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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>March 30, 2021</b></font></i></p>
[early flowers]<br>
<b>Japan’s Kyoto cherry blossoms peak on earliest date in 1,200
years, a sign of climate change</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/03/29/japan-kyoto-cherry-blossoms-record/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/03/29/japan-kyoto-cherry-blossoms-record/</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
[early fires]<br>
<b>'Active and dangerous scene': Mount Rushmore closed, 400 homes
evacuated as multiple wildfires spread in South Dakota</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/29/south-dakota-wildfires-mount-rushmore-evacuations-power-outages/7054347002/">https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/29/south-dakota-wildfires-mount-rushmore-evacuations-power-outages/7054347002/</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
[early melting]<br>
<b>This Russian Arctic coast has planet's quickest warming</b><br>
Parts of the Russian Arctic were up to 7℃ warmer than normal in
2020. Massive melting of sea-ice on the Northern Sea Route now paves
the way for a hike in shipping.<br>
March 29, 2021<br>
It was the second warmest year in the Arctic on record, and parts of
the vast region saw air temperatures far beyond the traditional
freeze. The year 2020 follows the trend of the past decades and its
spring months were the absolutely warmest since measurements started
more than 100 years ago, a weather report from Russian
meteorological service Roshydromet reads...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/climate-crisis/2021/03/unprecedented-arctic-warming-opens-gates-northern-sea-route">https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/climate-crisis/2021/03/unprecedented-arctic-warming-opens-gates-northern-sea-route</a>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
[overview video]<br>
<b>Arctic disintegration is worse than we thought.</b><br>
Sep 13, 2020<br>
Just Have a Think<br>
Arctic sea ice is disappearing faster than we thought! That's a
phrase we've seen so often in the news recently that it's become
quite easy to just tune it out. But a raft of research published in
the Summer of 2020 finds that it's not just the sea ice but ALL of
the feedbacks loops in the region that are gaining pace at an
alarming rate, including the atmospheric temperature, the heat
stored in the oceans, the release of methane from thawing permafrost
and the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, all of which directly
contribute to the catastrophic climate change we're witnessing
everywhere on the planet.<br>
Video Transcripts available at our website<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.justhaveathink.com">http://www.justhaveathink.com</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz6WxTH-p3o">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz6WxTH-p3o</a>
<p>- -<br>
</p>
<p>[a classic rant]<br>
<b>Blue Ocean Event : Game Over?</b><br>
Apr 7, 2019<br>
Just Have a Think<br>
A Blue Ocean Event, or Ice-Free Arctic, is the source of almost
fever pitch speculation in the climate science world. The
consequences of the disappearance of sea ice from the arctic
ocean, however briefly, at the end of a summer melt season some
time in the not too distant future, are potentially very ominous
for the way we organise our human socio-economic structures today.
This week, we consider what those consequences may look like.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo3cznpfIpA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo3cznpfIpA</a></p>
<p>- -</p>
<p>[Wikipedia article]<br>
<b>Tipping points in the climate system</b><br>
["Runaway climate change" redirects here. It is not to be confused
with Runaway greenhouse effect.]<br>
<br>
Possible tipping elements in the climate system.<br>
<br>
Interactions of climate tipping points (bottom) with associated
tipping points in the socioeconomic system (top) on different time
scales. [1]<br>
A tipping point in the climate system is a threshold that, when
exceeded, can lead to large changes in the state of the system.
Potential tipping points have been identified in the physical
climate system, in impacted ecosystems, and sometimes in both.[2]
For instance, feedback from the global carbon cycle is a driver
for the transition between glacial and interglacial periods, with
orbital forcing providing the initial trigger.[3] Earth's geologic
temperature record includes many more examples of geologically
rapid transitions between different climate states.<br>
<br>
see graphic
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system#/media/File:Social_tipping_dynamics_for_stabilizing_Earth%E2%80%99s_climate_by_2050_-_Figure_3_-_Social_tipping_elements_and_associated_social_tipping_interventions_with_the_potential_to_drive_rapid_decarbonization_in_the_World%E2%80%93Earth_system.jpg">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system#/media/File:Social_tipping_dynamics_for_stabilizing_Earth%E2%80%99s_climate_by_2050_-_Figure_3_-_Social_tipping_elements_and_associated_social_tipping_interventions_with_the_potential_to_drive_rapid_decarbonization_in_the_World%E2%80%93Earth_system.jpg</a><br>
Climate tipping points are of particular interest in reference to
concerns about global warming in the modern era. Possible tipping
point behaviour has been identified for the global mean surface
temperature by studying self-reinforcing feedbacks and the past
behavior of Earth's climate system. Self-reinforcing feedbacks in
the carbon cycle and planetary reflectivity could trigger a
cascading set of tipping points that lead the world into a
hothouse climate state.[5][6]<br>
<br>
Large-scale components of the Earth system that may pass a tipping
point have been referred to as tipping elements.[7] Tipping
elements are found in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets,
possibly causing tens of meters of sea level rise. These tipping
points are not always abrupt. For example, at some level of
temperature rise the melt of a large part of the Greenland ice
sheet and/or West Antarctic Ice Sheet will become inevitable; but
the ice sheet itself may persist for many centuries.[8] Some
tipping elements, like the collapse of ecosystems, are
irreversible.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Journal of Frontiers in Forests and Global Change - says the CO2
sink is becoming a source]<br>
<b>Carbon and Beyond: The Biogeochemistry of Climate in a Rapidly
Changing Amazon</b><br>
<blockquote>The Amazon Basin is at the center of an intensifying
discourse about deforestation, land-use, and global change. To
date, climate research in the Basin has overwhelmingly focused on
the cycling and storage of carbon (C) and its implications for
global climate. Missing, however, is a more comprehensive
consideration of other significant biophysical climate feedbacks
[i.e., CH4, N2O, black carbon, biogenic volatile organic compounds
(BVOCs), aerosols, evapotranspiration, and albedo] and their
dynamic responses to both localized (fire, land-use change,
infrastructure development, and storms) and global (warming,
drying, and some related to El Niño or to warming in the tropical
Atlantic) changes. Here, we synthesize the current understanding
of (1) sources and fluxes of all major forcing agents, (2) the
demonstrated or expected impact of global and local changes on
each agent, and (3) the nature, extent, and drivers of
anthropogenic change in the Basin. We highlight the large
uncertainty in flux magnitude and responses, and their
corresponding direct and indirect effects on the regional and
global climate system. Despite uncertainty in their responses to
change, we conclude that current warming from non-CO2 agents
(especially CH4 and N2O) in the Amazon Basin largely offsets—and
most likely exceeds—the climate service provided by atmospheric
CO2 uptake. We also find that the majority of anthropogenic
impacts act to increase the radiative forcing potential of the
Basin. Given the large contribution of less-recognized agents
(e.g., Amazonian trees alone emit ~3.5% of all global CH4), a
continuing focus on a single metric (i.e., C uptake and storage)
is incompatible with genuine efforts to understand and manage the
biogeochemistry of climate in a rapidly changing Amazon Basin.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2021.618401/full">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2021.618401/full</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[really? really?]<br>
<b>Should We Block the Sun? Scientists Say the Time Has Come to
Study It.</b><br>
The National Academies said the United States must study
technologies that would artificially cool the planet by reflecting
away some sunlight, citing the lack of progress fighting global
warming.<br>
<br>
WASHINGTON — The idea of artificially cooling the planet to blunt
climate change — in effect, blocking sunlight before it can warm the
atmosphere — got a boost on Thursday when an influential scientific
body urged the United States government to spend at least $100
million to research the technology.<br>
<br>
That technology, often called solar geoengineering, entails
reflecting more of the sun’s energy back into space through
techniques that include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. In a
new report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine said that governments urgently need to know whether solar
geoengineering could work and what the side effects might be.<br>
<br>
“Solar geoengineering is not a substitute for decarbonizing,” said
Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at
Stanford University and head of the committee that produced the
report, referring to the need to emit less carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Still, he said, technology to
reflect sunlight “deserves substantial funding, and it should be
researched as rapidly and effectively as possible.”<br>
<br>
The report acknowledged the risks that have made geoengineering one
of the most contentious issues in climate policy. Those risks
include upsetting regional weather patterns in potentially
devastating ways, for example by changing the behavior of the
monsoon in South Asia; relaxing public pressure to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions; and even creating an “unacceptable risk of
catastrophically rapid warming” if governments started reflecting
sunlight for a period of time, and then later stopped.<br>
But the authors argue that greenhouse gas emissions are not falling
quickly enough to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, which
means the world must begin to examine other options. Evidence for or
against solar geoengineering, they found, “could have profound
value” in guiding decisions about whether to deploy it.<br>
<br>
That includes evidence about what the authors called the social
risks: For example, if research showed that the side effects would
be concentrated in poorer nations, Dr. Field said, it could be
grounds not to pursue the technology, even if it benefited the world
as a whole.<br>
<br>
The report also argued that by publicly funding geoengineering
research, the United States could ensure that the work is
transparent and accountable to the public, with clear rules about
when and how to test the technology.<br>
<br>
Some critics said those safeguards weren’t enough.<br>
<br>
The steps urged in the report to protect the interests of poorer
countries — for example, accounting for farmers in South Asia whose
lives could be upended by changes in rain patterns — could fall away
once the research begins, according to Prakash Kashwan, a professor
of political science at the University of Connecticut.<br>
<br>
“Once these kinds of projects get into the political process, the
scientists who are adding all of these qualifiers, and all of these
cautionary notes, aren’t in control,” Dr. Kashwan said.<br>
<br>
Jennie Stephens, director of the School of Public Policy and Urban
Affairs at Northeastern University, said that geoengineering
research takes money and attention from the core problem, which is
cutting emissions and helping vulnerable communities cope with the
climate disruptions that are already happening.<br>
<br>
“We need to double down on bigger transformative changes,” Dr.
Stephens said. “That’s where the investment needs to be.”<br>
<br>
Solar geoengineering has bipartisan support in Congress, which in
late 2019 gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
$4 million to research the technology.<br>
“America needs to be on the cutting edge of climate research,”
Representative John Curtis, Republican of Utah, said in a statement.
“More knowledge is always better.”<br>
<br>
The calculation could be more difficult for President Biden, who has
tried to gain the support of the party’s progressive wing, some of
whom are skeptical about geoengineering. Senator Bernie Sanders of
Vermont has called it a “false solution,” grouping it with nuclear
power or capturing carbon dioxide and burying it underground.<br>
<br>
Asked for comment on the report, a White House spokesman, Vedant
Patel, said by email that President Biden “has been clear about
addressing the climate crisis.” He added, “innovative solutions that
can help accomplish this should be looked into and studied.”<br>
Tylar Greene, a spokeswoman for NASA, which helped fund the report,
said in a statement that “we look forward to reviewing the report,
examining recommendations, and exploring how NASA and its research
community can support this effort.”<br>
<br>
Ko Barrett, deputy assistant administrator at NOAA, which also
helped fund the report, said in a statement that the agency looked
forward to “carefully reviewing” it. The Department of Energy,
another funder, didn’t respond to a request for comment.<br>
<br>
The endorsement by the National Academies might make some lawmakers
feel more comfortable supporting the technology, according to
Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
at the Columbia Law School and editor of a book on solar
geoengineering.<br>
<br>
And rather than causing people to care less about curbing greenhouse
gas emissions, he said, a large new federal research program into
geoengineering might have the opposite effect: Jolting the public
into taking climate change seriously by demonstrating that more
extreme and dangerous options may soon be necessary.<br>
<br>
“It could be so scary that people will be even more motivated to
reduce emissions,” Mr. Gerrard said.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/geoengineering-sunlight.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/climate/geoengineering-sunlight.html</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[heaping blame onto affluence]<br>
<b>Cutting your carbon footprint matters a lot — if you’re rich</b><br>
A new book pushes back against the narrative that individual actions
make little difference to the climate.<br>
Maddie Stone - Mar 25, 2021<br>
It was the summer of 2012 when sustainability scientist Kimberly
Nicholas decided she couldn’t live like this anymore. She was
attending a climate change conference in Austria, listening to talk
after talk about how bad global warming was and how much worse it
was going to get. All the while, Nicholas was thinking about all of
the planet-heating carbon that she, like most other attendees, had
dumped into the atmosphere by flying there. <br>
<br>
“It really felt like a conference of doctors smoking cigarettes and
telling our patients to quit,” Nicholas said.<br>
<br>
But after a beer with a U.K.-based friend who took a train to the
conference, Nicholas, who is American but lives and conducts
research in Sweden, realized something: She could have done that
too. Since then, Nicholas has stopped flying within Europe, cutting
her air travel emissions by 90 percent in the process. She has also
stopped eating meat and gone car-free. To ensure she’s making
lifestyle changes that will have the biggest carbon bang for their
buck, Nicholas conducted peer-reviewed research on the subject. In
2017, she and her colleague Seth Wyens published a paper on the
individual behavioral changes that have the greatest benefits for
the climate. Topping the list? Flying less, followed by driving less
and eating a plant-based diet.<br>
<br>
Nicholas has now expanded that paper into a book, Under the Sky We
Make. A crash-course on why climate change is happening and how to
fix it interwoven with beautifully written, witty anecdotes about a
scientist’s personal journey toward sustainability, Under the Sky We
Make pushes back — politely, but with science — against the
narrative that individual actions make little difference to the
climate. Rather, if you’re a wealthy person living in a wealthy
country, the book makes a compelling case that your individual
choices matter a lot. For the “carbon elite,” as Nicholas describes
her intended audience, the decision to take fewer flights or install
solar panels on your roof materially reduces the amount of carbon in
the sky forever, not least because it can inspire similar behavioral
changes amongst your peers. <br>
<br>
“We all have to take responsibility for what we can control,”
Nicholas said. “And people like me, and like my friends from college
who I initially started writing this book for, are one of the major
sources of emissions.”<br>
<br>
Individual responsibility has become something of a flashpoint in
the climate discourse. On the one hand, oil companies love to harp
on about personal carbon footprints as a way of distracting from
their much larger contributions to the climate crisis, both through
the fossil fuel products they make and their longstanding, ongoing
efforts to delay climate action and misinform the public. At the
same time, prominent journalists and scientists have waved off
individual climate actions as a distraction from the systemic
changes that are needed to solve the crisis — changes like
overhauling our electricity and transit systems through governmental
investments in clean energy, better regulation, and carbon pricing.
They’re joined by a growing chorus of climate justice advocates who
rightly point out that asking poor people to make difficult dietary
shifts or give up the car they need to get to work is completely
unfair.<br>
<br>
That’s not what Nicholas is doing. Her message isn’t aimed at folks
struggling to make ends meet, but at people making a middle-class
income or higher who live in a wealthy country like the United
States, Germany, or France. Far from a distraction, Nicholas argues
that the climate impact of the carbon elite is something we need to
focus on — individually and systematically. She points out that
globally, more than two-thirds of climate pollution can be
attributed to household consumption, and that the richest 10 percent
of the world population — those making more than $38,000 a year — is
responsible for about half of those emissions. <br>
<br>
The wealthier you are, the higher your individual share of the
carbon pie tends to be due to “luxury emissions” associated with
extra steak dinners, owning and driving more cars, and the carbon
footprint elephant in the room, flying. Nicholas notes that the 1
percent of the world population who fly most often are responsible
for half of all air travel emissions. (Flights are responsible for
2.4 percent of emissions globally, but they drive an estimated 7.2
percent of warming due to high-altitude atmospheric effects.)
Wealthy high emitters, Nicholas argues, must support policies that
get the world to net-zero emissions quickly, but they must also take
steps to reduce their luxury emissions in order to make the energy
transition easier for everyone. <br>
<br>
What is a billionaire’s role in saving the planet?<br>
<br>
Eve Andrews<br>
“The quicker that high-income folks reduce our own personal
emissions to a sustainable level, that makes a huge difference for
how fast we can actually make this transition happen,” Nicholas
said.<br>
<br>
Cutting back on luxury carbon emissions doesn’t have to be a
sacrifice. Nicholas says she’s had numerous adventures she wouldn’t
have had otherwise “by traveling more slowly and more creatively and
more adventurously” across Europe on the train. In 2017, when
Georgia Institute of Technology climate scientist Kim Cobb decided
to start biking 3 miles to work twice a week instead of driving, she
says it “seemed like a cliff I would never be able to fall off and
not die.” A month later, she was biking to work every day. <br>
<br>
“It has become one of the true joys of my life,” Cobb told Grist.
“And I’m kicking myself for never trying it before. It keeps me
wondering: what other assumptions am I making about this transition
in front of us that are so deeply false?” <br>
<br>
Cobb said that while most of her friends and colleagues are “just
kind of intrigued” by her new lifestyle choices, a few have been
inspired to start biking more themselves, or to install solar panels
on their roofs as Cobb did in 2019. In her book, Nicholas cites
other examples of personal climate actions having a social ripple
effect, including how teen climate activist Greta Thunberg and her
mother, the opera singer Malena Ernman, have helped bring about a
no-fly movement in Sweden through their individual decisions to stay
on the ground. <br>
<br>
Individual actions are no panacea. After reading Nicholas’ book, I
used the University of California, Berkeley’s Cool Climate
Calculator to take a peek at my own carbon footprint.* I was alarmed
to discover that, at around 25 metric tons of CO2 per year, it’s 10
times higher than the 2.5 metric tons per person per year
researchers say we need to reach by 2030 to limit global warming to
1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). But when I simulated doing everything
I reasonably could do to reduce my footprint in the calculator,
including getting rid of my car and going vegan, my footprint only
shrank by 3 metric tons. I couldn’t very well stop eating entirely,
and as much as I’d like to, I can’t afford to retrofit my natural
gas-heated home to use an electric heat pump instead.<br>
- -<br>
<u>Under the Sky We Make </u>is a breezy field guide on how to
align your lifestyle with your values that avoids being overly
prescriptive. That’s perhaps best illustrated by the book’s
neutrality on one of the most controversial climate choices of all:
whether or not to have kids. While Nicholas’ 2017 study found that
having one more kid — and bringing an additional lifetime worth of
emissions into the world in the process — was the single most
significant individual climate choice a person could make, she sees
it as more of a philosophical decision than a scientific one. <br>
<br>
After all, Nicholas argues, the adults alive today will create the
climate conditions that future generations will inherit. If we make
the right decisions, children not yet born will have a world they
can thrive in. Whether those are our kids, or members of the global
community we’re fighting to secure a future for, the sky they live
under will be the one that we make for them.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://grist.org/culture/cutting-your-carbon-footprint-matters-a-lot-if-youre-rich/">https://grist.org/culture/cutting-your-carbon-footprint-matters-a-lot-if-youre-rich/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Notice how this appears in a foreign press ]<br>
<b>The lawyer who took on Chevron – and now marks his 600th day
under house arrest</b><br>
Steven Donziger has been detained at home since August 2019, the
result of a Kafkaesque legal battle stemming from his crusade on
behalf of Indigenous Amazonians<br>
Oliver Milman - Sun 28 Mar 2021<br>
Many of us will have felt the grip of claustrophobic isolation over
the past year, but the lawyer Steven Donziger has experienced an
extreme, very personal confinement as a pandemic arrived and then
raged around him in New York City.<br>
<br>
On Sunday, Donziger reached his 600th day of an unprecedented house
arrest that has resulted from a sprawling, Kafkaesque legal battle
with the oil giant Chevron. Donziger spearheaded a lengthy crusade
against the company on behalf of tens of thousands of Indigenous
people in the Amazon rainforest whose homes and health were
devastated by oil pollution, only to himself become, as he describes
it, the victim of a “planned targeting by a corporation to destroy
my life”.<br>
<br>
Since August 2019, Donziger has been restricted to his elegant
Manhattan apartment, a clunky court-mandated monitoring bracelet he
calls “the black claw” continuously strapped to his left ankle. He
cannot even venture into the hallway, or to pick up his mail.
Exempted excursions for medical appointments or major school events
for his 14-year-old son require permission days in advance. An
indoor bike sits by the front door in lieu of alternative exercise
options.<br>
<br>
“There’s no comparison to quarantine because I can’t even go outside
for a walk. If my kid is sick I can’t go to the drug store to get a
prescription,” Donziger said. “I never truly understood freedom
until I was put in this situation.”<br>
<br>
The nights are hardest for Donziger, when he has to struggle to get
his jeans off over the boxy tag and lie in bed next to his wife
“with the government still there on my ankle”. Each morning he wakes
up in angst. A flag reading “SOS Free Steven” sometimes flutters
defiantly from the window, but efforts to end the unusually long
detention have yet to be granted.<br>
<br>
“It’s been brutally difficult for him,” said Paul Paz y Miño,
associate director of Amazon Watch, a conservation group allied to
Donziger. “It’s taken a huge toll on him and his family. Chevron
wants the narrative to be that he’s a criminal. The implications of
that for the entire environmental movement against oil companies is
terrifying.”<br>
<br>
There are moments of relief, such as sticking his head outside to
taste a sunny day or talking to his growing legion of outraged
supporters, which now spans Alec Baldwin, Pink Floyd singer Roger
Waters and dozens of Nobel laureates. “There’s never a day off, I
can never properly relax,” Donziger said. “But you either grow or
die in a situation like this. And I’ve been growing.”<br>
<br>
The dispute with Chevron centres upon a landmark 2011 decision by
the Ecuador courts to order the company pay $9.5bn in damages to
people blighted by decades of polluted air and water. Chevron has
never paid up, claiming “shocking levels of misconduct” and fraud by
Donziger and the Ecuadorian judiciary.<br>
<br>
But the subsequent web of events that has led to Donziger being
detained and stripped of his law license is befuddling even to legal
scholars. “Frankly, I scratch my head when I look at this case,”
said Larry Catá Backer, a professor of international law at Penn
State University. “It is this strange multi-front battle with one
extraordinary explosive development after another. It has had this
magical quality to enrage everyone involved in it.”<br>
<br>
Donziger was first touched by the case that would consume his life
as a young lawyer acting as a public defender in Washington. In
1993, he joined a legal team investigating reports of pollution in
the Lago Agrio region of northern Ecuador, nestled next to the
country’s border with Colombia.<br>
<br>
The oil company Texaco had carved out drilling outposts in this
tract of the Amazon since the 1960s, leaving what Donziger calls
“grotesque” Olympic swimming pool-sized waste pits of oil. Pollution
flowed freely into rivers and streams used by the Indigenous
population for drinking water. Cancers of the stomach, liver and
throat reportedly became more common in the region, as did childhood
leukemia. “People there are living in a humanitarian crisis of epic
proportions,” Donziger said.<br>
<br>
A Spanish speaker, Donziger became ever more enmeshed in the case,
traveling to Ecuador hundreds of times to assemble a case in behalf
of local people. Despite lengthy attempts by Chevron, which bought
Texaco, to block the case, the action ultimately went to trial and
resulted in a historic judgement against the oil company.<br>
<br>
Donziger’s elation was short-lived, however, with Chevron claiming
that his team ghostwrote what should have been an independent
assessment and offered a $500,000 bribe to sway the judgment.
Donziger denied any wrongdoing and the Ecuador supreme court later
affirmed the original ruling, but Chevron has refused to pay the
$9.5bn in damages.<br>
<br>
A US federal judge then concurred with the fraud allegations,
negating the possibility of wrenching the money from Chevron in its
home country, finding that Donziger conducted a “pattern of
racketeering activity” under statutes more commonly used to target
mob bosses.<br>
<br>
Donziger was made liable for millions of dollars in Chevron’s legal
costs and the company was granted seizure of his laptop and
cellphone. When he appealed this, claiming the devices contained
sensitive client information, the judge, Lewis Kaplan, hit him with
criminal contempt charges, upheld on appeal, that led to his house
arrest.<br>
<br>
In one of the stranger episodes in this saga, Chevron relocated
Alberto Guerra, an Ecuadorian judge, and his family to the US, paid
for his health insurance and a car while meeting with him more than
50 times before he provided testimony that Donziger discussed the
bribe with him at a Quito restaurant. Guerra has since admitted that
his testimony was exaggerated in parts, untrue in others.<br>
<br>
This deception, the unprecedented length of detention for a
misdemeanor charge, legal disbarment and personal financial wipeout
has fueled a sense of persecution in Donziger. Kaplan’s conduct,
Donziger said, has been an “abomination, unethical and abusive. I
never thought this could happen in the US.” Other lawyers have
voiced more measured concerns over Kaplan. Chevron has “captured”
the judge, Donziger said, and now the oil company seems omnipresent
in his fate.<br>
<br>
His contempt charge will be heard by Judge Loretta Preska, who was
on the advisory board of the New York chapter of the Federalist
Society, who took the unusual step of appointing a law firm that has
previously done work for Chevron, Seward & Kissel, to prosecute
Donziger after the department of justice declined to take the case.
“Why am I being tried by a Chevron-connected judge and prosecuted by
a Chevron-connected lawyer? It’s just wrong,” Donziger said. “This
is all part of a plan concocted by Chevron to dismantle my life.
They want to do this to avoid paying up and to turn me into a weapon
of intimidation against the whole legal profession.”<br>
<br>
Christiana Ochoa, an expert in environmental law at Indiana
University, said Kaplan and Preska’s connections do not themselves
prove any sort of bias, and that Kaplan’s strongly worded judgment
suggests “not great behavior” by Donziger. But she added that the
severity of Donziger’s treatment is “odd” and that questions remain
over the conflict of interest in his prosecution.<br>
<br>
“Certainly it’s very important to corporations like Chevron to
protect themselves from liability from ecological harms,” she said.
“They’ve refused to apologize to the victims. They don’t want to
show any vulnerability.”<br>
<br>
A Chevron spokesman said an international tribunal has confirmed the
Ecuadorian decision was “fraudulent” and he denied the company has
persecuted its longtime adversary. “Donziger has no one to blame but
himself for his problems,” the spokesman said. “The court initiated
the pending criminal case against him. Chevron is not involved in
that case.”<br>
<br>
In Donziger’s eyes, the only real corruption has occurred in the US
system, not Ecuador’s, a symptom of what he views as a “colonial”
mindset that has airily dismissed judgements made outside the US and
obscured the ultimate protagonists of this saga, the people of Lago
Agrio. Shortly before his house arrest, in the summer of 2019,
Donziger toured some villages in Ecuador, discovering some people
he’d previously met had died of cancer. The toxic pits remain,
despite a piecemeal attempt by the government at a cleanup.<br>
<br>
“The human suffering is immense,” he said. “It was hard to see.
Ultimately, all this isn’t about me. It’s about what has happened to
these people.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/28/chevron-lawyer-steven-donziger-ecuador-house-arrest">https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/28/chevron-lawyer-steven-donziger-ecuador-house-arrest</a>
<p>- -</p>
[Tweet]<br>
Steven Donziger <br>
@SDonziger<br>
<b>To be clear, the judge who put me under house arrest—Loretta
Preska—is a leader of the Chevron-funded Federalist Society.</b><br>
A Chevron law firm is prosecuting me; Chevron lawyers are witnesses;
and the charging judge has investments in Chevron.<br>
How it all begins to fail.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/SDonziger/status/1376676895001997312">https://twitter.com/SDonziger/status/1376676895001997312</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[harsh information]<br>
<b>Why Climate Change Denial Still Exists In The U.S.</b><br>
Dec 20, 2020<br>
CNBC<br>
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, some American politicians
continue to deny that climate change exists, while others question
the severity of its impact. But public opinion is shifting, and
today even oil and gas companies publicly admit that climate change
demands action. So why does climate denialism continue to influence
U.S. politics? Here's a look into who is funding the movement, and
why denial is mainly a U.S. problem.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1rxv1yPQrc&t=1s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1rxv1yPQrc&t=1s</a>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
March 30, 2 </b></font><br>
<p>December 30, 2014: <br>
<br>
The Washington Post reports:<br>
<br>
"The methane that leaks from 40,000 gas wells near this desert
trading post may be colorless and odorless, but it’s not
invisible. It can be seen from space. <br>
<br>
"Satellites that sweep over energy-rich northern New Mexico can
spot the gas as it escapes from drilling rigs, compressors and
miles of pipeline snaking across the badlands. In the air it forms
a giant plume: a permanent, Delaware-sized methane cloud, so vast
that scientists questioned their own data when they first studied
it three years ago. 'We couldn’t be sure that the signal was
real,' said NASA researcher Christian Frankenberg.<br>
<br>
"The country’s biggest methane “hot spot,” verified by NASA and
University of Michigan scientists in October, is only the most
dramatic example of what scientists describe as a $2 billion leak
problem: the loss of methane from energy production sites across
the country. When oil, gas or coal are taken from the ground, a
little methane — the main ingredient in natural gas — often
escapes along with it, drifting into the atmosphere, where it
contributes to the warming of the Earth.<br>
<br>
"Methane accounts for about 9 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions, and the biggest single source of it — nearly 30 percent
— is the oil and gas industry, government figures show. All told,
oil and gas producers lose 8 million metric tons of methane a
year, enough to provide power to every household in the District
of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.<br>
<br>
"As early as next month, the Obama administration will announce
new measures to shrink New Mexico’s methane cloud while cracking
down nationally on a phenomenon that officials say erodes tax
revenue and contributes to climate change. The details are not
publicly known, but already a fight is shaping up between the
White House and industry supporters in Congress over how intrusive
the restrictions will be.<br>
<br>
"Republican leaders who will take control of the Senate next month
have vowed to block measures that they say could throttle domestic
energy production at a time when plummeting oil prices are cutting
deeply into company profits. Industry officials say they have a
strong financial incentive to curb leaks, and companies are moving
rapidly to upgrade their equipment.<br>
<br>
"But environmentalists say relatively modest government
restrictions on gas leaks could reap substantial rewards for
taxpayers and the planet. Because methane is such a powerful
greenhouse gas — with up to 80 times as much heat-trapping potency
per pound as carbon dioxide over the short term — the leaks must
be controlled if the United States is to have any chance of
meeting its goals for cutting the emissions responsible for
climate change, said David Doniger, who heads the climate policy
program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental
group.<br>
<br>
"'This is the most significant, most cost-effective thing the
administration can do to tackle climate change pollution that it
hasn’t already committed to do,' Doniger said."<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/delaware-sized-gas-plume-over-west-illustrates-the-cost-of-leaking-methane/2014/12/29/d34c3e6e-8d1f-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/delaware-sized-gas-plume-over-west-illustrates-the-cost-of-leaking-methane/2014/12/29/d34c3e6e-8d1f-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html</a>
<br>
<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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