Ex-officials at U.N. FAO say work on methane emissions was censored

Former officials in the United Nation’s farming wing have said they were censored, sabotaged, undermined and victimized for more than a decade after they wrote about the hugely damaging [Economist article – JG] contribution of methane emissions from livestock to global heating.

by Arthur Nelsen, October 20, 2023

EXCERPTS:

Team members at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tasked with estimating cattle’s contribution to soaring temperatures said that pressure from farm-friendly funding states was felt throughout the FAO’s Rome headquarters and coincided with attempts by FAO leadership to muzzle their work.

“The lobbyists obviously managed to influence things,” one ex-official said. “They had a strong impact on the way things were done at the FAO and there was a lot of censorship. It was always an uphill struggle getting the documents you produced past the office for corporate communications and one had to fend off a good deal of editorial vandalism.”

“There was substantial pressure internally and there were consequences for permanent staff who worked on this, in terms of their careers. It wasn’t really a healthy environment to work in,” said another ex-official.

A recent paper by Matthew Hayek, the assistant professor in environmental sciences at New York University, said that the FAO’s use of emissions modeling – without using verifiable atmospheric data – could underestimate methane emissions from livestock by up to 47% in countries such as the US. “Models are only estimates that need to be constantly validated – and there’s been an alarming lack of validation over the now decades that this [FAO] research has been produced,” he said.

READ Guardian ARTICLE: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/20/ex-officials-at-un-farming-fao-say-work-on-methane-emissions-was-censored?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

United Nations’ IPCC report:

Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late

Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.

IPCC spells out what’s needed to avert climate disaster.
by Fiona Harvey, March 20, 2023

EXCERPTS:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday [March 20, 2023].

The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late.

In sober language, the IPCC set out the devastation that has already been inflicted on swathes of the world. Extreme weather caused by climate breakdown has led to increased deaths from intensifying heatwaves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing hunger, and “increasingly irreversible losses” in vital ecosystems.

All of those impacts are set to increase rapidly, as we have failed to reverse the 200-year trend of rising greenhouse gas emissions, despite more than 30 years of warnings from the IPCC, which published its first report in 1990.

John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, said: “Today’s message from the IPCC is abundantly clear: we are making progress, but not enough. We have the tools to stave off and reduce the risks of the worst impacts of the climate crisis, but we must take advantage of this moment to act now.”

READ Guardian ARTICLE: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

One big subject leaders at COP conferences won’t touch: livestock operations

Renewable energies – specifically solar and wind — are already our best options economically, not just ecologically. And of course economics are tied to the environment. How many hundreds of billions (trillions?) of dollars will more heat waves, droughts, wildfire, hurricanes, food shortages, and other disasters on our horizon, cost humanity?

Livestock farming is on course to guzzle half the world’s carbon budget, so why won’t governments discuss it?
by George Monbiot, November 9, 2021

EXCERPT:

An analysis by Our World in Data shows that even if greenhouse gas pollution from every other sector were eliminated today, by 2100 food production will, on its current trajectory, bust the global carbon budget two or three times over. This is largely because of animal farming, which accounts for 57% of greenhouse gases from the food system, though it provides just 18% of the calories.

This issue has become even more urgent now we know the heating impact of methane is rising. Livestock farming is the world’s greatest source of methane released by human activities. Yet there is no mention of it in the global methane pledge launched at last year’s climate summit.

Governments have not ignored these issues by accident; they have resolutely looked away. A new analysis for Chatham House finds that only 12 nations name emissions from farm animals in their official climate commitments, and none seeks to reduce livestock production. Only two nations (Costa Rica and Ethiopia) mention dietary change: arguably the most important of all environmental actions, as animal farming is also the world’s greatest cause of habitat destruction and wildlife loss.

READ George Monbiot ARTICLE:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/09/leaders-cop27-livestock-farming-carbon-budget-governments

Watch “Don’t Look Up” on Netflix — and call everyone in the morning.

An allegory for our tumultuous, insane times, and one of the biggest-ever stories of humanity’s short time on Earth. Millions have watched this Netflix-produced film which was nominated for Best Picture of 2021.

We still have time to act to minimize the coming carnage. Oh, how I wish I could join my few climate crisis-denying friends in believing the sky isn’t falling, and the oceans aren’t rising, but I’m doomed by my willingness to face painful truths; common sense, and established science. 7+ billion humans can’t pump endless pollutants into our environment and atmosphere without, uh, consequences.

We’ve seen this ecological suicide coming, and multiplying, for decades. What happens if we don’t immediately alter our course is the ultimate inconvenient truth.

But, hopeful to the End of Days, CLICK HERE for BONUS SURPRISE ACTION YOU CAN TAKE, TODAY!, to mitigate our anthropogenic damage.

Exxon Campaigned Against Global Warming Despite Internal Research Accurately Predicting Future Calamity

JANUARY 12, 2023 ARTICLE EXCERPTS: “…despite a decades-long effort from the company to dismiss human-driven climate change, and the science underpinning it, according to a new study.

We now have the smoking gun showing that they accurately predicted warming years before they started attacking the science. These graphs confirm the complicity of what Exxon knew and how they misled.

These findings are important because ExxonMobil and the larger fossil fuel industry face lawsuits nationwide, claiming they misled the public on the harmful effects of their products.

In conversation with The Guardian, Supran noted that “This really does sum up what Exxon knew, years before many of us were born.”

“Exxon Campaigned Against Global Warming Despite Internal Research Accurately Predicting Future Calamity”
by Joshua Markland, January 12, 2023

READ Jan. 12, 2023 Guardian article by Oliver Milman:

Oil company drove some of the leading science of the era only to publicly dismiss global heating

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research

VIDEO: Exxon Researched Climate Change in 1977 | FRONTLINE

Reasons for hope. And its utility.

“Dare We Hope? Here’s My Cautious Case for Climate Optimism”
by Rebecca Solnit, May 1, 2021

EXCERPT: …amateurs and newcomers tend to be more alarmist and defeatist than insiders and experts. What the climate journalist Emily Atkin calls “first-time climate dudes” put forth long, breathless magazine articles, bestselling books and films announcing that it’s too late and we’re doomed, which is another way to say we don’t have to do a damned thing, which… undermine[s] the people who are doing those things and those who might be moved to do them.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/01/climate-change-environment-hope-future-optimism-success?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Looking for someone to blame for extreme heat? Try Wall St.

Big banks’ financing of coal, oil, and gas was higher in 2021 than in 2016, the year after the Paris agreement was adopted.

By Alec Connon, July 27, 2022
ARTICLE:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/27/looking-for-someone-to-blame-for-the-extreme-heat-try-wall-street?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Executives of fossil fuel companies bear the greatest responsibility. More than anything else, it has been their great deceit – their burying of climate science, funding of climate denial, and spending of billions to kill climate policy – that has prevented us from transitioning away from an economy powered by coal, oil and gas. Compromised politicians, including the entire Republican party and the Democratic coal baron Joe Manchin, deserve special condemnation, too.

In the cast of climate villains, however, another character rises to claim a special place on center stage: Wall Street. Since the Paris Agreement, the 6 largest US banks – Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs – have provided $1.4tn in financing to the fossil fuel industry. Indeed, since that heralded day in the French capital, the world’s four largest funders of fossil fuel expansion have all been US banks. So much for “American leadership”.

**I’m a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every day.**

The movie Don’t Look Up is satire. But speaking as a climate scientist doing everything I can to wake people up and avoid planetary destruction, it’s also the most accurate film about society’s terrifying non-response to climate breakdown I’ve seen.

By Peter Kalmus, Dec. 29, 2021
ARTICLE:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/climate-scientist-dont-look-up-madness

A lack of technology isn’t what’s blocking action. Instead, humanity needs to confront the fossil fuel industry head on, accept that we need to consume less energy, and switch into full-on emergency mode. The sense of solidarity and relief we’d feel once this happens – if it happens – would be gamechanging for our species.

Averting Climate Catastrophe: Can We Get Here From There?

“Americans’ worry about global warming is at an all time high,” with 70% very or somewhat worried, reports the Yale Program on Climate Communication. But in terms of active boots on the ground… We don’t have the numbers yet. Where thousands are sending messages to lawmakers, we need tens and hundreds of thousands. Where dozens are being arrested in civil disobedience actions, we need hundreds and thousands. Will we as a people gain the sense of urgency needed to generate those numbers?

By Patrick Mazza – Feb. 21, 2022

ARTICLE:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/21/averting-climate-catastrophe-can-we-get-here-from-there

In 2020, Global Renewable Energy Grew at Fastest Rate Since 1999.

New wind and solar power projects in China, Europe, and the US spurred 45% rise in capacity.

Wind power capacity doubled over the last year, and solar growth outpaced its pre-pandemic rate by almost 50%, due to growing appetites for clean energy of governments and corporations.

By Jillian Ambrose, May 11, 2021
https://tinyurl.com/2zdhsbem

EXCERPTS: “…In the UK, the growth of the offshore wind industry is forecast to account for 25% of the world’s offshore wind capacity by 2022, making it the only country in the world to have more wind power generated off its coast than on its land.”

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA (International Energy Agency), said governments need to “build on this promising momentum” by putting in place policies that “encourage greater investment in solar and wind, in the additional grid infrastructure they will require, and in other key renewable technologies such as hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal.”

“From the historic heat wave and wildfires in the West, to the massive derecho [hurricane-force windstorm] that tore through the middle of the nation, to the record-breaking pace of this year’s hurricane season, the unprecedented and concurrent extreme conditions resemble the chaotic climate future scientists have been warning us about for decades — only it’s happening right now.”

“This current stretch of natural catastrophe events in the United States are essentially a snapshot of what scientists and emergency managers have long feared,” says meteorologist Steven Bowen, the head of Catastrophe Insight at AON, an international risk mitigation firm.

CBS NEWS story: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-heat-wave-wildfires-hurricanes-derecho

60 Minutes interview: Sir David Attenborough, no longer a climate crisis skeptic. – Sept. 28, 2020

2021: SCIENCE trumps DENIALISM DISASTER

The Trump Administration’s solution to human-caused global warming (aka, anthropogenic climate change, aka the climate crisis) is to simply DENY its existence.

This is as ineffective, and as disastrous, as believing the Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic will go away all by itself without dramatic, organized and orchestrated action.

The previous Administration not only ignored, but HID more of the overwhelming scientific evidence that the 97% majority of the world’s climate scientists are in consensus about:

Three human activities are the main drivers of our climate crisis:
1) animal slaughterhouses;
2) deforestation, and;
3) fossil fuels consumption

JP Morgan economists warn climate crisis is threat to human race. Feb.21, 2020.

The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.

The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences.

The study implicitly condemns the US bank’s own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions about the financial and reputational risks of continued funding of carbon-intensive industries, such as oil and gas.

The research by JP Morgan economists David Mackie and Jessica Murray says the climate crisis will impact the world economy, human health, water stress, migration and the survival of other species on Earth.

“We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened,” notes the paper, dated January 14, 2020.

READ ARTICLE: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/21/jp-morgan-economists-warn-climate-crisis-threat-human-race?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Greta Thunberg TELLS IT LIKE IT IS, in short, biting speech to European Parliament. – March 3, 2020.

“Nature doesn’t bargain, and you can’t make deals with physics.”

The Swedish teen climate crisis activist sums up where we are, and how pitifully short it is of where we need to be — if we want to mitigate the global damage bearing down on us — you know, Biblical apocalyptic stuff, like massive floods, drought, wildfires, famine, even plagues of viruses as animals are driven from destroyed habitats into more contact with human populations. LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxh6X4CW38Y

Scientific Consensus: Earth’s Climate is Warming

Research scientists at NASA, a non-partisan government agency, verify our dire reality. NASA’s website lists literally hundreds of scientific institutions worldwide that corroborate the scientific fact that humans are creating our climate catastrophe. READ MORE.

Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals¹ show that 97% or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree*: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.

In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

World Scientist’s Warning of a Climate Emergency

The Alliance of World Scientists – over 13,500 scientists from 156 different countries around the world sign document attesting to the reality of human-caused climate crisis.

EXCERPT:

We scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat. In this paper, we present a suite of graphical vital signs of climate change over the last 40 years. Results show greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, with increasingly damaging effects.

With few exceptions, we are largely failing to address this predicament. The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating faster than many scientists expected. It is more severe than anticipated, threatening natural ecosystems and the fate of humanity.

READ FULL DOCUMENT: https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu

January 13, 2020

The heat in the world’s oceans reached a new record level in 2019, showing “irrefutable and accelerating” heating of the planet.

The new analysis shows the past five years are the top five warmest years recorded in the ocean and the past 10 years are also the top 10 years on record.

Hotter oceans lead to more severe storms and disrupt the water cycle, meaning more floods, droughts and wildfires, as well as an inexorable rise in sea level. Higher temperatures are also harming life in the seas, with the number of marine heatwaves increasing sharply.

READ MORE

Over 11,000 of the world’s leading climate scientists have added their names to a declaration calling the planet’s current warming trends a “climate emergency.” Feb.21, 2020.

EXCERPTS from the report, “World’s Scientists’ Warming of a Climate Emergency”:

“Scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and ‘tell it like it is.’ Based on this obligation and the date presented below, we herein proclaim, with more than 10,000 scientist signatories from around the world, a clear and unequivocal declaration that a climate emergency exists on planet Earth.

Profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained increases in both human and ruminant livestock populations, per capita meat production, world gross domestic product, global tree cover loss, fossil fuel consumption, number of air passengers carried, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and per capita CO2 emission since 2000…”

READ THE REPORT YOURSELF: https://scientistswarning.forestry.oregonstate.edu/sites/sw/files/climate%20emergency%20Ripple%20et%20al.pdf

How the fossil fuel industry intentionally misled Americans about climate change. October 2019.

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has deployed a well-funded, well-orchestrated disinformation campaign about the reality and severity of human-caused climate change. Its purpose: confuse Americans and policy-makers, all to delay climate action and protect fossil fuel industry profits.

As with Big Tobacco’s strategy, the public have been intentionally mis-informed about climate change, as they were about the hazards of smoking. While fossil fuel companies attacked sound science, climate-catalyzed damages worsened, including increased storm intensities, droughts, forest damage and wildfires, all at a huge financial cost — and in American lives.

READ Oct. 2019 REPORT: https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/America_Misled.pdf

1968 Stanford Research Institute Report to the American Petroleum Institute warning that rising CO2 would result in increases in temperature at the earth’s surface, and that significant temperature increase could lead to melting ice caps, rising seas, and potentially serious environmental damage worldwide.

https://www.smokeandfumes.org/documents/16

VIDEO: A 16-year-old girl (with the focus, determination and guts of a wise adult) tells it like it is on the Climate Crisis. Greta Thunberg, at the United Nations Climate Summit in NYC, sums it up in 4 min. (YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW3IQ-ke43w)

VIDEO: Global Warming (Climate Change) 101 – Bill Nye, “the Science Guy,” brings you up to speed in 4 min. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtW2rrLHs08

2017 University of Michigan survey shows a majority of Americans think the U.S. government has “a great deal of responsibility” to take action: READ MORE

The only people who deny global warming — and thus the international scientific community’s consensus — have a direct or indirect financial stake in the status quo fossil fuels-based economy, are friendly to it, or have been methodically misinformed by the industry’s decades-old public relations campaign. It really is that simple because…

97% of actively (peer-reviewed) publishing climate scientists agree that climate change — aka global warming — is caused by burning fossil fuels.

“Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world.” – Source: NASA

Tragically, too much of Washington D.C. is partnered with or corrupted by fossil fuel industry dollars. Hence climate deniers, to whom this page is in part devoted. To protect current, bloated, coal, oil and gas industry profits, this overwhelming scientific consensus is ignored and the waters intentionally muddied. This is the identical tactic employed for decades by the tobacco industry in denying its products kill millions.

Global warming is no longer just suicide by collective human ignorance, it’s now genocide-in-the-making, driven by greed. Millions of people worldwide will be killed, and millions more harmed by drought, floods, extreme summer heat, crippling storms and more. Ironically (poetically?), even deniers and wealthy fossil fuel industry execs will be harmed as our societies, economies — and their profit streams — are crippled by crises. Supply lines will be disrupted and consumers will be unable to buy fossil fuel products. READ MORE about global warming’s disruptive effects.

LATEST 1,656-page National Climate Assessment , Nov. 23, 2018

The 4th National Climate assessment is the most comprehensive scientific study to date on the effects of global warming on the U.S. economy, public health, coastlines and infrastructure. It describes in precise detail how the warming planet will wreak hundreds of billions of dollars of damage in coming decades. The assessment was performed by about 300 scientists, including career government scientists at 13 federal agencies, and began in 2014, shortly after the publication of the previous report.

Many of its authors expressed disappointment that President Trump’s strategy appears to be to ignore the findings and move forward with plans to undo climate change policies. Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a co-author of the report’s chapter on the effect of climate change on roads, bridges and other infrastructure said, “It’s incredibly frustrating. I’m watching these arguments between politicians and scientists, but I’m on the ground with public works officials who say that argument’s irrelevant. People are going to get hurt and die if we don’t change the policy.”

That chapter concludes that more extreme storms, flooding and heat waves, along with rising sea levels, will damage the nation’s roadways, leading to dangerous infrastructure collapses and up to $21 billion in damage by the century’s end.

• READ NY Times story about the report, “U.S. Climate Report Warns of Damaged Environment and Shrinking Econo

• READ the 4th National Climate Assessment: https://nca2018.globalchange.gov

NOV. 28, 2018: NEW Lancet Report, “Humanising Health and Climate Change”

The report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change by Nick Watts and colleagues from 24 academic institutions and United Nations agencies, published on Nov 28, 2018, describes the dire effects of climate change in more human, personal terms:

Today’s babies, by adulthood, will live on a planet without an Arctic. Prevalence of heatstroke and extreme weather will have redefined global labour and production beyond recognition. Multiple cities will be uninhabitable and migration patterns will be far beyond those levels already creating pressure worldwide.

The New York Times writes of the report: “Most worrying, according to the authors, is the compounding effect of extreme weather events that are exacerbated by climate change. Heat waves, floods and storms can batter the very public health systems that are meant to help people, the report says. A failure to rein in emissions, it warns, could lead to disasters that “disrupt core public health infrastructure and overwhelm health services.” READ Times review.

READ Lancet ARTICLE: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)33016-2/fulltext

READ Lancet REPORT: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32594-7/fulltext

OCT 8, 2018: United Nations IPCC Climate Report: Only Massive Action Will Avert Disaster

• This new report from the United Nations’ usually conservative IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivers a dire warning: we must limit global warming to 1.5° Celsius within the next 12 years to avoid devastating harm to life on Earth.

• This requires immediate, far-reaching action to end fossil fuel use and transition to clean energy. Carbon pollution must fall to net zero in the next 30 years.

• The report warns that 2° of warming will cause devastating sea-level rise, heat waves, drought, famine, and the extinction of thousands of species.

• The world is currently 1°C warmer than preindustrial levels. Following devastating hurricanes in the US, record droughts in Cape Town and forest fires in the Arctic, the IPCC clarifies that climate change is already happening, upgrading its risk warning from previous reports, and warns that every fraction of additional warming will worsen the impact.

Specifically, we must end deforestation AND plant billions more trees; drastically reduce fossil fuels and eliminate coal; increase wind and solar power; reduce meat consumption with its concomitant deforestation; meat production is the #1 generator of greenhouse gases.

The only good news from this report is that the necessary changes are possible, but we must muster the social/political will to act now.
TreeSpirit adds: “When the people lead, our leaders will follow.”

• The U.N. IPCC full report: https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/session48/pr_181008_P48_spm_en.pdf

U.S. GOV’T REPORT CONFIRMS GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL, HUMAN-CAUSED. – Nov 3, 2017

The product of hundreds of experts in the government and academia, peer-reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Climate Assesment (NCA4) is considered America’s most definitive statement on climate change science.

The 477-page report released on Nov. 3, 2017 said it was “extremely likely” – meaning with 95-100% certainty – that global warming is mostly from CO2 from humans burning coal, oil and natural gas.

READ New York Times story: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/climate/us-climate-report.html

READ Guardian story: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/03/climate-change-report-us-government-contradicts-trump?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

READ Climate Science Special Report: an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change with a focus on the U.S. It represents the first of two volumes of the 4th National Climate Assessment, mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990. https://science2017.globalchange.gov

The Lancet Countdown’s 2017 Report on climate change and human health reaches 3 key conclusions:

1) The human symptoms of climate change are unequivocal and potentially irreversible;
2) The delayed response to climate change over the past 25 years has jeopardized human life and livelihoods;
3) The past 5 years have seen an accelerated response, and in 2017 momentum is building.
READ REPORT from this venerable, peer-reviewed medical journal: http://www.lancetcountdown.org/the-report

How the fossil fuel industry funds the disinformation machine of climate science denial, an example:

Bankruptcy documents of the once-mighty Peabody Energy coal company show it had financial connections to “Friends of Science,” a Canadian climate science denial group. READ MORE:

https://thenarwhal.ca/canadian-climate-denial-group-friends-science-named-creditor-coal-giant-s-bankruptcy-files/

AUG 23, 2017: New Harvard study of ExxonMobil documents reveals 80% of their internal scientific communications acknowledged the link between fossil fuels use and global warming — while 81% of their public ads denied it:
READ New York Times STORY

AUGUST 8, 2017 BREAKING NEWS: Comic commentator Stephen Colbert discusses new, giant, leaked government report detailing global warming and its human causes:

NOV. 2017 research shows forests are essential to meeting Paris Climate Agreement goals [and reducing atmospheric CO2]

READ ARTICLE: https://news.mongabay.com/2017/11/new-research-shows-why-forests-are-absolutely-essential-to-meeting-paris-climate-agreement-goals

EXCERPT: It’s widely acknowledged that keeping what’s left of the world’s forests standing is crucial to combating climate change. But a suite of new research published last week shows that forests have an even larger role to play in achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement than was previously thought.

VIDEO: STATISTICALLY ACCURATE climate change DEBATE hosted by John Oliver:

READ & SHARE Trump Administration STORY: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/us/politics/trump-white-house-website.html

DO YOU KNOW PEOPLE WHO ARE UNCONVINCED HUMANS ARE CHANGING EARTH’S CLIMATE? Wonder why you keep hearing some pundits and politicians — including Donald Trump and his wealthy fossil fuel industry-backed advisors — challenging the climate change consensus? They claim that humans releasing millions of tons of greenhouse gases like CO2, CO and methane into the atmosphere for decades have not, could not, affect the planet’s climate.

WANT TO HAVE AN INTELLIGENT, FACT-BASED DISCUSSION on the topic, complete with facts and figures — not just hearsay — with family or friends who have bought into the disinformation campaign and are (anthropogenic) climate change skeptics? This webpage is for you — and them!

Scientists need to back up their opinions with research and data that survive the peer-review process. A Skeptical Science peer-reviewed survey of all — over 12,000 — peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject ‘global climate change’ and ‘global warming’ published between 1991 and 2011 (Cook et al. 2013) found that over 97% of the papers taking a position on the subject agreed with the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

• READ Science Skeptic article: https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm

• 5 KEY FACTS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE by Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University: http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/us/sutter-climate-opinion-maps/index.html

“…there is broad agreement in the American public on the solutions needed to fight climate change and usher in the clean-energy era.”

• THE MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY and its myriad business proxies need only muddy the debate waters — as the tobacco industry did for decades — to sow public confusion. READ:

Michael-Mann-Penn-State-climatologist-geophysicist_portrait-rev-WEB.jpg

Michael Mann, Ph.D., Penn State

“How the Right Wing Denial Machine Distorts the Climate Change Discourse,” by Michael Mann, climatologist, geophysicist, and Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Pennsylvania State University. author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change and 1 of 8 lead authors of the “Observed Climate Variability and Change” chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report published in 2001.

…polluting interests and other bad actors are mobilized. They are doing their best to continue the attacks on science and scientists whose findings threaten their bottom line, to distract the public, to promote climate change denial propaganda and to support politicians who will support their agenda of denial and inaction.

Ingrid Michaelson SINGS sweetly, sardonically, about how we’re treating Earth, with Samantha Bee:”

VIDEO: Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson LIES to CONGRESS about Exxon’s decades of funding climate change denialism.

January 11, 2017 Tillerson, a lifelong oil executive, uh, misrepresented what facts Exxon knew and when Exxon knew them during his Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of State. Exxon knew carbon pollution affected the climate but campaigned methodically against climate science for decades. READ THE STORY

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/01/11/tillerson-called-out-lying-about-climate-during-confirmation-hearing

VIDEO (2.5 min.): Senate hearing documents Exxon-Mobil years of disinformation campaign — aka, lying.

OVERWHELMING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS — a huge list of prominent, respected and non-partisan scientific institutions have determined climate change, previously called global warming, is real and human-caused, including:

• American Medical Association
• American Meteorological Society
• Union of Concerned Scientists
• U.S. National Academy of Sciences
• NASA
• EPA (Environmental Protection Agency, pre-Trump Administration)
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• American Geophysical Union

187 (!) more institutions are on this long list (bottom of this webpage).

View online list of respected, non-partisan scientific institutions that state climate change is real AND human-caused: http://www.opr.ca.gov/facts/list-of-scientific-organizations.html

READ: “Confronting the Realities of Climate Change – the consequences of global warming are already here”
by The Union of Concerned Scientists

EXCERPT:

Global warming is happening now. The planet’s temperature is rising. The trend is clear and unmistakable. Every one of the past 40 years has been warmer than the 20th century average. 2016 was the hottest year on record. The 12 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998. Globally, the average surface temperature has increased more than 1º F since the late 1800s. Most of that increase over just the past 3 decades.

We are the cause. We are overloading our atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which traps heat and steadily drives up the planet’s temperature. Where does all this carbon come from? The fossil fuels we burn for energy—coal, natural gas, and oil—plus the loss of forests due to deforestation, especially in the tropics.

The scientific evidence is clear. Within the scientific community, there is no debate. An overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that global warming is happening and that human activity is the primary cause.

READ MORE.

THERE IS STILL HOPE: WHAT WE CAN DO

RENEWABLES like SOLAR and WIND are NOW CHEAPER than filthy fossil fuels – even without accounting for their huge health costs (cancer, illnesses—and death).

Renewable energy is now, in 2018, the CHEAPEST unsubsidized electricity! (Meaning, the fossil fuel industry is being propped up by govt. policies, which is of course influenced (aka, bought and paid for) by large corporations.)

“A zero-carbon economy is both feasible and affordable, ”
The Financial Times, Adair Turner, Nov. 22, 2018

“That may seem daunting. But it would be undoubtedly technically possible at very small economic cost, as a report from the Energy Transitions Commission makes clear. The issue is not feasibility, but whether governments, industry and consumers are willing to take the actions required to get there.”

READ ARTICLE

California passes historic legislation: sets goal of 100% clean CA electricity by 2045. Sept. 10, 2018 An example of the direction America can move—and must move— quickly. We the people can press our elected officials, as here with CA Governor Jerry Brown, to support logjam-breaking, paradigm-shifting legislation (SB100 = Senate Bill 100) for entirely achievable clean energy goals. (Environmentalists lobbied for even faster conversion to clean energy, which is also feasible if corporations are no longer allowed to unethically tip the free market scale toward suicidal, dirty fossil fuels).

Previously, CA set 2030 as its target for halfway mark: 50% statewide renewable energy, meaning solar, wind, hydro-electric—and with this legislation that 2030 goal has been increased to 60% renewables. Both former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former VP Al Gore pushed for the legislation.

READ L.A. TIMES STORY: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-renewable-energy-law-signed-20180910-story.html

25 U.S. MILITARY EXPERTS SAY CLIMATE CHANGE POSES “SIGNIFICANT RISK” TO SECURITY. and requires more attention from the U.S. government. This includes former advisers to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. (In contrast, Donald Trump has said human-caused global warming is a fiction “created by the and for the Chinese” to hurt U.S. business.)

READ MORE in Guardian news story, Sept. 14, 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/14/military-experts-climate-change-significant-security-risk

READ MORE in Reuters news story, Sept. 14, 2016: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-idUSKCN11K0BC

VIDEO: Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says lawmakers and the media cherry pick scientific papers to reinforce political ideals on climate change and says it’s irresponsible to create public policy while ignoring the scientific community’s consensus.

[Climate science denial] “…is the beginning of the end of an informed democracy.”

• READ The 9 Most Prominent Climate Deniers – and their fossil fuel industry ties which motivate their denial and disinformation campaigns. This includes: Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), fossil fuel pundit Steve Milloy, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, self-styled “Skeptical Environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg, scientist-turned-denier-for-hire Fred Singer, Sarah Palin, conservative funders Charles & David Koch (aka the Koch Bros.), and “swift-boat” P.R. man Marc Morano.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

• The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy, by Michael Mann & Tom Toles

The award-winning climate scientist Michael E. Mann and the Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist Tom Toles have been on the front lines of the fight against climate denialism for most of their careers. They have witnessed the manipulation of the media by business and political interests and the unconscionable play to partisanship on issues that affect the well-being of billions. The lessons they have learned have been invaluable, inspiring this brilliant, colorful escape hatch from the madhouse of the climate wars. www.MichaelMann.net

The Madhouse Effect portrays the intellectual pretzels into which denialists must twist logic to explain away the clear evidence that human activity has changed Earth’s climate. Toles’s cartoons collapse counter-scientific strategies into their biased components, helping readers see how to best strike at these fallacies. Mann’s expert skills at science communication aim to restore sanity to a debate that continues to rage against widely acknowledged scientific consensus. The synergy of these two climate science crusaders enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed books―and may even convert die-hard doubters to the side of sound science.

This Changes Everything, is Naomi Klein’s seminal 2004 book tackling the myriad, giant issues engulfing anthropogenic climate change — and the fossil fuel industry’s terror of change and any loss of profits or control.

Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.

READ MORE, MORE REVIEWS

VIDEO: M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a “Liberal Hoax”

Brilliant political commentator Chomsky explains why, among other factors, institutional capitalistic systems keep corporate CEOs in line with either climate change denial for short-term profit, despite the long-term suicidal effect of inaction.

• ANALYSIS of a DISSENTING VOICE Freeman Dyson is a well-respected scientist in the fields of math and physics — but not climate science — who has weighed in on climate science with statements like this one:

“I’m just saying I don’t understand it and neither does anybody else. I’m skeptical because I don’t think the science is at all clear, and unfortunately a lot of the experts really believe they understand it, and maybe have the wrong answer.”

BUT THE REALITY IS: “…tens of thousands of scientists, from multiple disciplines, in a vast number of studies spanning decades, have combined all their data and come to the conclusion — disturbing as it is — that the climate is definitely warming, that CO₂ emissions from human activities are responsible, and that the consequences are likely to be both serious and increasingly difficult to prevent the longer action is delayed.

• READ ARTICLE on the shortcomings of Dyson’s views, by Ann Reid, Executive Director of The National Center for Science Education. Dyson is representative of the tiny minority of dissenting scientists, especially those from other fields (who aren’t financing by a fossil fuels industry existentially opposed to reducing fossil fuels consumption): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-reid/freeman-dyson-offers-up-a-smorgasbord-of-climate-change-misconceptions_b_7259170.html

• 7 min. VIDEO ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE EXPERTS & DENIERS On 12,000 scientific papers, what makes an expert an expert, scientists, climate scientists, published climate scientists, and more: Denial101x – Making Sense of Climate Science Denial

• EXAMPLE OF HOW DISINFORMATION WORKS: A seemingly legitimate petition website, PetitionProject.org, has apparently gathered over 31,000 signatures from “scientists” claiming that not only is anthropogenic global warming false, but ALSO that reducing CO2 and other emissions from the atmosphere would “harm the environment.” (!!) If you’re going to misinform, might as well go all the way. The video above dissects this misleading and astonishing “false equivalence” by revealing this number to be, in reality, a comparatively tiny number and percentage of signatories, and that only .1% of them are climate scientists.

The “MYTH” video screen-capture graphic at right illustrates the saying, “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.” WATCH THE SHORT VIDEO ABOVE. Most alarming is how astronomical the stakes now are, and that current weather anomalies like rapidly melting glaciers, concurrent sea level rise, and reports of increased global coastal flooding from India to Miami are all simply dismissed as unrelated to decades of massive amounts of fossil fuels emissions.

How can ANYONE today argue against reducing carbon emissions from, say, burning coal, that also creates, by common sense as well as climate science, the choking air pollution seen in China’s and India’s cities, water pollution, ocean acidification, coral reef die-offs and more?

A March 2016 Gallup poll revealed that 65% of Americans now say increases in the Earth’s temperature over the last century are primarily attributable to human activities rather than natural causes. This is a striking 10% increase in the past year. READ Gallup’s “U.S. Concerns About Global Warming at 8-year high.”

Please share this page and this information with everyone you know so the public consensus keeps growing, especially among educated and young people who will inherit this Earth. We the people can, as usual, lead our so-called “leaders” to a less disastrous future.

197 Worldwide Scientific Organizations state climate change is caused by human actions:

(Above) list of 197 Worldwide Scientific Organizations which state climate change is caused by human actions.

VIEW ONLINE LIST: http://www.opr.ca.gov/facts/list-of-scientific-organizations.html

VIDEO: Australian Coal Industry bridges the gap between environmental responsibility and responsibility to shareholders:

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Climate change, human activity, scientific consensus