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<p><font size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>April 17</b></i></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>, 2024</b></i></font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ unexpected images 2 mins ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>Nature has brought the UAE to its knees! The
worst flooding in decades in Dubai</b><br>
Painful Earth Short<br>
</font> Apr 17, 2024 ДУБАЙ<br>
Nature has brought the UAE to its knees! The worst flooding in
decades in Dubai. Natural disaster 16 April 2024.<br>
<br>
A powerful hurricane has struck the United Arab Emirates, causing
severe flooding in the capital and one of the country's leading
metropolises, Dubai.<br>
Heavy rains have submerged major roads in the city, with water
reaching into shopping centers as well.<br>
The city's metro system is already inundated, adding to the chaos
caused by the deluge.<br>
The inclement weather persists in the Emirates' capital, with the
storm showing no signs of abating.<br>
Authorities are working to manage the crisis and ensure the safety
of residents amidst the ongoing tempest.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mne4FFJYhAg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mne4FFJYhAg</a><br>
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<i>[ Big Oil tries to hide the climate crisis ]</i><br>
<b>How to spot five of the fossil fuel industry’s biggest
disinformation tactics</b><br>
Amy Westervelt and Kyle Pope have covered climate disinformation for
a combined 20-plus years – here’s their guide on how to decode it<br>
Increasingly sophisticated and better-funded disinformation is
making climate coverage trickier both for journalists to produce and
for the public to fully understand and trust.<br>
<br>
But telling the story, and understanding it, has never been more
urgent with half of Earth’s population eligible to vote in elections
that could decisively impact the world’s ability to act in time to
stave off the worst of the climate crisis.<br>
<br>
Swayed for 30 years by fossil fuel industry propaganda, the media
has been as likely to unknowingly amplify falsehoods as they were to
bat them down. It’s only in recent years that more journalists
started to shy away from “both-sides-ing” the climate crisis –
decades after scientists reached an overwhelming consensus on the
scope of the problem and its causes.<br>
<br>
The good news is that while the fossil fuel industry’s PR tactics
have shifted, the stories they’re telling don’t change much from
year to year, they are just adapted depending on what’s happening in
the world.<br>
<br>
When politicians talk about how much it will cost to act on climate
change, for example, they almost always refer to economic models
commissioned by the fossil fuel industry, which leave out the cost
of inaction, which rises with every passing year. When politicians
say that climate policies will increase the cost of gas or energy,
they count on reporters having no idea how gas or energy pricing
works, or how much fossil fuel companies’ production decisions, not
to mention lobbying for particular fossil fuel subsidies or against
policies that support renewable energy, impact those prices.<br>
<br>
<b>1 Energy security</b><br>
From fueling wars to preserving national security, the fossil fuel
industry loves to trumpet its role in keeping the world safe, even
when it is engaging in geopolitical brinksmanship that makes
everyone decidedly less so. In the context of national security,
it’s worth noting that the US military started funding net-zero
programs back in 2012 and listing climate change as a threat
multiplier in its Quadrennial Defense Review a decade ago. But oil
companies and their trade groups ignore that reality and instead
insist the threat is in reducing fossil fuel dependence.<br>
We’ve seen this recently in the industry’s messaging around the
Russia-Ukraine war, when it mobilized even before Putin to push the
idea that a global liquified natural gas (LNG) boom was a fix to
short-term energy shortages in Europe. The industry has been
noticeably quiet on the Israel-Palestine war, but is pushing general
“we keep you safe” messaging that emphasizes global instability. In
the US, energy security narratives often have nationalistic
undertones, with messages pushing the global environmental and
security benefits of US fossil fuel over that from countries like
Qatar or Russia.<br>
<p>It is true that energy self-sufficiency contributes to any
nation’s stability, but there’s no rule that says energy has to
come from hydrocarbons. In fact, it’s well-documented that
depending on an energy source vulnerable to the whims of world
commodity markets and global conflicts is a recipe for volatility.</p>
<b>2 The economy v the environment</b><br>
In 1944, when it looked like the second world war would end soon, PR
guru Earl Newsom pulled together his corporate clients–including
Standard Oil of New Jersey (ExxonMobil today), Ford, GM and Procter
& Gamble – and crafted a top secret post-war strategy to keep
the US public convinced of the “worth of the free enterprise
system”.<br>
<br>
From school curricula to Hollywood-crafted animated shorts to
industry presentations to media interviews, the fossil fuel industry
has hammered these themes repeatedly for decades. And, in a classic
move, industry spokespeople point to studies that industry groups,
like the American Petroleum Institute, commission as proof that
taking care of the environment is bad for the economy.<br>
In 2021, a peer-reviewed paper entitled “Weaponizing Economics”
tracked the activity of a group of economic consultants who were
hired by the petroleum industry for decades. “They produced analyses
that were then used by both companies and politicians … to tell the
public that it would just be way too expensive to act on climate,
and that in any case, climate change was not going to be a big deal,
so the best thing to do would be to do nothing,” the paper’s
co-author Ben Franta, head of the Climate Litigation Lab at Oxford
University, said.<br>
<p>These tactics also show up in ads that remind us to balance a
desire for reduced emissions with the need to keep the economy
going. One BP ad recently running on NPR, New York Times and
Washington Post podcasts states that oil and gas equals jobs and
argues for adding renewables, rather than replacing fossil fuels.</p>
<b>3 ‘We make your life work’</b><br>
The fossil fuel industry loves to argue that it makes the world work
– from keeping the lights on to keeping us riveted by smart phones
and TV, and clothed in fast fashion. It’s genius: create a product,
create demand for the product, and then shift the blame to consumers
not just for buying it but also for its associated impacts.<br>
“Basically it’s a propaganda campaign,” said Brown University
environmental sociologist Robert Brulle. “And you don’t have to use
the words ‘climate change’. What they’re doing is they’re seeding in
the collective unconscious the idea that fossil fuels equals
progress and the good life.”<br>
<p>Advertisements like Energy Transfer Partners’ “Our Lives Are
Petroleum” campaign, which has been running since 2021, also serve
the purpose of shaming people into keeping quiet on climate unless
they have successfully rid their own lives of hydrocarbons. The
logic goes: if you use a phone or drive a car, or really, if you
live in the modern world at all, you’re the problem. Not the
companies that have worked for decades to make their products seem
indispensable and block any alternatives to them.</p>
<b>4 ‘We’re part of the solution’</b><br>
Nothing keeps away regulation like promises of voluntary solutions
that make it seem like the fossil fuel industry is really trying. In
a 2020 exposé, Greenpeace’s investigative newsroom, Unearthed,
caught an Exxon lobbyist on camera explaining this tactic had worked
with a carbon tax to head off emissions regulations and how the
company was pursuing the same strategy with plastic. Working with
the American Chemistry Council to roll out voluntary measures like
“advanced recycling”, the lobbyist, Keith McCoy, said the goal was
to “get ahead of government intervention”.<br>
<p>As with climate change, McCoy explained, if the industry can make
it seem as though it was working on solutions, it could keep
outright bans on single-use plastics at bay. Today, this narrative
shows up in the industry’s push for carbon capture, biofuels, and
methane-based hydrogen solutions like blue, purple, and turquoise
hydrogen. We also see it in the industry’s embrace of the term
“low carbon” to describe not only fossil fuel–enabling solutions
like carbon capture, but also “natural gas”, which industry
lobbyists are successfully selling to politicians as a climate
solution.</p>
<b>5 ‘The world’s greatest neighbor’</b><br>
Just in case people still aren’t accepting of dirty air, dirty water
and climate change, the fossil fuel industry funds museums, sports,
aquariums, and schools, serving the dual purpose of cleaning up its
image and making communities feel dependent on the industry and thus
less likely to criticize it.<br>
<br>
Both journalists and their audiences have more power to combat
climate disinformation than it might feel when they’re awash in it.
Understanding the industry’s classic narratives is a good starting
point.<br>
<br>
Debunking false claims is a critical next step.<br>
<br>
<i>Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative climate
journalist, founder of Critical Frequency, and executive editor of
Drilled Media<br>
Kyle Pope is executive director of strategic initiatives and
co-founder of Covering Climate Now, and a former editor and
publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review</i><br>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/14/climate-disinformation-explainer">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/14/climate-disinformation-explainer</a><br>
</p>
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<i>[ information causes change ]</i><br>
<b>These Climate Activists Make People Uncomfortable — And It’s
Working</b><br>
Last week, guerilla activists at Climate Defiance recounted the
powerful people they’ve made uncomfortable, and used that power to
raise real money<br>
BY ANDREW PEREZ<br>
APRIL 14, 2024<br>
Outside of the Climate Emergency Fund, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit
that funds organizations that lead disruptive climate actions,
Greenberg told the crowd, there are few foundations willing to
finance his group’s work, which has included bird-dogging
politicians like coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) or ExxonMobil
CEO Darren Woods. <br>
<br>
“If we are to keep doing this work, it will be because people in
this room give us money,” he said, calling on one donor in the room
to give $20,000. His rationale for that number was a bit convoluted
— honestly, it was a lot to follow — yet powerful nonetheless. <br>
<br>
Climate Defiance’s targeted, disruptive activism played a key role
in convincing the Biden administration to pause a decision on
whether to approve CP2, a liquefied natural-gas (LNG) export
terminal that would be the largest in the United States — and also
temporarily pause all pending decisions on new LNG export projects.
As Greenberg noted at the event, the White House specifically
included a quote from Climate Defiance in a press release about its
decision to pause new LNG decisions. <br>
<br>
“If you stopped all proposed LNG build-out, that’s the equivalent of
stopping 500 coal plants,” Greenberg said, extrapolating from there
to suggest his group’s activities last year ultimately “had the
impact of shutting down 25 coal plants.”<br>
<br>
He continued: “Our annual budget is about $500,000 per year. So
$500,000, divided by the 25 coal plant equivalents we’ve shut down,
shows that for every $20,000, you have the impact of shutting down
the equivalent of one coal plant.”<br>
When he finally made the ask, it worked almost immediately: A man
pledged $20,000 on the spot. <br>
<br>
“That is incredible. I am blown away,” Greenberg said, before asking
if anyone else was ready to give $20,000. It worked, again, as a
foundation executive pledged to give that much, too. <br>
<br>
Greenberg asked again: “Is there one more person ready to make a
$20,000 commitment to Climate Defiance?”<br>
<br>
After some awkward silence, Steven Donziger — an environmental
justice lawyer who was imprisoned and held under house arrest for
nearly three years due to his role in a $9.5 billion judgment
against Chevron — stepped in and joked, “The discomfort is part of
the strategy.”<br>
<br>
“The New Republic ran a piece on Climate Defiance, which was
otherwise a very nice piece,” Greenberg said, “but they said that I
am ‘lanky and awkward.’ So then I quote tweeted [them] and said,
‘Nobody has ever called me ‘lanky.’” He explained, “I think part of
why I’m able to do this is that I don’t always get too concerned
about social norms.”<br>
<br>
After lowering the ask to $10,000, Greenberg joked that Sen. Amy
Klobuchar (D-Minn.) “once told me that I take things too far — but
tonight, I am ready to prove her absolutely right.” <br>
When he finally made the ask, it worked almost immediately: A man
pledged $20,000 on the spot. <br>
<br>
“That is incredible. I am blown away,” Greenberg said, before asking
if anyone else was ready to give $20,000. It worked, again, as a
foundation executive pledged to give that much, too. <br>
<br>
Greenberg asked again: “Is there one more person ready to make a
$20,000 commitment to Climate Defiance?”<br>
<br>
After some awkward silence, Steven Donziger — an environmental
justice lawyer who was imprisoned and held under house arrest for
nearly three years due to his role in a $9.5 billion judgment
against Chevron — stepped in and joked, “The discomfort is part of
the strategy.”<br>
<br>
“The New Republic ran a piece on Climate Defiance, which was
otherwise a very nice piece,” Greenberg said, “but they said that I
am ‘lanky and awkward.’ So then I quote tweeted [them] and said,
‘Nobody has ever called me ‘lanky.’” He explained, “I think part of
why I’m able to do this is that I don’t always get too concerned
about social norms.”<br>
<br>
After lowering the ask to $10,000, Greenberg joked that Sen. Amy
Klobuchar (D-Minn.) “once told me that I take things too far — but
tonight, I am ready to prove her absolutely right.” <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/climate-defiance-activism-uncomfortable-1235004241/?wpisrc=nl_climatecoach">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/climate-defiance-activism-uncomfortable-1235004241/?wpisrc=nl_climatecoach</a><br>
<br>
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</i></p>
<i>[ summer camp pays for youth to work ]</i><br>
<b>Low Wages and Health Risks Are Crippling the U.S. Wildland
Firefighting Forces</b><br>
At the end of February, a curtain of flames engulfed the Texas
Panhandle, eventually marking the state’s largest wildfire in
history. The blaze was merciless, burning through more than 1
million acres of land and swallowing houses whole. <br>
<br>
While many residents in this region fled to safer ground, a small
contingent ran toward the inferno to help stifle it. After a
grueling three-week battle, Texas firefighters managed to fully
contain the epic wildfire in mid-March. <br>
<br>
Each year, thousands of wildland firefighters put their lives on the
line to face similar battles across the U.S., particularly along the
West Coast. As climate change accelerates, warming temperatures and
drier conditions are fueling longer and more severe fire seasons,
which are pushing U.S. firefighters to their limits. <br>
<br>
In the first three months of 2024, wildfires tore through around
2,660 square miles of land, more than half of last year’s total
annual area burned, reports the Associated Press. Many firefighters
argue that they are not getting the government support they need to
take on these increasingly dangerous conditions. <br>
<br>
Burning Up: In March, ProPublica published a sprawling investigation
about how top federal agencies are failing U.S. wildland
firefighters. The main issues boil down to low wages and a lack of
support for job-related health threats, of which there are many. <br>
<br>
Beyond the obvious hazards of clocking into work in an active fire
zone, wildland firefighters are exposed to a variety of long-term
threats—from carcinogens in the smoke and ash to “forever chemicals”
in firefighter foam known as PFAS, which has been linked to various
types of cancer. <br>
<br>
But another threat is silently simmering among the people who fight
the flames: suicide risk. In 2022, my colleague Liza Gross wrote
about the rising reports of suicide and depression among wildland
firefighters—and the need to better study these risks. <br>
<br>
“It’s a job skill to be able to manage personal discomfort, physical
discomfort, emotional discomfort and stress while working in
high-demand, high-consequence occupations,” Patricia O’Brien, who
worked as a wildland firefighter for 15 years and now oversees the
Bureau of Land Management’s mental health program, told Inside
Climate News. “But it can be really difficult to shift gears and
switch that off.”<br>
<br>
Despite the high health costs associated with this job, compensation
remains low, starting at around $15 an hour for permanent
firefighters employed by the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the
majority of the country’s wildfire response efforts. Now, the Forest
Service is struggling to hold the frontlines of its firefighting
brigades, with a 45 percent attrition rate among its permanent
employees in the past three years and fewer new individuals
applying, according to ProPublica’s analysis. <br>
<br>
“The ship is sinking,” Abel Martinez, a Forest Service engine
captain in California and the national fire chair for the National
Federation of Federal Employees, told ProPublica. <br>
<br>
Firefighter Reform: Wildland firefighters are classified by
different tiers based on their qualifications and areas of
expertise, often requiring years of training to learn how to manage
teams during large fires like those that ravaged the Texas
Panhandle. In the past few years, however, employees with less
experience have been forced to tackle more complex blazes than they
are prepared for. <br>
<br>
In the face of growing fire risks—and shrinking firefighter
staff—the Forest Service is testing a new business model this season
by deploying 44 leadership teams to help handle this next generation
of infernos, reports the Associated Press. Additionally, as fire
seasons become longer, federal offices say they will be hiring more
permanent positions rather than seasonal crew members, which have
traditionally made up more than a third of the wildland firefighting
workforce. <br>
<br>
Last year, the Forest Service launched a mental health support
program, but it’s still within early planning stages and far behind
similar programs run through the Bureau of Land Management, critics
say. Within the Senate, there is a push to permanently increase pay
for wildland firefighters, though the bill has not yet been voted
on. <br>
<br>
“By the time I left fire in 2020, half the temps on my crew were
living in their cars and sleeping literally down by the river
because gentrification from remote work had sent housing prices in
mountain towns skyrocketing,” Christopher Benz, a former wildland
firefighter and writer, recently wrote in an op-ed for The
Washington Post. “If the nation wants experienced firefighters to
stay in the job, it should just raise the base pay.”<br>
<br>
However, in California, a new—and darkly ironic—issue is arising:
Firehouses are struggling to get fire insurance as risks become too
high for insurers. State senators and representatives from the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection discussed this
situation at a Senate budget subcommittee hearing in Sacramento on
April 11, reports Politico. <br>
<br>
Aside from the area burned already, the National Interagency Fire
Center forecasts project a slow start to this fire season overall
due to wet conditions across many parts of the country. However, the
outlook shows high wildfire risk throughout the Midwest, Southwest
and Hawaii, which has just started to recover from its last major
wildfire last August.<br>
<br>
With climate-fueled fires exposing the issues in of the nation’s
firefighting system, it’s going to be difficult for reforms to match
the pace that flames are spreading.<br>
More Top Climate News<br>
<br>
In March, I wrote about scientists predicting that rising ocean
temperatures were pushing the world toward its fourth mass coral
bleaching event. <br>
<br>
Welp, the prediction has officially come true, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration and international partners announced
Monday. And federal officials say that this could be the most
widespread mass coral bleaching event in history. Bleaching occurs
when ocean water temperatures become too warm and cause corals to
expel the algae living in their tissues, turning their color white.<br>
<br>
Around the world, 54 countries and nations—from Kenya to
Indonesia—have confirmed bleaching events in their waters, reports
The New York Times. Last year, bleaching hit several previously
unaffected reef areas and corals that were not deeply affected in
the past, such as soft corals in Florida, which my colleague Bob
Berwyn covered. <br>
<br>
“That was completely unexpected,” Derek Manzello, coordinator of
NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch, told Inside Climate News. “What ended up
happening is, they got hit with so much heat so fast, they just kind
of disintegrated. They started sloughing off their tissues. That was
definitely one of the most shocking things to me last year.”<br>
<br>
Meanwhile marine upwelling is driving cold snaps in other pockets of
the ocean, which could be killing sharks, a new study suggests. In
these events, strong winds and ocean currents can push cold water to
the surface, causing a rapid change in temperature that some marine
life may struggle to survive, the researchers say. <br>
<br>
“Climate change is actually really complex,” Nicolas Lubitz, lead
author of the study and a researcher at James Cook University in
Queensland, Australia, told CNN. “It’s not just warming of the
globe, but it’s really changing the way our oceans function.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16042024/todays-climate-firefighters-climate-change-health/#:~:text=Burning%20Up%3A%20In%20March%2C%20ProPublica,of%20which%20there%20are%20many">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16042024/todays-climate-firefighters-climate-change-health/#:~:text=Burning%20Up%3A%20In%20March%2C%20ProPublica,of%20which%20there%20are%20many</a>.<br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"> <i>[The news archive - the last moment when
Republicans agreed with Democrats and facing reality. ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <font size="+2"><i><b>April 17, 2008 -- </b>Nancy
and Newt on the couch </i></font> </font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> April 17, 2008: <br>
Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection releases a commercial
featuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, and former House
Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, calling for a bipartisan effort
to address human-caused climate change. Gingrich is rhetorically
flogged by right-wing bloggers for participating in the commercial,
and later disavows it.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6n_-wB154">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6n_-wB154</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1COYhkzEXPI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1COYhkzEXPI</a><br>
<br>
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