The Pope Has Strong Opinions: Pope Francis has once again weighed in on climate change—this time condemning climate deniers and lambasting “irresponsible” Western lifestyles that contribute to carbon emissions. In a 7,000-word letter issued Wednesday—a format known in the Catholic Church as a papal encyclical—Francis used stark language to lay out the current state of the climate crisis and implore world leaders to phase out fossil fuels, footnoting his arguments with reports from the IPCC and NOAA. The encyclical, titled “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”), is a follow-up to “Laudato Si” (“Praise Be”), the 2015 encyclical where Francis first laid out his views on climate change and the urgent need for action. “Once and for all, let us put an end to the irresponsible derision that would present this issue as something purely ecological, ‘green,’, romantic, frequently subject to ridicule by economic interests,” Francis writes in the latest text. “Let us finally admit that it is a human and social problem on any number of levels.” (AP, New York Times $, CNN) 

Alabama May Have Withheld Sanitation $ From Black Communities: The Environmental Protection Agency will open an investigation into whether or not the state of Alabama violated Black residents’ civil rights when it distributed funds to improve sewer systems, the agency said Wednesday. The investigation is in response to a complaint filed by The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice in March, which alleged that a state fund intended to help communities and individuals finance sanitation projects made it nearly impossible for Black communities to access those funds. In May, the Department of Justice found that state and county officials—including in majority-Black Lowndes County, where residents have long complained of appalling sewage issues and received no help from the state, which often punished people for improper maintenance—“engaged in a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect” when handling sanitation problems. “Sanitation is a basic human right that every person in this country, and in the state of Alabama, should have equal access to,” CREEJ founder Catherine Coleman Flowers said in a press release. “Those without proper sanitation access are exposed to illness and serious harm. We are hopeful that the EPA’s investigation will result in positive change for any Alabama resident currently relying on a failing on site sanitation system and for all U.S. communities for whom justice is long overdue.” (AP, AL.com, Reuters)

World’s Amphibians Having A Rough Time: Two in every five amphibian species in the world, or around 40% of 8,000 species, are categorized as threatened—a much higher percentage than other classes of animals, a new assessment has found. In a paper published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, researchers looked at 20 years’ worth of data on nearly every amphibian species on Earth, compiled by more than 1,000 scientists—a follow-up assessment to a similar one conducted in 2004. The paper finds that amphibians around the world are "deteriorating rapidly”—and that climate change poses much more of a risk to them than it did in the first analysis, responsible for 39% of species getting closer to extinction compared to just 1% in the 2004 work. "They don't have any protection in their skin," Patricia Burrowes, a professor of biology at the University of Puerto Rico, told NPR. "They don't have feathers, they don't have hair, they don't have scales." (NPR, NBC, USA Today, Washington Post $, AP)

 CLIMATE JUSTICE: Climate change is devastating Puerto Rico. Women environmentalists are fighting back (Refinery29)

THE HILL: What to know about the House's historic meltdown (E&E $), Interior Department’s no. 2 is stepping down (Washington Post $)

HORSE RACE: Here's where the 2024 presidential candidates stand on climate change (ABC)

INT’L: Himalayan glacial lake flooding kills 14, more than 100 missing in India (Reuters), Flash floods kill at least 14 in northeastern India and leave more than 100 missing (AP)

MIGRATION: Study finds more people are moving into high flood zones, increasing risk of water disasters (AP)

FOSSIL FUELS: Natural gas, oil industry urges EPA to revise proposed GHG reporting rule (Natural Gas Intel), UN report urges global end to fossil fuel exploration by 2030 (The Guardian)

CITIES & STATES: Climate change is a key obstacle for New York City’s transit system (New York Times $), Climate change, aging infrastructure menace NYC’s mass transit system, says MTA report outlining needs (NY Daily News), Jersey Shore town sues to overturn toxic waste settlement where childhood cancer cases rose (AP), Hawaiian electric’s insurance would cover a fraction of Maui fire claims (Washington Post $)

IMPACTS: Earth is on track for its hottest year yet, according to a European climate agency (NPR), 2023 on track to become another record-breaking year as temperature hits new high (Reuters), Why summers may never be the same (New York Times $), Scientists say strong typhoons are arriving earlier, overlapping with extreme summer rain (South China Morning Post), Where’s all the Antarctic sea ice? Annual peak is the lowest ever recorded. (New York Times $), "Gobsmackingly" warm September was Earth's hottest on record (Axios)

STORMS: Tropical Storm Philippe soaks northeast Caribbean on a path toward Bermuda, New England and Canada (AP)

WHERE WE LIVE: Flood threats are rising. Here’s where people are moving into harm’s way (New York Times $), Climate change leads homebuyers to seek a place not in the sun (FT $)

INSURANCE: Insurers are seeking a way to make money from your climate change travel anxiety (CNBC)

INT’L POLICY: U.S. could reach net-zero target through these key steps: Report (Axios), Japan pledges $1 billion for UN climate change fund (Reuters), Australian Antarctic Division admits to ‘extraordinary overspend’ of $42m before climate projects halted (The Guardian), Australia to rejoin Global Climate Fund it abandoned in 2018 (Al Jazeera)

PIPELINES: Mountain Valley Pipeline builder, feds agree to fix pipe corrosion (West Virginia Public Radio)

RENEWABLES: 3 New England states join together for offshore wind power projects, aiming to lower costs (AP)

NUCLEAR: Environmentalists suffer another setback in fight to shutter California’s last nuclear power plant (AP)

UTILITIES: Southern California county files lawsuits alleging power company’s equipment sparked wildfires (AP)

EMISSIONS: Global carbon emissions from electric power may peak this year, report says (The Guardian)

ACTIVISM: Just Stop Oil protesters arrested after disrupting Les Misérables performance in London – video (The Guardian)

CULTURE: A new measure of the political-cultural gap on climate change (Washington Post $)

MINING: South African mining employs many and may only have decades left, report warns (AP)

WATER: Climate change-related droughts dent progress on energy emissions -report (Reuters), In Reading, a solution for local flooding aims to help the whole watershed (WBUR), 

FOOD: In-depth Q&A: what food waste means for climate change (Carbon Brief), Are you a vegetarian? It may be in your genes (Washington Post $)

HEALTH: Climate change could make migraines worse (CBS), The epidemiological consequences of climate change on mosquito niche range (Indiana Public Media), Floods linked to increased deaths from heart and lung disease, Australian-led research shows (The Guardian)

CRITTERS: World’s dogs going vegan ‘would save more emissions than UK produces’ (The Guardian), First leopard cubs born in captivity in Peru climb trees and greet visitors at a Lima zoo (AP)

JOBS: Workers exposed to extreme heat have few protections (New York Times $), Any job can be a climate solutions job: ask this teacher, electrician or beauty CEO (NPR)

SCHOOL’S IN: What are the A-B-Cs of teaching climate change in math, language arts? (New Jersey Spotlight News)

• Global heat is now ‘gobsmackingly bananas’, but there’s hope humanity can limit the climate damage (The Guardian, Adam Morton)
• The tension in climate science between mitigation and adaptation (TIME, Adam Sobel op-ed)
• We’re not ready for rising temperatures in a rapidly aging nation (Bangor Daily News, Danielle Arigoni op-ed)
• New York City’s climate change whiplash (The Nation, Ilana Cohen op-ed)
• Trillions in G20 fossil fuel subsidies fuel profits and climate change (Forbes, Michael Barnard column)
• Sadly, it's not 'just another summer.' We must end the fossil fuel industry (Newsweek, Peter Kalmus op-ed)
• We need a real green jobs program to fight climate change (Jacobin, Daniel Goulden analysis)
• Higher education must take the lead on climate change, beginning on our own campuses (Hechinger Report, Mildred García and Kim Hunter Reed op-ed)
• If only nuclear power were an easy climate change solution (LA Times, Sammy Roth column $)
• Utah ratepayers shouldn’t front climate change related costs for power companies (Casper Star-Tribune, Stan Holmes op-ed)
• Make your voice heard on equity and access in Michigan’s water (Planet Detroit, Victoria Loong op-ed)
• Denial of climate change may be a party deal-breaker for young conservatives (Twin Cities Pioneer Press, Susan Atkinson op-ed)

The Federalist Rips Off A Trio Of Bjørn Lomborg Op-Eds Without Even Naming Him

Yesterday we pointed out how lazy RealClearEnergy is in ripping off other people's content to drive clicks to its Chevron-sponsored page. Today, we see that even that level of work ethic isn't as low as it goes. For that, we turn to The Federalist, where on Monday Kiyan Kassam ("a conservative writer," according to a very sparse contributor bio) published "3 Facts To Arm You Against Global Elites' Biggest 'Climate Crisis' Lies." 

A more honest headline would have been "3 Climate Disinfo Talking Points From Old Bjørn Lomborg Op-Eds," because that's literally all it was: 

1. Kassam's first fake "fact" is that global wildfires are "at their lowest rate in decades," but real scientists have pointed out that "The decline in global average area burned has indeed been misused to support false claims numerous times. There is strong evidence that the increase in fire activity we are seeing in many forested regions is indeed linked to climate change.” 
2. The second falsehood is that "the severity and frequency of landfall hurricanes in the U.S. are actually decreasing slightly, not increasing." But what does a real scientist say? "Concentrating on the continental U.S. landfall frequency record has become a bit of a cottage industry for anyone who wants to claim that hurricanes are not linked to climate change. We're not sure that there will be more storms that form, and there may even be fewer that form, but when they do form, they are more likely to be very dangerous: stronger winds, higher storm surge, more rain and freshwater flooding, slower moving and more likely to stall."
3. And finally, there’s the misleading claim that "climate-related deaths are down 99 percent worldwide over the past 100 years," which, again, is a reliable disinfo factoid Lomborg's been finessing to get around fact checks debunking it. 

Kassam links to a Bjørn Lomborg opinion piece to justify each point, but each time he somehow forgot to credit Lomborg. And while someone could certainly be forgiven for not naming each individual author in a link-filled essay, as that quickly gets cumbersome and the URL serves as an inherent citation to give credit, if you're making three big points and each one comes from the same person… maybe that's worth mentioning? (Maybe not though, if that source, like Lomborg, is a longtime spreader of climate disinformation who has recently aligned himself with the likes of sexist climate science denier Jordan Peterson.) 

Now, since Lomborg appears plenty happy to plagiarize himself, and since his job is basically to spread this propaganda, odds are slim that he'd be mad about The Federalist copying his work. 

But it just goes to show, once again, how the spread of disinformation is driven largely by just a handful of producers, whose work is regurgitated (laundered) through pseudo-media outlets built to churn out a steady stream of propaganda to fill news vacuums, drive social media clicks, and pander to political partisanship.

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