br>
Americans who use social media for their news consumption are less
likely to follow and understand news about the elections or the
coronavirus, according to a new study from Pew Research Center’s
American News Pathways project.<br>
<br>
Researchers analyzed data from five different surveys conducted from
October 2019 to June 2020, each with over 8,000 respondents. They
studied the seven most common pathways to election and political
news: social media; news websites or apps; local, cable and network
TV; radio; and print.<br>
<br>
Nearly one in five (18%) of Americans said social media is their
most common pathway to political and election news. These
individuals skew younger and are less likely to be white.<br>
<br>
Only 8% of these social media users said they are following news
about the 2020 presidential candidates “very closely.” About a
quarter are following news about the pandemic very closely. These
statistics are lower than those of any other news group surveyed,
though are most similar to local TV news consumers’ averages...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/people-who-use-social-media-for-news-are-less-knowledgeable-than-other-news-consumers/">https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/people-who-use-social-media-for-news-are-less-knowledgeable-than-other-news-consumers/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>[cold arctic wind energy]<br>
<b>The ice cold Arctic winds of Berlevåg might propel the world
towards a great green shift</b><br>
The power generated at the local wind farm in Berlevåg is to be
used to produce hydrogen and green ammonia. Industry developers
believe the far northern town will develop into a hub for
renewable energy that ultimately can offer zero emission fuel to
ships operating in northern waters.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/7554">https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/7554</a><br>
</p>
<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 -
February 23, 2014 </b></font><br>
The New York Times reports:<br>
<blockquote>"President Obama’s annual budget request to Congress
will propose a significant change in how the government pays to
fight wildfires, administration officials said, a move that they
say reflects the ways in which climate change is increasing the
risk for and cost of those fires.<br>
<br>
"The wildfire funding shift is one in a series of recent White
House actions related to climate change as Mr. Obama tries to
highlight the issue and build political support for his
administration’s more muscular policies, like curbing carbon
emissions from coal-fired power plants. On Monday, Mr. Obama plans
to describe his proposal at a meeting in Washington with governors
of Western states that have been ravaged recently by severe
drought and wildfires."<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/us/obama-to-propose-shift-in-wildfire-funding.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/us/obama-to-propose-shift-in-wildfire-funding.html</a><br>
<br>
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