2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #12

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Some is just out of date, some is intentionally misleading.

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S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Story of the week

Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch " Climate  - the Movie" and jotting down several pages worth of notes on Friday morning, we were able to quickly put together  a blog post debunking the many false and misleading claims made in the film . The first 42-odd minutes of this 80 minute long festival of misinformation are dedicated to "The Science". But instead of that, what one is exposed to is a veritable   Gish-gallop  of  climate  myths, with the phrase, "we are told" liberally scattered among them. In addition to a list of the 25 myths identified by John, we also checked them off on our  myth rebuttal chart , available for occasions like this. It makes for a  neat sharable graphic  driving home the point of how much is wrong with the item debunked.

After publishing the blog post on Saturday, we shared it on social media where it was the post generating the most interest by far during the week.

Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:

Before March 17

• Climate -Science  Denier s, Right-Wing Think Tanks, and Fossil Fuel Shills Are Plotting Against the Clean Energy Transition , DeSmog, Rebecca Burns.   Lede: Inside the conspiracy to take down wind and solar power.
• Climate  Criminals - Prosecuting Big Oil For Environmental Crimes , CleanTechnica, Steve Hanley.
• Climate  adaptation becomes less effective as the world warms , Guest Posts, Scientific American, Dr Tabea Katharina Lissner, Tessa Möller, Dr Martina Angela Caretta & Dr Aditi Mukherji.   "From flooding in New Zealand and wildfires in Canada through to  drought  in the Middle East and extreme  heat  across the northern hemisphere, last year provided a powerful demonstration of the impacts of  climate change ."
• The Zombies of the U.S. Tax Code: Why Fossil Fuels Subsidies Seem Impossible to Kill ,  Climate , New York Times, Lisa Friedman.  "For the fourth year in a row, President Biden is trying to eliminate federal tax breaks for coal, oil and gas companies. But fossil fuel subsidies have proven difficult to stop."
• Polluters Are Melting the Winter Sports They Sponsor , DeSmog, Andrew Simms and Anna Jonsson.   Corporations are using sport as a billboard to sell the high-carbon products that are killing our winters, and now we can put a figure on the damage their money does.
• Six Months After the  Heat  Spiked, Caribbean Corals Are Still Reeling , Hakai Magazine, Lisa S. Gardiner.   In deep water and in the shallows, corals cooked by last year’s extreme  heat  are not doing great.
• The  Climate   Denier 's Playbook , Art19 Podcasts, Rollie Williams and Nicole Conlan.
• How to overcome political polarization on  climate change , Knowable Magazine, Ula Chrobak.   Conversations — in real life — can help bridge the partisan divide, but the trick is to have some structure to the discussion, says a human ecologist
• Corals Have ‘No Reprieve’ as the Great Barrier Reef Faces Its Latest Bleaching Event , Today's  Climate , Inside  Climate  News, Kiley Price.  Increasingly frequent marine  heat  waves are hammering away at the world’s coral reefs, scientists say.
• Skeptical Science   New Research  for Week #11 2024 ,  Skeptical Science , Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack.  Our weekly compendium of freshly published  climate  research.

March 17

• 2024 SkS Weekly  Climate Change  & Global Warming News Roundup #11 ,  Skeptical Science , Baerbel Winkler, Doug Bostrom & John Hartz.  A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 17, 2024.
• ‘Greenhushing’ Is On the Rise as Companies Go Silent on  Climate  Pledges , Today's  Climate , Inside  Climate  News, Kiley Price.  "Facing backlash from both the left and right, companies are backing away from  climate  initiatives—at least publicly."
• Cherry Blossoms Are Blooming Early From Tokyo to Washington , Bloomberg City Lab, Shoko Oda, Zahra Hirji & Brian K Sullivan.   A tourist draw in Japan and the US, cherry blossom season is starting earlier as  climate change  makes winters warmer.

March 18

• What Are the Most Effective Strategies To Inspire Action on  Climate Change ? , Annenberg School of Communications, U of Pe nnsylvania, Hailey Reissman.   The Communication Neuroscience Lab is conducting an intervention tournament, testing six strategies to change beliefs and intentions regarding  climate change .
• NVIDIA Announces Earth  Climate  Digital Twin , NVIDIA press release, NVIDIA.   The Weather Company, Taiwan Weather Administration Among First to Adopt New Earth-2 Cloud APIs, Using AI to Speed Creation of High-Resolution Simulations and Visualization of Global  Climate , Weather at Groundbreaking 2-Kilometer Scale

March 19

• At a glance  - Does  CO2  always correlate with temperature? ,  Skeptical Science , John Mason.  This is the 57th updated rebuttal since we started the project last year in February.
• Climate change  graphics are important-make them simple, say experts , Phys.org, University of Southern California.   The study was published in Climatic Change in a paper titled "Improving figures for  climate change  communications: Insights from interviews with international policymakers and practitioners."
• Earlier Springs Have Cascading Effects on Animals, Plants and Pastimes , Inside  Climate  News, Kiley Price.  A growing body of research shows that  climate change  is throwing the seasons out of whack.
• UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on  climate change  after record  heat , ice-melt increases in 2023 , AP News/PBS, Jamey Keatan & Seth Borenstein.
• The attitude-behavior gap on  climate  action: How can it be bridged? , Center for  Climate Change  Communication, 4C-Team.

March 20

• World`s top fossil-fuel bosses deride efforts to move away from oil and gas , The Guardian, Oliver Milman.   Executives at Texas summit claim clean-energy transition is failing and say world should ‘abandon the fantasy’ of fossil-fuel phaseout
• Will The UK`s Flagship  Climate  `Solution` Be Used to Pump More North Sea Oil? , DeSmog, Michael Buchsbaum.   Documents show industry has spent years studying how to harness carbon capture projects for a process known as “enhanced oil recovery.”
• How Not to Act in an Emergency , The Crucial Years, Bill McKibben.   Forget AI--we need some human intelligence
• SEC  climate  rule prompts lawuits. Experts say companies are likely to prepare to comply anyway , AP News/PBS, News Hour, Suman Naishadham.

March 21

• Fossil fuel firms could be tried in US for homicide over  climate -related deaths, experts say , The Guardian, Dharna Noor.   Public Citizen, a non-profit group, proposed the idea last year to prosecute companies for millions of deaths due to  climate  crisis
• Higher temperatures mean higher food and other prices. A new study links  climate  shocks to inflation , The Independent News, Seth Borenstein.   A study by an environmental scientist and the European Central Bank finds that food prices and overall inflation will rise as temperatures climb with  climate change
• WMO  - The Earth Continues To Warm As Nations Ignore  Climate  Science , CleanTechnica, Steve Hanley.
• Factcheck: 18 misleading myths about  heat  pumps , Energy, Carbon Brief, Dr Jan Rosenow.

March 22

• A new way to quantify  climate change  impacts: "Outdoor days" , MIT News, David L. Chandler.   This measure, developed by MIT researchers, reflects direct effects on people’s quality of life — and reveals significant global disparities.
• Climate change  is shifting the zones where plants grow - here`s what that could mean for your garden , The Conversation - Articles (US), Matt Kasson, Associate Professor of Mycology and Plant Pathology, West Virginia University.
• `When it`s this hot, time stands still`: surviving west Africa`s blistering  heat , The Guardian, Damian Carrington and Èlia Borràs.   The region’s  heat  index hit 50C in February, leaving millions battling dangerous  climate -crisis-fuelled temperatures
• Fossil Fuel Lobby Kicks off Disinformation Campaign Against EPA Auto Emissions Rule , DeSmog, Adam M. Lowenstein.   The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a major oil refining group, is once again behind a push to keep cars running on oil.

March 23

• Climate  - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths! ,  Skeptical Science , John Mason and Bärbel Winkler.  A list of the 25 myths spotted in the film
• Q&A: Extreme  Heat , Severe Storms Among Key  Climate  Challenges for Maryland`s New Chief Resilience Officer , Inside  Climate  News, Aman Azhar.  Climate -proofing Maryland is a challenging task that requires a multi-agency effort and access to resources. Mike Hinson, the state’s newly appointed chief resilience officer, says he’s ready for the challenge.
• Heat  records keep puzzling, alarming scientists in 2024. Here's what to know. , Nation, USA TODAY, Dinah Voyles Pulver.