Maya Lilly—who has lived through several California wildfires that threatened her home—explains the science behind wildfires. How is climate change responsible for making wildfires worse? Global warming produces more heat and more fuel—two ingredients that necessary for fires. Watch more #ClimateFacts: https://theyearsproject.com/watch/cli...
Related:A season of climate-fueled disasters (excerpt): NYT
"A documentary that looks at pundits-for-hire who present themselves as scientific authorities as they speak about topics like toxic chemicals, pharmaceuticals and climate change. Director: Robert Kenner" YouTube
Related: Climate Hustle 2: Showcasing a Thinning Roster of Climate Science Deniers (excerpt): DeSmog
"A class action launched on behalf of young people everywhere seeks an injunction to stop the Australian Government approving an extension to Whitehaven's Vickery coal mine, arguing it will harm young people by exacerbating climate change.
 |
| from: nwprotectionadvocacy.com |
The class action argues that by digging up and burning coal, climate change will be made worse and that will harm young people in the future"
ABC,#Australia,coal mining,#youth,climate litigation,
When written histories remember 2020 as the year that America’s anti-science obsessions completed their evolution from dangerous to deadly, the premier of 'Climate Hustle 2: Rise of the Climate Monarchy', will be deserving of at least a footnote.
The film, produced by CFACT, the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, and starring Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, was originally set to be released on April 21, before the coronavirus pandemic shut down theaters and much of American life.
In the five months since, climate-fueled wildfires have torched the Western U.S., the World Meteorological Organization ran out of hurricane names in the overheated Atlantic, the Arctic ice cap contracted to a nearly unprecedented minimum, and polar scientists announced that Greenland’s ice sheet has melted “past the point of no return.”
Undeterred by these physical realities, tonight CFACT will release its paean to climate denial, pledging to “rock the climate change debate,” a debate that has long been settled by the 97% or more of actively publishing climate scientists who agree that current warming trends are manmade.
The film is being released by CFACT, a free market organization with a history of taking corporate money to deploy its PR tactics against public interest and environmental advocates. When it launched in 1989, CFACT approached the Chemical Manufacturers Association for “corporate involvement and support.” The CMA described CFACT at the time as being “established to fight the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG) and Ralph Nader-type organizations.”
Go to complete DeSmog article READ MORE
"The most popular climate change story across social media in the past six months used a debunked survey from the late 1990s to claim that “tens of thousands of scientists” had declared global warming a “hoax”, a DeSmog analysis has found.
Fake News example
Published on YourNewsWire, the story was shared, clicked or “liked” 557,000 times on social media, with 555,000 of those engagements from Facebook. The story's author worked for many years with UK conspiracy theorist David Icke.
DeSmog used the social media analytics tool BuzzSumo to find the most popular climate stories globally over the last six months, using the search term “climate change”.
The YourNewsWire story appears on a site mixed with stories about aliens, conspiracy theories, and anti-Clinton rhetoric together with some serious news. The story was shared on Facebook three times as much as the second most popular article, published by the LA Times.
The LA Times article, from November, reported the comments of California Governor Jerry Brown, who warned President-elect Donald Trump his state would not walk away from its climate change commitments."
...................
Pic from a Change.org petition about Fake News
The YourNewsWire story ran under the headline: “Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax” and is a mish-mash of old debunked talking points together with content from other websites also claiming climate change is a hoax.
The intro to the story reads: “A staggering 30,000 scientists have come forward confirming that man-made climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the elite in order to make money.”
The story only briefly references the source for the “30,000 scientists” claim which is, in fact, a survey released 18 years ago known as the Oregon Petition.
An analysis of the petition has found only 39 of the 31,000 signatories actually had a relevant climate science qualification.
Much of the content of the YourNewsWire story was cut and pasted from an article published three days earlier on the website Natural News.
That story, shared more than 80,000 times, ran with the headline: “Over 30,000 scientists say 'Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming' is a complete hoax and science lie.”
Go to the complete DeSmog article
Related: European Thinktanks Repeating ‘Well-worn’ US Climate Denial Tropes (excerpt): DeSmog
#fakenews,fake news,climate change deniers,Facebook page,climatescience,#fossilfuelcompanies,climate change disinformation,
"Time is running out to prevent a climate catastrophe. The summer of
2020, with its devastating wildfires and climate-fueled extreme weather,
is a preview of the world's apocalyptic future — unless decisive steps are taken to reduce carbon emissions. The public’s need for accurate climate change information could not be greater."
.......................................
"Scientists and climate advocates, however, have panned Facebook's initiative because it does nothing to address the massive distribution of climate disinformation on Facebook. Further, Facebook's Climate Science Information Center contains no information about the primary reasons the climate crisis exists: polluting companies, policy obstruction, and unchecked climate denial."
........................
"Facebook’s Climate Science Information Center ignores systemic solutions and emphasizes individual solutions like turning off the lights and buying local produce. Cook calls this approach “disturbing” because it's the same tactic fossil fuel companies have used to delay climate action for years. “Facebook’s new page buys into that framing,” he said. “It pushes an unhelpful narrative that distracts from what is necessary to solve climate change.”
 | |
Marlon Weems @GeekTraderSeptember 7th 2020
1 Retweet1 LikeStone said Facebook “spoke to a number of leading climate science organizations as well as academics in different countries” to inform what was on the page, but declined to say which organizations or academics were involved.
He
added that Facebook is “looking to expand the types of actions featured
and are working with partners on that now.” In the meantime, climate
disinformation continues to spread on Facebook at an alarming rate."
Go to this article By Emily Atkin and Judd Legum
Related: European Thinktanks Repeating ‘Well-worn’ US Climate Denial Tropes (excerpt): DeSmog
climate change disinformation,#fakenews,climate change deniers,climate change,global heating,#jailclimatecriminals,
“An industry in its last days.”
“Steady decline [in growth, demand] for the past decade.”
“Cratering.”
Those are a few of the characterizations of today’s oil, natural gas, and coal industries put forward by several independent journalists, writers, and analysts in the new edition of the “This is Not Cool” video series.
… And then, along came the coronavirus and the COVID-19 challenges, providing one more blow to the energy industry.
Even pre-pandemic, the conventional energy sector “already had plans to cancel major infrastructure projects like pipelines,” independent journalist Keith Schneider told Yale Climate Connections. And with the pandemic, oil and gas experienced “the worst body blow in its modern contemporary history,” he said.
Journalist and writer Antonia Juhasz agrees, pointing to “an industry in its last days, it’s just getting hit from too many sides.”
“Most of the new electricity generation coming online today is coming from wind and solar,” says Houston Chronicle reporter Chris Tomlinson. And professor Dan Kammen of the University of California Berkeley says solar and wind have been the cheapest energy options worldwide for at least the past three consecutive years.
Kammen also says that he believes solar and wind energy initiatives can advance two to three times as many job opportunities as traditional fossil fuel projects: That would be critical to help long-time coal and other fossil fuel industry employees whose decades of work has been critical to economic development … and who society cannot simply leave stranded as momentum turns toward a clean economy. Tending to the plight of those workers whose jobs are lost will have to be part of the energy-options puzzle, interviewees say."..."
Related: Scottish green hydrogen scheme gears up to fuel ferries, buses and trains (excerpt): The Guardian
"Expert consensus is a powerful thing. People know we don’t have the time or capacity to learn about everything, and so we frequently defer to the conclusions of experts. It’s why we visit doctors when we’re ill. The same is true of climate change: most people defer to the expert consensus of climate scientists. Crucially, as we note in our paper:
Public perception of the scientific consensus has been found to be a gateway belief, affecting other climate beliefs and attitudes including policy support.
That’s why those who oppose taking action to curb climate change have
engaged in a misinformation campaign to deny the existence of the
expert consensus. They’ve been largely successful, as the public badly
underestimate the expert consensus, in what we call the “consensus gap.” Only 16% of Americans realize that the consensus is above 90%."
Lead author John Cook explaining the team’s 2016 consensus paper.
To tackle climate change, natural gas has got to go.
 |
| Methane gas energy has to go. Leave gas in the ground. |
The paper leads with a quick note on methane leakage in natural gas production. Methane is a fast-acting greenhouse gas with enormous short-term impacts on climate. It leaks at every stage of the natural gas production and transportation process.
While gas itself is less carbon-intensive than coal, if enough methane leaks during its production, its greenhouse gas advantages are wiped out.
 |
| Gas wells destroy farmland. |
For our purposes here, it doesn’t matter. None of the five arguments against natural gas rely on any particular estimate of leakage. All of them would apply even if natural gas achieved zero leakage (which is impossible). The same is true regarding the local environmental impacts of natural gas production (air pollution, habitat loss, earthquakes) — they are dreadful, but even if they were eliminated, the following arguments would still apply.
Honestly, this one is enough to rule out gas on its own. .......... "
Read the complete Vox article by
Revealed: how the gas industry is waging war against climate action (excerpt) : The Guardian
 |
| Fact check on PM Morrison's gas plan. |
#methanegas,methane gas,greenhouse gas pollution,carbon dioxide,#economy,#stranded assets,#renewables,#jailclimatecriminals,
The overwhelming majority of climate scientists, international governmental bodies, relevant research institutes and scientific societies are in unison in saying that climate change is real, that it's a problem, and that we should probably do something about it now, not later. And yet, for some reason, the idea persists in some peoples' minds that climate change is up for debate, or that climate change is no big deal.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Actually, it's not “for some reason” that people are confused. There's a very obvious reason. There is a very well-funded, well-orchestrated climate change-denial movement, one funded by powerful people with very deep pockets. In a new and incredibly thorough study, Drexel University sociologist Robert Brulle took a deep dive into the financial structure of the climate deniers, to see who is holding the purse strings.
According to Brulle's research, the 91 think tanks and advocacy organizations and trade associations that make up the American climate denial industry pull down just shy of a billion dollars each year, money used to lobby or sway public opinion on climate change and other issues. (The grand total also includes funds used to support initiatives unrelated to climate change denial, as explained in a quote Brulle gave to The Guardian: “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”)
“The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative
“This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power,” he said. “They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hire people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy.
Go to complete Smithsonian Magazine article
Organisations promoting climate science denial and
anti-environmentalism in Europe share the same rhetoric, narratives and
right-wing links as their US counterparts, new research has found.The paper published in the journal Climatic Change examines publications from eight of the most prominent contrarian thinktanks in six EU countries over 24 years from 1994 to 2018, and argues the organisations enjoy a “remarkable” level of political influence for their size.
These include the UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), as well as the German Europäisches Institut für Klima und Energie (EIKE), the Austrian Economics Centre (AEC), Institut Économique Molinari (IEM) in France, Instituto Juan de Mariana (IJM) in Spain and the Liberales Institut (LI) in Switzerland.
The researchers found an increase in environmentally-focused activity
by these organisations in Europe after 2007 and again between 2015
and 2018.
From DeSmog
The publications echoed the arguments put forward by US thinktanks, with a fifth denying climate science outright. Of those which accepted that the planet is warming, many downplayed the role of people in causing it, were sceptical about policies to tackle the problem, or argued that climate change was actually a good thing.
As well as openly contesting climate science, many of the critiques were aimed at environmental campaigners, politicians or journalists.
“Well-worn climate change counter-frames” spread by US thinktanks are being “consistently circulated” by European organisations, too, the research concludes.
Go to complete DeSmog article By Isabella Kaminski • Thursday, September 17, 2020
Related: How Climate Migration Will Reshape America Millions will be displaced. Where will they go? (excerpt) : NYT Magazine
Wildfires are still scorching the West as a hurricane hits the South
"It’s pretty scary out there these days. There are wildfires in the West and a hurricane causing
“catastrophic” flooding in the South. And the destructiveness of those disasters is being aggravated by climate change. |
All of that is keeping those of us on The Times climate team very busy. |
For decades, climate journalists focused on the science of climate change, which proves the planet is warming and forecasts the consequences. That goes back at least to 1988, when The Times published a front-page article about the NASA scientist James Hansen, who testified in the Senate and warned in an interview that “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” |
The government, as we all know, continued to waffle. And here we are. Now, to an ever increasing degree, being a climate reporter is all about catastrophes, reported in real time. |
And so, we do what we do. We cover the news.
In the West, more than 5 million acres have now burned, and fire season still has months to go. Our coverage has focused heavily on the links between wildfires and climate change. |
.........................."
By John Schwartz (Images from this blog)
|
Related: The exhausted Raccoons of the Resistance are running an Antifarsonist self care workshop
#climatefires,#climatechange,#climateaction,#climate crisis,hurricanes,floods,science,
 |
| Wind and solar farms will produce the gas alongside Scottish Power, |
The renewable energy company, owned by Spain’s Iberdrola, will work alongside companies that specialise in producing and distributing the zero-carbon gas. Hydrogen is expected to play a major role in helping the UK to meet its climate targets.
Scottish
Power will use the clean electricity generated by a major new solar
farm planned for a site near Glasgow to run an electrolyser, owned by
its project partner ITM Power, which will split water into hydrogen and
oxygen molecules."..............
Go to complete The Guardian article
Related: HYDROGEN The once and future fuel? Opinion
hydrogen,clean energy,energy,#renewables,
(Pics by this blog)
ARENA to get $1.4 billion as Coalition channels funds to CCS, hydrogen and pubs (excerpt): RenewEconomyThe federal Coalition government has finally decided to extending the funding for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, but will – as predicted – push both ARENA and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation away from wind and solar into other “low emission” technologies, including carbon capture and storage.
ARENA and CEFC have played critical roles in advancing Australian renewable, storage and other critical enabling technologies since their creation in 2012, and despite repeated attempts by the Coalition government to dismantle them, and severe cuts to ARENA’s original budget.
ARENA – which is now nearly exhausted of
funds, and had its board recently stacked with Coalition favourites – is
to be given “guaranteed baseline funding” of $1.427 billion over the
next 10 years, and will be given extra allocations in the annual budget.
For 2020/21, that will amount to $191 million.
This is part of a $1.9 billion package to the two green funds that will include money for CCS, a regional hydrogen hub, along with many of the project identified by a group led by former Origin Energy CEO Grant King, and even some money for pubs to upgrade their refrigeration systems.
The government
will change the mandates of both ARENA and the CEFC so they can more or
less follow the government’s Technology Roadmap which is to be finalised
in the next couple of weeks, and which looks at technologies beyond
wind and solar, including gas, hydrogen and CCS.
The push to
broaden the mandate into “low emissions” technologies will require
parliamentary approval – rejected by the Senate when the Coalition first
tried to scrap the bodies – and comes just days after the unveiling of a
major gas package, and the government’s extraordinary ultimatum to build a 1GW gas plant in the Hunter Valley.
Go to Renew Economy's complete article by Giles Parkinson
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| Climate Fires in the USA |
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| Children Face Unique Health Threats Due To Climate Change |
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| Hurricane Michael left this |
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| Sea rise and no planned retreat |
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| Some predicted sea rise may be too conservative |
government projections, 
