2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #35

Posted on 1 September 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz

A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, August 25, 2024 thru Sat, August 31, 2024.

Story of the week

After another crammed week of climate news including updates on climate tipping points, increasing threats from rising seas, burgeoning disease threats and tropical storms juiced by too much warmth, Our Story of the Week is about root cause and excacerbator for all of the above.

Writing for Jacobin, former Rhode Island state representative Aaron Regenburg delivers a critique and rebuttal of a previous essay in the same publication. Regenburg’s target is a sincerely delivered but incorrect argument that climate disinformation is not a matter of priority when talking to the general public about solving our climate mishap, an ill-conceived premise that we should save our words by ignoring climate disinformation and instead forcus on climate solutions.

As Regenburg points  out, choosing a single frame in this way is a false choice, a misindentification of mutual exclusivity. Following this advice would only prolong the disastrous outcome we’re now living. After all, the problems listed in this edition of Climate News of the Week are much worse thanks to a decades long, concerted, pervasive and well-funded campaign of disinformaton on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.

Downplaying or ignoring intentional deceit delivered on an industrial scale is a bit like thinking that wishing hard enough to stay dry is as good as an umbrella when encountering a rainstorm. Climate remedy will happen via effective public policy, public policy is an outcome of politics and hence systematic climate mitigation is an inherently political matter. Electorates confused by disinformation into flaccid support for or even hostile reactions against useful climate policy cut the legs from beneath our ability to confront and solve our climate problem. 

Writes Regenburg, “The climate movement can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Perfectly true, and it’s equally true that people can be told and understand both how they’re being misled and what they can do to help fix our problem. Doubt and uncertainty over the very existence of climate change as a matter of concern clearly preempts impetus to act, so if there were an attention or communications resource shortage, we’d better be looking to first clear up climate confusion. In reality there is no inherent dilemma or condundrum in simultaneous delivery, and it’s even arguably a bit insulting to suggest that average people can’t cope with full information. 

Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:

Before August 25

• Scientists closely watching these 3 disastrous climate change scenarios, Nation, USA TODAY, Doyle Rice.
• This chart of ocean heat is terrifying, Climate, Vox, Benji Jones. “The Gulf’s looming hurricane problem, explained in a simple graph.”
• The need for pluralism in climate modelling, RealClimate, Guest post by Marina Baldissera Pacchetti, Julie Jebeile and Erica Thompson. How should we allocate resources for climate modelling if the goal is to improve climate-related decisions? Higher resolution, machine learning and/or storylines? A call for a deeper discussion on how we should develop the climate modelling toolbox.
• China and India are so big. Do my country`s climate actions even matter?, Yale Climate Connections, Dana Nuccitelli. Though some countries contribute more to climate change than others, the crisis can only be averted if every major polluter does its part.
• The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand, TED on Youtube, Johan Rochström.