California Inundated By Heavy Rain (Again), Biden Declares Disaster: Torrential storms soaked California and set off flooding across the state this weekend. The heavy rainfall was caused by one of the many atmospheric river events to hit the state this winter. Californians have seen hundreds of inches of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains and rain elsewhere in the state since January. Atmospheric rivers, long, narrow bands of moisture in the atmosphere that extend from the tropics, are responsible for most of the flood damage in the United States. But climate change is increasing the moisture and precipitation carried by atmospheric rivers, escalating the threat of flooding, landslides, runoff and damage to infrastructure to communities. A Pajaro River’s levee breach, flash floods, evacuations, power loss, and storm-related deaths plagued California over the weekend. Governor Gavin Newson has declared emergencies in over 30 counties and signed an executive order on Friday easing restrictions on capturing water from the storms. Also Friday, the Biden administration issued a disaster declaration for 35 counties and pledged funding for California’s emergency response. Californians are moving to collect this winter’s flush of water, but torrential rains and saturated landscapes won’t solve the Western region’s ongoing drought. Years of dry weather has left parched soil compact, making it more difficult to absorb groundwater when it rains, leading to even more flooding and less water storage in the landscape. Reservoirs are also at record lows which would take more than just one wet winter to replenish adequately. This cycle is likely to continue, as climate change, caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, is poised to increase the pattern of dry, hot drought periods followed by heavy rainfall. (Snow: LA Times; Levees: AP, Washington Post $, NPR, Reuters, LA Times $, NPR, Bloomberg, NPR; Evacuations: AP; Deaths; The Hill; Power Loss: Axios, Washington Post $, Axios; Drought: Vox, E&E $; Climate Signals: Atmospheric rivers)

Ukrainian Activist Banned From CERAWeek: Ukrainian activist and lawyer Svitlana Romanko was barred from entering the CERAWeek oil and gas conference in Houston last week. Romanko helped launch the Stand with Ukraine campaign, which sought to ban all fossil fuel imports from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine with the hope of ending the war and accelerating a clean energy transition. Romanko was never given a straight answer on why her CERAWeek registration was rejected last minute, but she guesses “the fossil fuel industry is actually scared by having someone from Ukraine attend.”While oil and gas industry executives and high-level government officials discussed how they could profit off their idea of a clean energy transition—one completely reliant on carbon capture and rebranding the fossil fuels responsible for climate change ‘green’—amid geopolitical tensions and an ongoing war in Romanko’s home country, her unique expertise in the subject was barred from discussions. Instead, Romanko spent the week outside of the conference alongside US Gulf Coast activists calling for an end to fossil fuel projects in the Gulf and a just clean energy transition. (E&E News, The Independent, The Hill, Clean Technica)

Biden and Von Der Leyen Talk Critical Minerals, Signal Collaboration: President Biden met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday amid increased tension surrounding the Inflation Reduction Act and policies some say undercut trade between the U.S. and E.U. The leaders agreed to launch formal trade talks that will focus on critical minerals, a move that could help both countries reduce their dependence on China, and allow E.U. countries to benefit from Inflation Reduction Act subsidies by more easily accessing American Markets. The commitment to work towards agreement, which also includes Japan, signals the U.S. and E.U.’s willingness to ameliorate strained tensions. The E.U. has previously criticized the IRA for discriminating against European countries, or even violating international trade rules. Last week the E.U. loosened restrictions on tax breaks and benefits for clean technologies, in hope of matching the new U.S. incentives, which threatened to pull developments in the field out of Europe.  (E&E $, OilPrice, Politico, Wall Street Journal $, Wall Street Journal $, Reuters, FT $, Bloomberg $, NPR, OilPrice)

(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: India’s rural women are ‘bearing the brunt’ of climate shocks (CNBC), Concern grows over rich nations controlling sunlight (E&E $)

COP28: EU agrees diplomatic push for fossil fuel phase out ahead of COP28 (Climate Home),

9:37 🚂 TO THE PETROCHEMICAL DYSTOPIA: Aches, rashes and fear: Trauma remains after Ohio derailment (AP), Norfolk Southern disaster prompts rare warning from railroad association (OilPrice), When train crashes leak harmful chemicals, small town firefighters can be vulnerable (NPR)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: UN chief: ‘Cold, hard facts’ should guide climate policy (AP), Climate-vulnerable nations prepare to deploy loss and damage funds (Context), 

DENIAL: Climate denial king Rupert Murdoch is hiring a director of sustainability (Gizmodo)

GOP vs. ESG: Politics of ESG investing (Bloomberg $), Republicans use new majority to take on Biden regulations (The Hill)

HISTORICAL ANALOGIES: The first great energy transition: How humanity gave up whaling (The Guardian)

WILLOW PROJECT?: Biden officials back Alaska oil project scorned as carbon bomb (Bloomberg $, New York Times $, Wall Street Journal $, Politico), Can TikTokkers sway Biden on oil drilling? The #StopWillow campaign, explained (NPR), White House denies reports Biden has decided to sign off on controversial Alaska oil project (The Hill, Reuters), TikTok campaign targets controversial Alaska willow oil project (EcoWatch), Administration to approve huge Alaska oil project on Monday, two officials say (New York Times $), As Biden weighs Willow, he blocks other Alaska oil drilling (AP)

CERAWEEK: Renewable energy investors squeezed by higher interest rates, costs (Reuters), Mitsubishi Power shifts focal point of hydrogen business from Japan to US (S&P Global), Energy Sec. Granholm ‘extremely hopeful’ after meetings with Houston’s energy leaders (Houston Chronicle), Oil industry struts Texas stage with its old swagger at energy jamboree (FT $), Senators say overregulating new permits threatens America's status as global energy leader (Houston Chronicle), Shell and NRG CEOs say electrification will lead the way in the shift to clean energy (Houston Chronicle)

STOVES: There’s something different about the new gas stove influencer (Vox)

EPA: Regan links hydrogen to upcoming carbon rules for power plants (E&E $)

DOE: Jennifer Granholm claims US can 'learn from what China is doing' (Washington Examiner), US energy secretary offers olive branch to EU in green subsidies row (FT $)

DOI: US to hold Gulf of Mexico drilling auction in September (Reuters)

DOT: Regulators cut pressure on pipeline after Kansas oil spill (AP)

WHITE HOUSE: 5 energy issues to watch in Biden's budget (E&E $), Biden makes Oval Office pitch on critical minerals (E&E $), Biden proposed budget boosts funding for clean energy, permitting, efficiency programs (Utility Dive), Biden turns rote budget into campaign-style attack on oil (E&E $), Why Big Oil is less worried about Biden phasing out fossil fuels (Washington Post $), Biden declares US Arctic Ocean off limits to new oil and gas leasing (Wall Street Journal $)

HOUSE: House GOP pushes private insurance to close 'flood gap' (E&E $)

SENATE: US senators blast Treasury's 'lack of progress' on climate risks (Reuters)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: In rift with Biden, Manchin vows to block oil, gas nominee (AP, Washington Examiner, The Hill, E&E $), Senator Manchin threatens to block Biden nominees over IRA energy provisions (OilPrice)

CITIES AND STATES: ‘A defining issue of our time’: Massachusetts’ first-ever climate chief is bringing an all-of-government approach to climate change (Boston Globe $), As enforcement falls short, many worry that companies are flouting New Mexico’s landmark gas flaring rules (Inside Climate News), California regulators set to launch proceeding to investigate natural gas price spikes this winter (Utility Dive), Which state you live in matters for how well environmental laws protect your health (EcoWatch), NW Natural in existential fight as Oregon eyes electrification (The Oregonian), Oregon eyes mandate for climate change lessons in schools (AP)

FERC: Grid operators oppose FERC conference on barriers to merchant interregional HVDC transmission (Utility Dive)

IMPACTS: Climate change is making a springtime tradition for the Umatilla tribes hard to uphold (NPR), East coast African states ail from too much, too little rain (AP), Post-wildfire conditions result in poor recovery for fish (AP), Why saving the whales means saving ourselves (Inside Climate News), Free online tool helps people identify tree species that will thrive in a warmer climate (Yale Climate Connections), As atmospheric river exits, a new storm threatens California (AP)

ADAPTATION: How coconuts protect the Jersey Shore, other eroding coasts (AP), 

HEAT: In the once-cool forests of the Pacific Northwest, heat poses a new threat (Grist)

HURRICANES: Cyclone Freddy pummels Mozambique for a second time, killing one (Reuters, Yale Climate Connections, AP), Lashing Mozambique, Freddy has become Earth’s most energetic cyclone on record (Washington Post $)

RENEWABLES: Can double-sided solar panels help meet global energy demands? (OilPrice), Clean energy to make up 84% of new US power capacity in 2023 (Canary Media), China is still backing an elusive breakthrough for solar panels (Bloomberg $), In the middle of war, Ukraine is building a wind farm (Washington Post $), Planet-saving wind farms fall victim to global inflation fight (Bloomberg $), Solar industry aims for 2023 rebound, but year ahead remains deeply uncertain (Utility Dive), Solar firm Sunrun slumps most in nine months on SVB exposure (Bloomberg $)

BATTERIES: Energy breakthrough opens up possibility for better battery power (Wall Street Journal $), 

BUILDINGS: Energy-saving smart windows could help combat climate change (CBS), The heat pump revolution is here. This is what you need to know (The Guardian), What would you pay for a sustainable home? (FT $), How a small business in Arizona is helping decarbonize concrete (Grist)

METHANE: An unexpected source of methane? Your local sewage plant. (Grist)

OIL & GAS: Saudi Aramco’s $161 billion profit is largest recorded by an oil and gas firm (The Guardian, Wall Street Journal $, New York Times $, CNBC), Four takeaways as oil giant Saudi Aramco reports a huge $161 billion profit (NPR), US oil drilling activity cools off in the Permian (OilPrice), Shell warns of ballooning carbon costs, climate risks to its oil, gas business (S&P Global), Landowners fear injection of fracking waste threatens West Texas aquifers (Texas Tribune), Risk assessment framework developing for beneficial reuse (Houston Chronicle), The world desperately needs more oil and gas investment (OilPrice), Global economy gets tailwind from falling energy prices (Wall Street Journal $)

HYDROGEN: Inside the global race to turn water into fuel (New York Times $)

NUKES: Minnesota nuclear power reactor seeks 20-year license extension (Reuters)

UTILITIES: ‘Welcome to ERCOT.’ Regulators approve city of Lubbock, Texas, shift to retail competition (Utility Dive), Utility astroturf campaign threatens Oregon’s first electrification law (Mother Jones), Highest heating costs in years strain many in New England (New York Times $)

(ALLEGED) UTILITY CORRUPTION: Ohio politicians found guilty in $60 million utilities bribery scandal (Grist)

GRID: EPA, DOE issue framework for maintaining grid reliability during energy transition (Utility Dive), Texas power grid may need ‘breath of god’ to keep cool in summer (Bloomberg $), The dawn of a new era in superconductor materials (OilPrice)

AI: AI can now forecast the next food crisis (Axios)

ACTIVISM: Texas youth organizers take aim at the biggest oil field in the US (The Guardian)

AVIATION: Aviation included in amended EU green classification - Document (Reuters)

AGRICULTURE: ‘Communities, not corporations’: farmers march for climate action in DC (Modern Farmer), Climate diet trend: A "reducetarian" explains how to eat with the health of the planet in mind (CBS), Fighting drought, potato farmers in northern Minnesota overdrew their water permits by tens of millions of gallons (Grist), Scientists warn of ‘phosphogeddon’ as critical fertiliser shortages loom (The Guardian), Moooove over: how single-celled yeasts are doing the work of 1,500-pound cows (Washington Post $)

BUSINESSES: Businesses urge Biden to use ‘every tool’ in Mexico energy spat (Bloomberg $), PepsiCo, FrieslandCampina halt business with palm oil supplier (Reuters), Silicon Valley bank collapse threatens climate start-ups (New York Times $)

CARBON REMOVAL: ‘High-quality’ carbon-removal tech will be focus for new industry group (Canary Media)

ENTERTAINMENT: Hollywood’s climate adviser (New York Times $), BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over fear of ‘rightwing backlash’ (The Guardian, Truthout), BBC denies pulling David Attenborough nature doc to avoid angering right-wingers (HuffPost)

FINANCE: UK pension funds target BP and Shell directors over climate goals (Reuters), Greenwashing crackdown in Europe leaves investors in the dark (Reuters)

OFFSETS: Biggest carbon credit certifier to replace its rainforest offsets scheme (The Guardian), Guardian investigation “compares apples and oranges” – Verra ceo (Energy Monitor)

TRASH: A months-long landfill fire in Alabama reveals waste regulation gaps (NPR)

UKRAINE: Ukraine war’s environmental toll will devastate lives for decades (Washington Post $)

INTERNATIONAL: EU clean tech draft plan sets 40% production target (FT $), EU seeks to arrest industry decline in green transition (Reuters), Iraq to plant 5 million trees to combat climate change (Bloomberg $), Iraqi prime minister promises action to tackle climate change, transition to renewables (PBS NewsHour)

LA NIÑA: La Niña has ended and El Niño will form during hurricane season, forecasters say (CNN), La Niña is gone. These were the deadly storms during its run (AP), La Niña, which worsens hurricanes and drought, is gone (E&E $), After three long years, La Niña is out (Gizmodo)

• The US Chamber still blocks climate progress (The Hill, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Bill Weihl op-ed)
• Why Europe is struggling to compete with the US on green subsidies (FT, Peter Campbell op-ed $)
• #StopWillow has become too big to ignore – are you listening, President Biden? (CNN, Quannah Chasinghorse op-ed)
• The US Chamber still blocks climate progress (The Hill, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Bill Weihl op-ed)
• The West’s weather whiplash should not influence long-term water management (The Hill, Thomas Piechota op-ed)
• What Britain should learn from Biden’s IRA plan (FT, Torsten Bell op-ed $)
• Colonialism created food insecurity in Haiti, now climate change compounds it (Truthout, Victoria Koski-Karell and Elio Dortilus op-ed)
• Who profits from Southern California’s high gas bills? The problem is we don’t know (LA Times, Jamie Court op-ed)
• 3 ways to spend Biden’s clean-energy windfall faster (Washington Post, Gernot Wagner and Julio Friedmann op-ed $)

Daily Caller's Climate Disinfo Coming From Around "News"room, Not Just Koch Operatives With Opinions

As internal text messages prove what most have long known about Fox News (that it's a conservative propaganda machine posing as a news outlet), it's important to remember that these days, Fox is hardly alone. While Murdoch's Fox and Wall Street Journal are the unquestioned Big Leagues of right-wing disinformation, there's a whole set of bush league outlets serving as training grounds. 

The Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller is one of the primary examples of how Fox and the Koch-funded climate change counter-movement are intertwined. Back when they were mostly Koch-funded, Koch-trained Michael Bastasch was regularly running climate disinformation featuring Koch-funded climate deniers. These days, their funding has diversified a bit thanks to Carlson's feud with Kochs, though giving the Daily Caller money still appears to increase the odds of the outlet writing favorable content about you. But Bastasch returned last year as Managing Editor of the Daily Caller's non-profit tax dodge foundation, after a stint at Fox News writing for election-lie-spreader Laura Ingraham. 

Since his return, we've been watching closely to note any changes, and at this point can say it definitely appears that Bastasch is using his position to spread climate disinformation through multiple channels at the Caller, not just the "Big Tent" opinion vertical we noted last week. 

In the past, most of the Caller's climate disinfo would come from just one or two employees who appeared to be tasked with turning press releases from Koch cronies into "news" as their job on the "energy" beat (like Thomas Catenacci, who now works for, you guessed it, Fox News).

But these days, attacks on climate change science, policy, and experts have become a feature of coverage across the website and its various staffers.  

It really stood out between 5 and 7 p.m. last Wednesday, when the Daily Caller published a triple-play of climate disinfo: defending a fossil-fuel loving white supremacist, cherry-picking climate change from a US National security assessment, and attacked environmentalists organizing on TikTok to #StopWillow. 

The first was from "news and commentary writer" Brianna Lyman, who provided a short write-up framed as criticism of Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who "accused one of the witnesses of being racist." Who, you might ask? Well, despite the fact that 'who/what/where/why/when' is a basic tenet of journalism, Lyman didn't identify the person at the center of the House committee meeting, and in fact, described Bush as "criticizing the oil industry before turning her attention toward an unidentified witness." 

Which is an absolutely astonishing thing for a supposed journalist to write, because Congressional hearings are very easy to look up. Alex Epstein, one of the "so-called ‘energy experts’" called by Republicans, is who Rep. Bush called "a philosopher who has previously espoused white supremacist views," before Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) interjected to try and censor her. 

But naming Epstein would require doing actual reporting, and apparently all Lyman did was watch a video clip of the hearing (that she embedded in the story). If you'd like to see what real reporting of the hearing looks like, as opposed to someone running cover for a fellow traveler, Timothy Cama covered it for PoliticoPRO and named Alex Epstein right up front.

Roughly thirty-six minutes after Lyman’s article defending a racist was posted, the Daily 'whoopsie we keep hiring racists' Caller published a piece on the US intelligence community's Annual Threat Assessment. The headline of "reporter" Micaela Burrow's coverage? "Intel Community Warns Fight Over Green Energy Tech Will Worsen Global Tensions."

The 10-paragraph write-up quotes the assessment just twice to justify the story's thrust that fighting climate change will somehow make the world more dangerous. That's probably because the 40-page assessment only devotes 2 pages to climate, and then otherwise focuses on a bunch of things that the Daily Caller doesn't spread disinfo about. 

Finally, rounding out a very busy day for the Caller, "Associate Editor" Ailan Evans' hit piece ran at 6:49, attacking the #StopWillow campaign on TikTok because one of the participating groups is funded by "a Swiss billionaire with a documented history of philanthropy and political donations, primarily to left-wing causes and candidates." Though it's dressed up as some sort of scandalous revelation, at no point does Evans attempt to explain how or why this is somehow bad.

But that's the kind of training you get from the Daily Caller. Both Evans and current Fox Production Assistant Kendall Tietz were 2021 fellows of the Daily Caller's American Journalism Institute, where they train the next generation of political hacks to pretend to be journalists.

So next time you hear about some bizarre disinformation, rank political propaganda, or shameless defense of racism on Fox News, remember that it's not an accident, they're trained to be that awful. There's a whole farm league of conservative propaganda shops like the Daily Caller — the frack-backed Daily Wire and Heritage's Daily Signal come to mind — and while they'd all oppose a Universal Basic Income as socialism, they're proof that as long as would-be-journalists are willing to play ball for the highest bidder, they'll never want for work.

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