FIRST LOOK:

The Chamber of Commerce does not represent the American business community. Hear CEOs & business leaders explain why they are urging Congress to pass the Build Back Better Act. THIS MORNING at 11:00 am ET.

Climate Crisis Compounds Injustice For Tribes: Indigenous people the world over are generally the least responsible for, and most harmed by the impact of climate change, including across what is now the United States. Along the Yukon River, Alaska Natives are desperately hunting moose and caribou to make up for a precipitous drop in salmon stocks. “Nobody has fish in their freezer right now. Nobody. … We have to fill that void quickly before winter gets here.” Giovanna Stevens, 38, a member of the Stevens Village tribe, told the AP. “When you dig into all the available data for Yukon River salmon,” Kate Howard, a fisheries scientist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told the AP, “it’s hard to explain it all unless you consider climate change.” In what is now the Southwestern U.S., Hopi ranchers are struggling to feed their communities as water allocation decisions exacerbate a climate-fueled megadrought. “This is where the cows come to die,” Mr. Honani, manager of the Hopi Office of Range Management, told the New York Times. “Cut out the pools. Cut out the water recreation areas. Cut out the golf courses, and you’ll start resolving some of the issues the state of Arizona is looking at right now,” said Clark Tenakhongva, vice chairman of the Hopi Tribe in northeast Arizona. In what is now southeastern Louisiana, the Houma people, who do not live on a traditional reservation and are still fighting for federal recognition, were hammered by Hurricane Ida but are struggling to get the assistance — lacking across the board — they need to rebuild. "We would normally be totally self-sufficient," Houma tribal administrator Lanor Curole told NPR. "However, our normal volunteers and the folks within our community … those are the folks that are homeless right now or, you know, having to clean out homes, trying to figure out how to secure their homes." (Alaska Natives: AP; Hopi: New York Times $; Houma: NPR; Insufficient Ida assistance: AP; Climate Signals background: Drought, 2021 Atlantic hurricane season)

Facebook 'Profit Over Safety' Whistleblower Comes Forward: The former Facebook employee who leaked internal documents to the Wall Street Journal revealed her identity as 37-year-old Frances Haugen in a 60 Minutes interview on Sunday, in which she gave her personal perspective as a member of the Civic Integrity team. “Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” Haugen said. She cited Facebook's dissolution of its political misinformation team and associated safety protections directly after the election last year, facilitating and enabling the successful planning and promotion of the January 6 insurrection. Hauge also confirmed that Facebook programmers and executives chose to prioritize hateful and divisive content, because it drives more engagement and thus brings in more ad revenue, while choosing not to push safer content into users' feeds. Despite assurances from Facebook that it’s got a handle on problematic content —and consistent with the findings of a recent report showing Facebook only addressed less than 1% of the fact-checked disinformation about the Texas blackout — the company's internal research found Facebook only identifies just 3-5% of the hate and 1% of the incitements to violence on its platform. (Wall Street Journal $, Gizmodo, AP, The Verge, New York Post, CNN,The Guardian, Axios, Washington Post $, TIME, New York Times $, NY Mag, Reuters, CBS, Vox)

Oil Spill Off SoCal Coast 'Infiltrates' Wetland, Kills Wildlife: At least 126,000 gallons of crude oil have gushed from a pipeline just five miles off the Southern California coast Sunday, wreaking still-unknown devastation on local wetlands and fouling Huntington Beach. “It’s terrible,” Jon Ely, a 58-year-old Huntington Beach resident, told the LA Times. “This stuff is not going to come up. It’s goo, and it’s thick.” The pipeline, owned by Houston-based oil and gas company Amplify Energy, has "probably been leaking longer than we know," Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley told CNN Sunday. Dead fish and birds are already washing up on shore. The toxic slick caused by the pipeline rupture spanned 8,320 acres, officials said, and while the leak appears to have stopped, crews have been unable to actually fix the pipeline. It also "infiltrated" the Talbert Marsh wetland, threatening numerous bird species. Cal State coastal ecotoxicologist told the Washington Post seabirds, marine mammals, and crustaceans living near the shore are most at risk. Birds will try to clean their oily feathers with their beak, as if the oil is "a piece of dirt. Then they ingest the oil and if it’s a little, it might be okay, but it’s usually a pretty toxic exposure, and they die." Biologist and consultant for the county Ben Smith told the LA Times, “There’s tar everywhere. You think by now we would have figured out how to keep this kind of thing from happening, but I guess not.” (Washington Post $, CNN, LA Times $, NBC, CBS, ABC, The Guardian, New York Times $, The Hill, Washington Post $)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: Puerto Ricans fume as outages threaten health, work, school (AP), Greenpeace ad asks if climate change is racist (The Hill)

COP26: COP26 delegates agree on need to deliver on $100 bln climate finance pledge - UK's Sharma (Reuters), Queen Elizabeth tells lawmakers 'eyes of the world' will be on Scotland during climate summit (The Hill, The Guardian, Reuters), John Kerry says UN Climate Summit can generate "enormous progress" (Axios, The Hill, AP), Vatican hopes its pre-COP26 climate event will raise stakes in Glasgow (Reuters, AP)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Big nations must stretch further to limit climate change - U.S. envoy Kerry (Reuters, CNN, Reuters), Indigenous leader to France’s Macron: Save the Amazon (AP), the White House sees a new $150 million loan in Ecuador as way to compete with China (NPR)

FLOOD INSURANCE: FEMA’s new flood insurance plan is drawing the battle lines over climate adaptation (Grist), homeowners face new risks and costs (Axios, Wall Street Journal $), flood insurance revamp aims for fairer rates (AP, explainer), flood insurance revamp starts today, despite opposition (E&E $), the price of living near the shore is already high. It’s about to go through the roof. (Washington Post $, CBS)

LINE 3: Oil starts flowing through Line 3 on FrIday, but water protectors will keep fighting it (Earther , Grist)

FOSSIL LITIGATION: Energy lawsuits pact seen threatening Paris climate deal (Reuters)

RULE OF LAW: Lawyer Steven Donziger gets six-month sentence for contempt in Chevron battle (The Guardian, The Hill, AP, Reuters, Common Dreams, Bloomberg $)

CLIMATE COMMUNICATIONS: From Corrie to car ads, carbon literacy training pushes climate to the fore (The Guardian), has the media industry taken it seriously enough in recent years? (Mediatel News)

GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE YOUNG: The ABCs of big oil: the fossil fuel industry’s century-long quest to invade elementary schools (Earther)

AGENCIES: Next DOD budget request will include a climate focus (E&E $)

EPA: ‘Strategic tension’: EPA plowing ahead on power plant rules (E&E News), EPA reverses Trump-era memo that allowed pollution limit exemptions (Politico Pro $)

DOE: Congress trying to make good on climate 'down payment' (E&E $), DOE scientists unveil advance in turning CO2 into natural gas (E&E $), gas appliances are no longer eligible for Energy Star’s top rating (Grist)

DOI: 5 challenges facing Stone-Manning as BLM’s new director (E&E News), Bureau of Land Management hopes goats can slow wildfires (AP)

SCOTUS: Supreme Court could curb agency powers (E&E News)

THE HILL: How Dems’ clean electricity plan hits nuclear, gas, FERC (E&E News)

HOUSE: Infrastructure delay shows clout of progressive leader Pramila Jayapal (Wall Street Journal $), Rep. Pramila Jayapal: $1.5 trillion for economic bill is 'too small' and 'not going to happen' (CNN), centrist Democrats go after Pelosi over delayed infrastructure vote: 'deeply regrettable' (The Hill), Democrats ready highway funding patch as talks drag on (E&E News), House passes bill to halt Transportation Department furloughs (Politico Pro $)

SENATE: With Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s snubbing of the Democrats’ reconciliation plans, environmental advocates ask, ‘which side are you on?’ (InsideClimate News, E&E $), Senate clears short-term surface transportation bill (Politico Pro $), Sinema, a holdout on the social spending bill, returns to Arizona for a doctor’s visit and a scheduled fund-raiser. (New York Times $)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden says he'll 'work like hell' to pass infrastructure, social spending bills (Reuters), White House seeks to flip debate on agenda price tag (The Hill), Biden throws in with left, leaving his agenda in doubt (New York Times $), Biden to host lawmakers at White House next week amid impasse on his agenda (The Hill), Democrats will be 'disappointed' as party pares agenda - White House (Reuters), no timeline for votes on Biden’s agenda, senior adviser says (Politico Pro $)

INFRASTRUCTURE BILL(S): 'Everybody is frustrated,' except for Biden, about agenda delays (NPR), Dem divisions, Manchin demands highlight climate struggles (E&E News, ABC), the rickety state of climate legislation (Axios), White House, top Democrats agree to boost carbon capture credit in budget bill -sources (Reuters), Ocasio-Cortez says moderate senators "not really coming to the table" over budget bill (CBS, ABC)

POLITICS: The budget bill could place a fee on methane, and big oil is lying like hell to stop it (HuffPost), Big Oil is going all-out to fight climate rules in Build Back Better (CNN), big business is bankrolling an effort to kill the Democratic climate bill (The Atlantic), labor, environmental groups in new ad press lawmakers for bigger package (The Hill, Wall Street Journal $), Progressives stand firm on priorities as infrastructure debate continues (New York Times $, New York Times $, Axios, New York Times $), progressives rallied behind Biden's agenda. Now he’s gotta sell them on a compromise. (Politico), why Democrats’ climate goals may test their Latino appeal (AP)

CITIES: Trams, cable cars, electric ferries: how cities are rethinking transit (New York Times $), Columbus commits to large-scale solar park (Axios), Pittsburgh’s climate-friendly plan for condemned homes (Yale Climate Connections), Tucson, Ariz., Mayor nervously awaits passage of infrastructure bill (NPR)

STATES: As Massachusetts envisions a fossil fuel-free future, gas companies are quietly investing billions in pipelines (Boston Globe $), [New Mexico's] Democratic governor juggles energy priorities in oil region (AP), [North Carolina] energy bill deal aims to meet Cooper NC gas reduction goals (AP), North Carolina bipartisan energy compromise gets muted, mixed reaction from advocates (Energy News Network), solar supply squeeze frustrates New Mexico's move away from coal (Reuters)

CALIFORNIA: As California's solar net metering battle goes to regulators, a focus on reliability may be the best answer (Utility Dive), Boston passes new building decarbonization ordinance (Utility Dive)

FERC: MISO, ISO-NE execs stress need for new power supply planning framework at FERC reliability meeting (Utility Dive), FERC pressed on gas, renewables, cyber threats (E&E News)

IMPACTS: Warming Arctic could spread nuclear waste, unknown viruses: report (The Hill)

• EXTREME WEATHER THREAT: 1. The next 30 years of extreme weather (Axios), 2. The extreme weather risk-hedging industry (Axios), 3. There's no outrunning the risks of climate-fueled weather (Axios), 4. Homeowners face new risks and costs (Axios), 5. How to adapt to extreme weather (Axios), 6. 1 wine thing: The new vineyards (Axios)

DROUGHT: California battles historic drought with $5.2B, fish relocation (E&E $), the Colorado River is in crisis. The Walton family is pushing a solution. (Wall Street Journal $)

WILDFIRES: 1 in 8 acres in California has burned in last decade (The Hill), giant sequoias and fire have coexisted for centuries. Climate crisis is upping the stakes (The Guardian), scientists are racing to save sequoias (NPR, Short Wave)

CYCLONIC STORMS: Hurricane Sam to bring tropical storm conditions to Bermuda (AP), Oman braces for historic landfall from Tropical Cyclone Shaheen (Washington Post $, Yale Climate Connections)

HEALTH: We’re miscalculating the cancer risk from a massive class of chemicals: MIT Study (Environmental Health News), heat waves are dangerous during pregnancy, but doctors don't often mention it (NPR)

RENEWABLES: Solar companies rush to prove they don't use forced labor (E&E $), solar industry ramps up lobbying over 'forced labor' issue (E&E $), US fishermen are making their last stand against offshore wind (TIME), world’s largest solar producers warn of delays, ’serious imbalance' (E&E $)

BATTERIES: Fish and Wildlife Service proposes endangered status for Nevada desert flower (The Hill, AP)

OIL & GAS: What's behind the wild surges in global LNG prices and the risks ahead (Reuters, explainer), China's oil giants cautiously chart their climate course (Axios), Exxon sees green gold in algae-based fuels. Skeptics see greenwashing. (Wall Street Journal $), global natural gas crunch roils consumers and industry (New York Times $), OPEC boss says world can’t afford to underinvest in oil (Wall Street Journal $), winter is coming. Should the US hang on to its natural gas? (Wall Street Journal $)

GAS LEAKS: Southwest Gas releases data on frequency of Driscopipe 8000 leaks (ABC15-Arizona)

GAS EXPLOSIONS: More than 150 people signed up for assistance after apartment explosion in Dallas (KRLD), city extends housing help for residents displaced by apartment explosion (NBC Dallas-Fort Worth)

PLASTICS: Plastics company agrees to $23M settlement in drinking water pollution case (The Hill)

COAL: Climate activists seek to block German coal mine expansion (AP), India coal crisis brews as power demand surges, record global prices bite (Reuters), Norway closing its one remaining Arctic coal mine in 2023 (The Hill)

UTILITIES: 16 utilities took $1.2B in COVID relief while continuing power shutoffs: report (Utility Dive), head of California utility regulator resigns less than one year into six-year term (ProPublica)

EVs: 5 midwestern governors agree to create a network to charge electric vehicles (NPR, The Hill), EV sales have doubled. Is a ‘tidal wave’ coming? (E&E News), Amazon-backed EV maker Rivian discloses nearly $1 billion losses in IPO filing (Reuters, Bloomberg $, Jalopnik, The Verge, Tech Crunch, The Verge, MarketWatch)

INSULATE BRITAIN: Climate protesters block 4 roads in London; 38 arrested (AP)

BUSINESS: Early lessons from Microsoft's climate push (Axios), Amazon settles with 2 outspoken workers it fired last year (AP), executives say the pandemic opens their eyes to complex risks (Axios)

RICH PEOPLE: Study: the rich can spur climate action — or uphold the status quo (Grist)

CARBON REMOVAL: The carbon capture project that couldn’t: Chevron misses targets for its huge Australia facility (Canary Media)

WILDLIFE: Humpback whales are bouncing back in Alaska after a deadly blob heatwave (NPR)

INTERNATIONAL: Battered towns in England’s north test Johnson’s plan to level up’ (New York Times $), global gas shortage stings UK, showing shortcomings in its energy transition (Wall Street Journal $), for Bangladesh's climate migrants, pandemic job cuts fuel 'multiple crises' (Thomson Reuters Foundation), Mexico weighs limits to private investment in electricity (Wall Street Journal $), oil-dependent Russia seeks to protect economy from energy transition (Wall Street Journal $), UK seeks alliance to end public finance for coal, oil and gas projects overseas (Climate Home)

• EUROPE: Austria announces carbon tax, offset by reduction in other taxes (Deutsche Welle, Reuters), Austria to revise carbon tax to include 'climate bonus' for residents (The Hill), German election prompts hope for climate action, worry that democracies can’t do enough (InsideClimate News, E&E $), Luxembourg asks EU to limit speculators in response to gas price spike (Reuters), Poland joins calls for EU action on energy price spike (Reuters)
• CHINA: China’s power shortfalls begin to ripple around the world (Wall Street Journal $), will China’s energy crisis make it more reluctant to fight climate change? (TIME)

• A letter from a jailed Line 3 water protector (Vogue, Tara Houska)
• Biden’s big vision collides with his small majorities (New York Times, Carl Hulse analysis $)
• What’s the least bad way to cool the planet? (New York Times, David Keith op-ed $)
• Biden calls for international cooperation, but how to cooperate with China? (The Hill, Jianli Yang op-ed)
• How our discussion of race becomes distorted (New York Times, John McWhorter op-ed $)
• Political partisanship in transportation overshadows strong overall support for reform (The Hill, Kelcie Ralph and Nicholas Klein op-ed)
• Potty trained cows: From polluter to problem solver (The Hill, Lindsay Matthews, Ph.D., op-ed)
• Harvard and other schools make a choice on fossil fuels (New York Times, Naomi Oreskes and Sofia Andrade op-ed $)
• Keeping score on the environment (Environmental Health News, Peter Dykstra column)
• Happy New Water Year —  Californians have to face some difficult wet season truths (LA Times, Peter Gleick op-ed $)
• Leveling the playing field for recycled plastics (The Hill, Roberta Elias op-ed)
• All Democrats must compromise to pass economic plans, just like 1993 (The Hill, Paul Bledsoe op-ed)
• 150 years after the great Chicago fire, we're more vulnerable (NPR, Scot Simon commentary)
• The success of COP26 rests on it providing an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Energy Monitor, Sebastian Shehadi op-ed)
• President Sanders uses his veto (Wall Street Journal, Editorial Board $)

Deniers Publicize Journal Retraction of Their Pal-Reviewed Denial Paper as Though Being Bad at Science is Alarmists' Fault

It’s not often that deniers just straight up tell you that the few things they do manage to slip into the peer-reviewed literature are garbage, but last week we saw exactly that. 

“Activists,” according to a NoTricksZone post by liar Kenneth Richard, reposted to WUWT, have gotten a paper retracted because it “threatens climate alarm narratives.” 

Oh no! What activists did this? What sort of campaign did they wage? How did they convince the publishing journal, History of Geo- and Space Sciences, to retract the paper? 

Don’t expect any actual answers. The best Richard can offer is that the journal only retracted the paper “after likely receiving heavy criticism from climate activists.” He doesn’t point to any such criticism from any activists, because there doesn’t appear to have been any. In fact, the only chatter about it seems relegated to a couple of mocking responses to a Judith Curry tweet calling it a “very interesting and provocative new paper.” Actual climate scientist Gavid Schmidt referred to the study, which claims that carbon dioxide and methane do not cause warming, as “obvious and pre-debunked nonsense,” while glaciologist Eric Steig joked that “as an ice core specialist” he “could find 538 things wrong with it in about five minutes.” 

The most robust response though by far, was a lengthy twitter thread by John Mashey that called out some very …um… interesting aspects of the study, for example that the pre-publication reviewers included deniers like Richard Lindzen and Martin Hovland, a longtime petroleum industry employee, while an editor at the journal has a history of climate denial. 

But Gavin got 38 retweets, Eric got 2, and John 14. Not exactly a social media mob of activists demanding a retraction!

Instead, it seems the journal itself felt, after a bunch of denier blogs promoted the study, that it might’ve slipped through their editorial standards' cracks. A different editor than the one who had initially deemed it worthy of publication reached out and solicited reviews from scientists who actually had an expertise in climate, and as a result of uniform feedback, they retracted the paper and removed it from the website.

The nearly-40-pages of reviews are brutal. “It is wrong in many ways,” says one, demonstrating “a complete misconcept[ion] of the understanding of how CO2 influences temperature,” and “until this is understood any further discussions are meaningless.” 

Another wrote that the paper’s argument that past CO2 changes didn’t have any influence on ice ages, therefore current CO2 emissions can’t cause warming are “deeply flawed,” and a “logical fallacy” so “in summary, this paper should have never gotten past peer review. It appears that quality peer review was not done. It is inherently flawed and cannot be remedied by further revision. It must be withdrawn.” 

Another points out that “the only ‘analysis’ in the manuscript is that the author” simply “drew horizontal bars” across a graph of CO2 levels and temperature, “noted that, as drawn, the bars on the CO2 curve are longer” than the temperature ones, and then “concluded that this invalidates the idea that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has a warming influence on temperature, for ice age cycling and for all other variations.” Ouch.

And because the physics of climate change “does not lead to a specific prediction about the relative widths of these horizontal bars” it “invalidates the manuscript.” 

Yes, “in a nutshell,” another reviewer wrote, “Prof. Richet would like us to believe that simply by eyeballing a graph” of CO2 and methane levels against Antarctic temperatures, “he can see what generations of scientists before him have failed to understand, namely that carbon dioxide has played little or no role in Earth temperature variations over the last 423kyr.” 

Our favorite critique though, was the confession that the reviewer has “probably never read a ‘scientific’ paper of such low quality” as it “looks like a strongly biased political indictment” that relies on “a plethora of historical impossibilities and without any knowledge of the most basic concepts of climatology.” 

The reviewer concluded that they are “surprised that the author, who is so keen on discussing scientific rigour, can make such beginner’s mistakes.” 

The journal though, to its credit, seems eager to learn from those mistakes, and appears to have dropped the author and the editor who handled the paper from its Editorial Board. 

All without any apparent pressure from the supposed gang of climate activists deniers are blaming for this paper’s retraction.

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