New Mexico Stops Oil And Gas Production Near Schools: A group of residents, led by the former president of the Navajo Chapter in Counselor, New Mexico, are suing the state for failing to prevent their neighbors and other New Mexico residents from suffering from oil and methane gas pollution. About 7 percent of New Mexico’s population live or attend a school or daycare within a half-mile radius of an oil and gas production site. In response, the New Mexico Land Commissioner issued an executive order that stops all new oil and gas leases on state trust land within a mile of schools or other places of education, including daycares, preschools and sports facilities used by students. The order also calls for the state to review the existing oil and gas leases on state trust land that are near schools and homes to understand whether they are complying with existing state regulations. Nearly 120 schools could be within one mile of oil and gas sites on federal, state, Tribal, and private lands in the state. (AP, Albuquerque Journal $)

Energy Department Kicks Nuclear Fusion Startups $46 Million: Following a big breakthrough in fusion energy this past December, the Biden administration is pumping funds to fusion startups working to achieve a pilot-scale demonstration of energy produced through nuclear fusion “within a decade.” Fusion is often considered to be a nearly limitless source of clean energy that does not produce the radioactive waste that is a byproduct of the nuclear fission power plants operating today. Fusion merges atoms; fission tears them apart. The Energy Department selected eight companies and a diverse set of technologies for this round of nuclear fusion funding; one uses a device called a tokamak to confine hot plasma and smash atmos together. In December, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved fusion ignition, or a net energy gain, which was a major milestone not previously achieved in a laboratory setting. “This showed that fusion is a possible source of clean energy for humanity and that fusion science has reached a level of maturity to support the premise of that vision to accelerate efforts in the engineering development of a fusion pilot plant,” the DOE said in a press release. (The Verge, Axios)

Water Constraints Limit Construction In Arizona: Arizona will no longer certify new developments within the Phoenix area as groundwater supplies have been rapidly disappearing after years of overuse and drought driven by the climate crisis. A report from the Arizona Department of Water Resources found that there is not enough groundwater under Phoenix to meet projected demand over the next 100 years, a troubling warning for the nation’s fifth-largest city with around 5 million residents. Terry Goddard, a former Phoenix mayor, told the Washington Post that the message of the study is: “[Arizonans are] living on borrowed water. “You need to be conscious of every drop,” he said. “You can’t build unless you know exactly where the water is coming from.” Developers must now show they have enough water to last 100 years before building a subdivision in much of Arizona, but as the climate gets hotter and dries up major water resources like the Colorado River, new developments become even riskier. The Phoenix area uses roughly 2 billion gallons of water a day - more than twice as much as New York City despite having half as many people. (CNN, Axios, Wall Street Journal $, Washington Post $, New York Times $, AZCentral $)

COP28: UAE oil chief is ‘the perfect person’ to lead UN climate talks, COP28 director general says (CNBC)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: PG&E reaches $50M settlement in fatal 2020 fire as charges dismissed (Axios), Judge dismisses criminal charges against California energy company in 2020 fatal wildfire (AP), Federal appeals court halts EPA effort to impose air pollution plan in Missouri (AP)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Rich nations say they're spending billions to fight climate change. Some money is going to strange places (Reuters), Argentine meteorologist becomes first female head of UN weather agency (AP)

THE HILL: Senate passes debt limit deal to avert default (CNN), Debt ceiling deal advances pipeline and tweaks environmental rules. But more work remains (AP), How a fossil fuel pipeline helped grease the debt ceiling deal (Washington Post $), The House passed the bill. Who won? (New York Times $)

MVP: Some experts are questioning Mountain Valley Pipeline's emissions estimates (Washington Post $)

CITIES AND STATES: Cities stand to win big with the Inflation Reduction Act. How do they turn this opportunity into results? (Inside Climate News), State program to fund new schools allows for fossil fuels, despite climate goals (Boston Globe $)

~CALIFORNIA: California lawmakers advance bill to cool down outside areas at schools (AP), In California’s heartland, a new resistance movement is taking root (New York Times $), Can Californians keep their lawns? (New York Times $), Majority of Californians fear worsening weather swings due to climate change, poll finds (LA Times $)

IMPACTS: Erosion and sea-level rise are coming for their Louisiana home. They’re staying anyway (Grist)

HEAT: Summerlike heat across Great Lakes region forces school closings (AP), High temperatures close schools in several US cities (New York Times $)

WILDFIRES: Wildfires threaten to undo decades of progress in fighting air pollution (The Hill), Man acquitted of igniting massive 2018 Southern California wildfire (AP)

HURRICANES: New airborne radar could revolutionize hurricane forecasting (Axios), A new hurricane season begins with forecasts for less activity but more uncertainty (Inside Climate News), Hurricane season begins with a Gulf of Mexico tropical disturbance to watch (Yale Climate Connections), Tropical depression forms in Gulf of Mexico on 1st day of hurricane season (AP), The 2023 Atlantic hurricane season is now underway. Here’s what to know (LA Times $), Hurricane season starts today. Here’s what to expect (CNN), How to prepare for the 2023 hurricane season with climate change in mind (NPR), Generators can be deadly during hurricanes. Here's what to know about using them safely (CBS News)

PERMITTING: Here’s how the debt ceiling bill would change the US energy permitting process (The Hill)

RENEWABLES: High fuel prices, energy security concerns drive surge in renewables: research (The Hill), Renewable energy surges, driven by solar boom and high fuel prices, report finds (AP), New global renewables capacity additions to rise by a third this year - IEA (Reuters)

JOBS: Growing climate tech firms need engineers — but also sales and HR pros (Bloomberg $)

PFAS: Industry documents show corporate ghouls knew about forever chemicals for decades (Gizmodo), New Mexico sues manufacturers of ‘forever chemicals’ amid health concerns (AP)

TRANSMISSION: House passes debt limit bill with permitting reform, transmission study (Utility Dive)

PLASTICS: As plastics keep piling up, can ‘advanced’ recycling cut the waste? (Yale Environment 360)

OIL & GAS: Petrobras captures carbon to ramp up gas production, and calls it green (Bloomberg $), IEA head Fatih Birol wants the fossil fuel industry to set climate targets (TIME), OPEC excludes some WSJ, Reuters and Bloomberg reporters from meeting (CNBC)

FINANCE: ESG blowback: Exxon, Chevron investors reject climate measures (Wall Street Journal $)

RESEARCH: Climate paradox: Emission cuts could ‘unmask’ deadly face of climate change, scientists warn (The Hill), New research shows global climate benefits of protecting nature, but it’s not a silver bullet (Inside Climate News)

GRID: US power grid faces 'more frequent and more serious disruptions,' NERC CEO warns (Politico $)

ACTIVISM: Berlin police record jump in angry motorists attacking road-blocking climate activists (AP), England cricket team bus briefly held up by Just Stop Oil protest in London (The Guardian)

AVIATION: Boeing signs alternative fuel deal with Los Angeles startup to cut carbon footprint (AP), Plan to use pig fat as plane fuel doesn’t fly, study says (Washington Post $)

BATTERIES: US battery storage capacity increased by 52% year over year, to 10.8 GW by the end of Q1 (Utility Dive), A onetime paper maker is now the king of lithium (Wall Street Journal $)

REMOVAL: Should we reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions? Why not both? (Fast Company)

EVs: EVs have a hole big enough to drive a hydrogen truck through (Wall Street Journal $)

INSURANCE: Yet another home insurance giant quietly stops writing new policies in California (San Francisco Chronicle), Louisiana, 9 other states sue US government over steep flood insurance rate increases (AP), Florida intensifies oversight of insurers after they cut disaster estimates (Washington Post $), Florida’s homeowner insurance rates are four times the national average. That’s not getting better anytime soon (CNN)

MINING: Minnesota plans rewrite of rules for copper-nickel mining near popular wilderness (AP)

H2: Toyota debuts hydrogen-fueled Corolla race car as auto racing begins shift away from gas guzzlers (AP)

SEAWEED: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change? (National Geographic)

INTERNATIONAL: South Africa may burn heavy fuel oil to ease record blackouts (Bloomberg $), Is the tide turning for Australia’s fossil fuel exports? (Energy Monitor), Japan’s southern Okinawa Islands prepare as tropical storm approaches (AP), India pauses plans to add new coal plants for five years, bets on renewables, batteries (AP), Brazil’s Congress weakens pro-environment ministries in a rejection of Lula (AP), Government body warns of increased health threats from climate change in Germany (ABC), Asia climate woes mount as heat shatters May records (Reuters), China leads the world in preparing for extreme weather threats to power supplies (Bloomberg $)

• Billions in hydrogen tax credits could be given to polluters (The Hill, Sara Gersen)

• California’s snow is melting, and it’s a beautiful thing (New York Times, Andrew Schwartz $)

• Why the fossil fuel divestment movement should reach hospitals (LA Times, Don Lieber $)

• Congress is turning climate gaslighting into law (New York Times, Jonathan Mingle $)

• Carbon capture isn’t the climate change health benefit the world needs (Boston Globe, Gina McCarthy and Kari Nadeau $)

• How ‘carbon scoring’ can help Congress make real progress on climate change (The Hill, Kevin Rennert and Sanjay Patnaik)

Daily Caller Defends Joe Rogan Guest's Totally 'Bogus' Climate Conspiracy Going Viral On TikTok

Last Friday, Media Matters for America published some of the most amusing content we've seen this side of actual literal scripted comedy. This week, it got even better. 

It starts seriously enough: TikTok announced a new policy against climate change misinformation in April, so TikToker and misinfo expert Abbie Richards teamed up with Media Matters' Ilana Berger to see how effectively the platform is enforcing that policy. 

Turns out it wasn't that hard to find climate misinfo on the platform still, as they found 20 million cumulative views on seven viral TikTok clips warning that climate change isn't real based on  "The Adam and Eve Story,” pseudoscience book. 

Perpetual misinfo machine Joe Rogan had a guest on his $200 million podcast to tell listeners about the "Adam and Eve" theory that there is supposedly a dramatic six-day, "90–degree flip" of the Earth's magnetic poles that corrects itself on the seventh day. But before it does, the event will apparently be "cataclysmic" with winds of "approximately 1,000 miles an hour." (In addition to cataclysmic pole flipping, the book claims that Jesus Christ lived in India for nearly 18 years and was abducted by aliens in a “space vehicle” after his crucifixion.)

Winds of that speed would be "past supersonic," NASA scientist Martin Mlynczak told Justine Calma at The Verge, so "Just right there, I mean, the person has no idea what they're talking about." And while the planet's magnetic poles do slowly wobble around over the course of thousands of years, it's definitely not flipping in a week, the technical term for which is "total bogus." (Well, maybe it’s not really a technical term, but that's what Mlyzncak called it anyway.)  

As Richards explains on TikTok, hiding in Joe Rogan's obsession with fun and kooky ancient conspiracy theories is regular ol' climate denial, as they're used as an alternative explanation for the boring old fact that greenhouse gasses are trapping heat in the oceans and atmosphere, just like scientists have said for like a hundred + years. 

Mlynczak explained (because this is what some of the brightest minds in the country have to spend time doing), "there’s no proof and no science and no physics behind any of the claims about the magnetic field change being associated with climate change.”

But no proof and no science and no physics is no problem for Joe Rogan's podcast, for TikTok conspiracy theorists, and, apparently, for The Daily Caller. 

Because if you think there's absolutely no way anyone would try and defend the "bogus" conspiracy theory then you, like the Adam and Eve theory, would be quite wrong. 

Rising to the defense of Rogan's guest Jimmy Corsetti is none other than The Daily Caller, boasting of an "EXCLUSIVE" editorial(?) from "news and commentary writer" Kay Smythe, claiming that "Media Matters launch[ed] misinformation campaign against Joe Rogan, his guests." 

Yes, it appears that there is literally no conspiracy theory too stupid for The Daily Caller to defend, as long as there’s a chance to attack its political opposition. Apparently The Verge and Media Matters were wrong to claim "there is no relationship between Earth's magnetic field and climate change, despite this being an actual part of developing science." 

Oh? This Daily Caller writer, whose stories before and after this one are headlined "Dave Chappelle Invites Cancelled 'SNL' Comic On Stage. What Comes Next Is Pure Gold" and "‘Yellowstone’ Breaks Absurd TV Record", wants to argue the science with NASA? 

Apparently so! "For example," Smythe writes, "while I was studying climate change at Plymouth University in the early 2010s, pole shift theory and its relationship to the climate, the Earth’s core, etc, was part of the conversation and curriculum hosted by my professors." 

Mlynczak has done his time on this already, so we asked another climate scientist about it, one who not only took a class on climate in the early 2010s but actually got a degree in it and everything, and they confirmed that yes, pole shift theory "was part of the conversation when I was studying climate too. Namely how it isn't causing climate change." (Though we're keeping their identity confidential so as to protect them from being in any way associated with this stupidity.) 

But according to Smythe (who for her Bachelor of Science degree in Geography, according to her LinkedIn, wrote a thesis on "A qualitative study of recreational drug use amongst student populations in the leisure spaces of Plymouth, England"), the pole shift is "definitely not a conspiracy theory. And with so many people trying to shut it down, doesn’t that make you think we need to be paying even more attention?" 

Woah. Dude! That's like, super-smart. NASA's best and brightest minds, even their rocket scientists, could never hope to get so high… minded. 

Anyway, we're going to go qualitatively study recreational drug use in leisure spaces for a while and think real hard about why everyone tells us not to eat silica gel, or if the reason why The Daily Caller is defending the magnetic pole shift conspiracy theory is because it is funded by Big Magnet.

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