(ENVIRONMENTAL) RACISM: How climate change impacts people of color (CNN), the movement for Black lives and environmentalists are finding common ground (Gizmodo)
CORONAVIRUS: The scariest thing about global warming (and COVID-19) (Vox), US power use to drop by record amount in 2020 due coronavirus: EIA (Reuters), it’s getting hot in here: Can NYC keep seniors cool during COVID? (Grist), EPA advances long-delayed toxic emission updates (E&E $)
ATLANTIC COAST PIPELINE: 'A thorn in their side': Nelson County stands out in its fight against now-canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline (News & Advance), legal and environmental setbacks stymie pipelines nationwide (New York Times $) opponents: pipeline’s defeat ‘a testament to perseverance’ (AP), gigantic atlantic coast gas pipeline done in by humble household heat pump (Clean Technica), the Atlantic Coast Pipeline cancellation shows how far fossil fuels have fallen (Gizmodo), climate activists see ‘new era’ after three major oil and gas pipeline defeats (InsideClimate News), how Trump's 'energy dominance' backfired on an $8B pipeline (E&E $), $8 billion natural gas pipeline canceled, raising questions about fuel’s future (Marketplace), cancellation of Atlantic Coast Pipeline buoys opponents of another controversial project (WDBJ), 'We won the impossible fight': Nelsonians react to news of Atlantic Coast Pipeline's demise (News & Advance)
THE HILL: The Democrats’ new climate plan is weirdly isolationist (New Republic), 4 takeaways from the Democrats' Interior-EPA bill (E&E $), [House] Committee targets plastic pollution during pandemic (E&E $), spending bill aims to block soon-to-be-final methane rule (E&E $), appropriators target Pruitt's phone booth (E&E $), Senator [Sheldon Whitehouse] warns of political pressure on US probe into hackers of green groups (Reuters), clearing up confusion about House GOP stance on net-zero emissions by 2050 target (Washington Examiner)
POLITICS: 'He just doesn't get it': [EDF Action] Climate ad targets Trump in Fla. (E&E $), calls grow louder for Biden to strengthen his climate goals (E&E $), Carbon180 brings on The Coefficient Group for new carbon removal lobbying (Axios)
CITIES AND STATES: Maine pushes forward on electric vehicle charging during pandemic (Energy News Network), NC waiver for NOx violations draws lawsuit (E&E $), New Mexico fines Denver-based firm $5.3M for air pollution (AP), Michigan's new front against an oil pipeline (Politico Pro $)
IMPACTS: ‘Nature doesn’t trust us any more’: Arctic heatwave stokes permafrost thaw (Climate Home), Ellicott City, MD: a city on edge (Weather Channel), heat will stay stuck on extra high for July in most of US (AP, AccuWeather), death toll from flooding in Japan reaches 55, dozen missing (AP), will climate change upend projections of future forest growth? (Yale Environment 360), dead fish are popping up all along the Hudson River (New York Post), unprecedented heat in Siberia pushed planet to warmest June on record, tied with last year (Washington Post $), climate change may push Zika virus into southern and eastern Europe (New Scientist)
WILDFIRES: Weather ingredients in place for rapid wildfire development across western US (AccuWeather)
HURRICANES: The Atlantic hurricane season is off to a record fast start and is likely to get worse (Washington Post $), Cristina poised to become 1st hurricane of 2020 (AccuWeather), wildfire near [CA-NV] border more than triples; homes threatened (AP)
ARCTIC: Intense arctic wildfires set a pollution record (New York Times $), Siberia wildfire smoke reaches Southcentral Alaska, islands (AP), Siberia temperatures hit record for June as wildfires spread (Reuters)
RENEWABLES: Solar deal would create a new industry giant (New York Times $, Reuters, Utility Dive, Axios), solar power conversion underway at iconic West Virginia business (WVNSTV)
SOLUTIONS: There’s no quick fix for climate change (The Verge)
OIL AND GAS: Gas boom risks 'perfect storm' for climate, economy: report (Barron's), oil's coronavirus recovery is stuck in neutral (Axios)
OIL PIPELINES: 'Wrong pipeline in the wrong place' — nationwide litigation could affect permian highway pipeline (Texas Public Radio), US judge denies Dakota Access motion to reconsider pipeline shutdown order (Reuters), Army Corps ruling: 'Nail' in the coffin for Keystone XL? (E&E $), 2020 could decide fate of Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines (Axios)
COAL: Wyoming regulators approve state's first new coal mine in decades (Casper Star-Tribune), coal communities increasingly rely on federal health programs (Energy News Network)
HYDROGEN: World’s largest green hydrogen project unveiled in Saudi Arabia (Greentech Media)
UTILITIES: Gas to nuclear? Dominion looks beyond pipeline's demise (E&E $)
AGRICULTURE: Think COVID-19 disrupted the food chain? Wait and see what climate change will do (InsideClimate News)
CARS: Critics fire legal darts at Trump's Calif. waiver revocation (E&E $)
EMISSIONS: Earth may take decades to cool after we cut emissions (Gizmodo, Washington Post $)
FINANCE: Investors worry about climate. But data is limited — report (E&E $), Barclays CEO urged to confront slavery and act on climate (Bloomberg $), Warren Buffett bets big on gas after his oil 'mistake' (E&E $), [Carbon Disclosure Project] launches climate 'temperature rating' system for investors (Reuters)
WILDLIFE: The oil industry threatens Alaskan polar bears in their dens (Gizmodo, InsideClimate News)
INTERNATIONAL: Brazil corporations urge action on illegal logging in Amazon (AP, Bloomberg $), Jamaica becomes first Caribbean nation to submit tougher climate plan to UN (Climate Home), Norway sets electric car record as battery autos least dented by COVID-19 crisis (Climate Home), EU carbon tax could cost Russia 33bln euros – RBC (Moscow Times)
SFW: This e-bike ad was too intense for French TV. Now it’s blowing up online. (Grist) |
Mike Shellenberger Works Denial Media Circuit To Sell Misleading Anti-Climate Book, “Apocalypse Never”
We first mentioned nuclear power-lover and renewable-hating former environmentalist Michael Shellenberger back in 2015, when he accused the Pope of blasphemy (among other things). By 2018 his anti-renewable schtick was catching on with the paid-by-fossil-fuels denial crowd, for example in his embrace of pollution-publicist Steve Milloy’s argument that a little nuclear radiation is perfectly safe.
Now he has a new book out, and unsurprisingly, deniers who love any anti-climate argument they can get are eating it up while basically everyone else, including experts at Shellenberger's own former organization, are calling it out for being full of errors and otherwise misleading. (For example, one of his first points about how environmental alarmists are liars is that the Amazon isn’t "the lungs of the world" -- a short-lived viral meme that even we debunked!)
The marketing ploy started with a blog post at Forbes, in which Shellenberger claims to “apologize for the climate scare” on behalf of environmentalists. It was quickly removed removed from Forbes because they considered it too-self promotional, but that supposed censorship of course kicked off a repost-spree in denierland, with the piece getting published by such luminaries of the climate world as WUWT, Quillette and GWPF (twice!), with additional pieces at ClimateDepot and the Australian, and interviews with Glenn Beck, oil PR man Alex Epstein, and a podcast interview with the Heartland Institute, which also posted a piece threading together Michael Moore and Bjorn Lomborg’s recent anti-climate nonsense, making for a nice trifecta of people who supposedly aren’t deniers themselves, but whose work (on climate) is indistinguishable from rank and file climate denial.
As for Shellenberger’s book, that’s actually the point. It’s meant to appeal to deniers, so that instead of thinking, in the words of its publisher Eric Nelson to climate journalist Eric Holthaus, that “it’s a hoax,” they might instead come to accept that climate change “is a 100 year problem not a 10 year problem.”
So according to its publisher, the book is meant to give deniers a reason to believe we don’t have to take action on climate change until the next century. Responding to Nelson’s comment that he “feel[s] good” about publishing the book that “advocates allowing Africans and Asians [sic] people the benefits of energy that Europeans currently enjoy,” Holthaus did not mince words: “It’s not about you ‘feeling good,’ it’s definitely not about you ‘allowing’ exploited, colonized people to do anything. Reinforcing extractive capitalist white supremacy is indefensible as climate policy.”
But even if it weren’t a book written for and marketed to those with a financially- or ideologically-driven compulsion for climate denial, it would still be wrong about a lot.
In fact, Shellenberger’s “censored” op-ed was so rife with mistakes that even those couple legitimate climate scientists who wrote positive blurbs of their book were critical, according to a piece in the Guardian by Graham Readfern. Kerry Emanuel, for example, is reportedly reconsidering his involvement, and said that Shellenerger “gets a few of his facts wrong,” pointing to “plenty of evidence” that Shellenberger denies in claiming climate change isn’t making natural disasters worse. In response, Shellenberger behaved exactly how deniers behave, and claimed that “The Guardian isn’t a legitimate newspaper,” but instead “a renewable energy industry-funded religious organization” that “provides public relations services to the renewables industry in exchange for money for its apocalyptic, heliocentric sect.”
The sad part is that Emanuel was being generous, as a ClimateFeedback grading of the piece by actual climate scientists shows just how reliant Shellenberger’s argument is on misleading, cherry-picked or inaccurate claims.
Shellenberger responded with a lengthy post that amounted to “nuh uh!”, but sensing one of their own was in trouble, deniers swarmed twitter to defend him. One particularly rich vein of denial can be found in response to Zeke Hausfather, now at Shellenberger’s erstwhile organization BTI, who was one of the experts who contributed to ClimateFeedback’s debunking. There, you can find Judith Curry apparently criticizing the debunking without reading past the intro, Mike Bastasch claiming that Climate Feedback is “purely a platform for certain scientists to ‘cancel’ people,” and, somewhat bizarrely, Richard Tol scoffing at Roger Pielke Jr.’s insistence that there’s no climate signal in hurricane damages.
We could go on, for example Ketan Joshi’s comparison to Gamergate is very interesting, but this is already running long, and more importantly, The Guardian just sounded the gong that commands us to begin our daily heliocentric devotions.
May the ever-churning orbits of our celestial bodies bring you all the peace, energy and wisdom the Sun has to offer. |
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