Thursday 28th of March 2024

canada faces up to the reality of global warming...

firefire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canada: Firefighters battle 170 wildfires amid heat wave


Fires have devastated towns in British Columbia, with the military on standby to respond to the threat.

 

Over 170 wildfires were raging in the western Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) on Saturday, as the region experiences a record heat wave.

The Canadian military was put on standby to help fight the blazes and evacuate citizens from affected towns.

Many of the fires were caused by lightning strikes. 

"We saw 12,000 lightning strikes, roughly, yesterday," British Columbia Wildfire Service official Cliff Chapman told the public CBC news outlet on Saturday.

 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to work with the government of British Columbia to respond to the threat. 

 

Towns devastated by the blazes

 

The small British Columbian town of Lytton was almost completely destroyed by the blazes. The town recorded a record high temperature of 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.28 degrees F) earlier this week. 

 

Read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/canada-firefighters-battle-170-wildfires-amid-heat-wave/a-58149794

 

FIRES reported IN NEW SOUTH WALES, Australia

Between July 2019 and 13 February 2020, the NSW Rural Fire Service reported that 11,264 bush or grass fires burnt 5.4 million hectares (13 million acres), destroyed 2,439 homes, and approximately 24 megalitres (5.3 million imperial gallons; 6.3 million US gallons) of fire retardant was used.

Cause: Started fires: Lightning strikes; Accident; ...

Burned area: Approximately 18,636,079 hecta...

Date(s): June 2019 – May 2020

Cost: over $103 billion (2020 AUD)

 

 

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still burning...

 

The BC Wildfire Service is facing another challenging day on Saturday as firefighters continue to battle over 170 blazes burning across the province.

According to the B.C. Wildfire Dashboard, there are 175 active wildfires in B.C., and 12 of them are being closely watched, as they could potentially pose a threat to public safety. The majority of these wildfires are in the Kamloops region.

Additionally, there are fires burning near Lillooet, 100 Mile House, Prince George and several small communities in the Cariboo region.

In the past 24 hours, the wildfire service says it has detected 99 new fires, with over 66 per cent of those linked to lightning activity.

"We are still experiencing that hot weather ... and we are also seeing the drying trend continue with fuels remaining highly susceptible to ignition," said B.C. provincial fire information officer Jean Strong.

On Friday night, a wildfire just outside Kamloops, near Durand Lake, forced the evacuation of 71 properties. Earlier that day, Kamloops announced it was reactivating its Emergency Operations Centre in response to multiple fires flaring up in the area.

 

Read more:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/saturday-wildfire-evac-update-1.6089194

 

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canicule, new zealand...

New Zealand has experienced its hottest June since records began more than 110 years ago, according to official climate data.

Despite a polar blast that swept up the country last week, figures from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research’s (NIWA) show the average temperature for June was 2C warmer than usual, with twenty-four locations around the country hitting their own record highs.

 

That makes this June New Zealand’s warmest since NIWA’s seven station temperature series began in 1909.

The warmth was widespread, with every long-term monitoring station observing either above or well-above average mean temperatures. It was particularly warm in Motueka, near the top of the South Island, where the mean temperature of 10.8C was 3.2C higher than the town’s 1981-2010 average.

 

Of the six main centres, Auckland was the warmest and sunniest, Tauranga was the wettest, Christchurch was the coldest and driest, and Dunedin was the least sunny.

The highest temperature recorded was in Hastings, in the Hawke’s Bay, and Leigh, north of Auckland, both reaching 22C on different days of the month.

The 2C average increase is “a massive shift” relative to normal, climate scientist Gregor Macara said, adding that the previous June record was an average 1.64C higher than usual.

NIWA puts the increase in temperatures down to above-normal sea level air pressure to the east of the country, and climate change.

“North-easterlies are dragging air masses from the sub-tropics, so they are relatively warm. The fact we were having more north-easterlies than normal delivered warmer air over the country than we would typically see in June.”

 

Sea surface temperatures were also warmer than normal and could be a contributing factor.

“Because we are an island nation, our climate is characterised as maritime, which means it is influenced by the sea. The warmer-than-normal sea surfaces helped to sustain the warmer-than-normal air temperatures,” Macara said.

Underpinning all of this was climate change, he said.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/05/new-zealand-experiences-hottest-june-on-record-despite-polar-blast

 

Canicule: heat wave in Québécois...

 

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August 5 2021…

exporting global warming...

 

Despite being heavily reliant on green energy for domestic use, Norway remains one of the world's leading exporters of energy resources, covering about 2 percent of global oil demand and 3 percent of natural gas demand. At present, there are about 90 fields in production on the Norwegian shelf.

Rasmus Hansson of Norway's Green Party has raised eyebrows by holding his government directly responsible for the extreme heat wave that swept North America.

The unparallelled heat wave saw Canada's national record jump from 45 degrees to 49.6 degrees Celsius in a matter of three days, with widespread wildfires bringing about destruction. As many as 170 wildfires were ravaging the province of British Columbia alone this weekend.

Residents of the Canadian town of Lytton were forced to evacuate at short notice when it was suddenly surrounded by fires. The authorities subsequently reported that 90 percent of the town disappeared in flames.

The heat also paralysed swaths of the United States unaccustomed to such weather, with temperatures well over 40 degrees. Authorities in both countries estimate that the heat wave claimed hundreds of lives.

"This is the global warming of our time: an ordinary Canadian town, Lytton in British Columbia, is on fire. [Prime Minister] Erna Solberg, [Petroleum Minister] Tina Bru and the parliamentary majority are directly responsible", biologist and parliamentary candidate for the Greens Rasmus Hansson told the newspaper Dagbladet, adding that Lytton and other places affected by extreme weather could demand compensation from Norway.

Hansson labelled Norway "the world's seventh largest exporter of carbon dioxide" and ventured that the current government is going "full throttle" by opening new oil fields, including the Breidablikk field in the North Sea.

The Greens, by contrast, seek a gradual phasing out of the petroleum branch, a staple of the Norwegian economy and a pillar of its well-being, by 2035.

Petroleum Minister Tina Bru, however, struck back against the allegations.

"These are well-known tones from the Greens. This is what they tend to do: whenever major natural disasters occur around the world, they try to blame us and hold us almost personally responsible. It falls, of course, on its own unreasonableness", Bru told Dagbladeet. "I simply think that it is quite embarrassing to come up with such attacks".

Bru emphasised that the Norwegian government's policy is well in line with the goals set by the Paris Agreement and underscored that the country's greenhouse emissions have steadily decreased in recent years, reaching 49.3 million tonnes, down from 51.2 million tonnes in 1990, but still somewhat higher than the climate target of 48.6 million tonnes.

 

The government aims to cut the emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030 and at least 90 percent by 2050. According to Bru, Norway is well on its way.

"We have delivered a climate plan, and we are also the first western country to strengthen our climate goal under the Paris Agreement. So we have a good climate policy, and it is also necessary, precisely because of what we see in Canada. But neither I, Erna Solberg nor the government is personally responsible for what is happening now", Bru underscored.

While heavily relying on green energy for domestic use, Norway is one of the world's leaders in exports of energy resources, covering about 2 percent of global oil demand and 3 percent of natural gas demand. At present, there are about 90 fields in production on the Norwegian shelf.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/europe/202107071083324679-embarrassing-green-politician-blames-norway-for-deadly-heat-wave-in-north-america/

 

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assangexassangex

burning with gas...

 

One of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s grand announcements early in the pandemic was the formation of a group of business and technical experts to plan the way out of the (then assumed) deep economic pandemic recession. The theory was this group of ‘experts’ would develop the mitigation strategy for managing the economics around COVID19 and the ‘climb out of the abyss’ when an eventual ‘cure’ to COVID was identified. In September 2020, the glossy marketing information and the press release promoting a ‘gas fired’ recovery was the result. If you want to see the Government’s Press Release it’s here but neither Morrison, Energy Minister Angus Taylor or Northern Australia Minister Keith Pitt mention the environmental impacts of burning more fossil fuels.

While burning gas isn’t as devastating to the environment as burning coal — the end result could be compared to being a ‘little bit pregnant’ — there is no halfway, just as pregnancy is an ‘all or nothing’ event, burning fossil fuels is damaging to the environment. Part of Morrison’s plan was the opening of various probable reserves of natural gas for exploration and exploitation by mining and energy companies, the same group of people that had representation on the Morrison’s advisory panel. Despite the rhetoric, no one seems to be particularly interested in ‘owning’ the decision — except for Morrison. 

We recently discussed the lack of private capital interest in the proposed Kurri Kurri (NSW Hunter Valley) gas fired power plant that Morrison claims is absolutely necessary for electricity supply on the almost National Grid despite ‘the market’ claiming it might be switched on for 2% of the year, if at all. Of course the claim of the coal crusaders across both major political parties is that we need fossil fuelled power generation for the baseload. 

The recent catastrophic failure of a turbine at the Callide C power station near Biloela in Central Queensland demonstrates that even ‘reliable’ coal fired power generation is not something that we should bank on. Callide C is one of the newest power stations in the country and the turbine in question was overhauled last year to, as the reports suggest, ‘operate safely and reliably’.

While considering the calls from various interest groups for more baseload power, it is actually interesting to read the definition of baseload power — it’s not what you think

 

Baseload, however, is not a virtue. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the minimum required amount of electricity to keep the lights on. 

It's the opposite. It instead describes one of the fundamental shortcomings of coal-fired electricity generators and the inflexibility of steam engines. You can only turn them down to a certain point — the baseload — beyond which, you have to shut them down. They then take weeks to fire back up.

 

The railways swapped to diesel and electric traction decades ago to overcome the same issue. It’s far easier and cheaper for the operator to turn up, turn the machine on and go. A gas fired power plant can also be switched on and off at will, so Morrison’s gas plan does have one advantage over coal fired power generation. Pity there are also some deal breakers with burning stuff to make electricity. 

Where’s the gas coming from? Morrison’s open invitation to prospectors to invest in potential gas producing assets is probably going nowhere when the large energy companies such as Shell, Chevon and Exxon Mobil are being ordered by courts or their own shareholders to substantially reduce carbon emissions almost immediately. His ‘gas-fired’ power plant will initially operate on diesel as there is no gas extraction in the area and seemingly no private concern that will commit the funding to make it happen. 

The economics don’t stack up. Regardless of the traditional wisdom, political will or the honestly held beliefs of some members of the community, renewable energy is cheaper to produce than energy produced by fossil fuel and in most cases is dispatchable, hardly the case with coal fired generators. True, the sun doesn’t shine at midnight, but wind continues as do the action of the waves. There is also existing and well understood technology to store solar power for ’later on’ — not all of it being large scale batteries, although large scale batteries also play a pivotal role in stabilising the grid. 

The Australian Federal Court has ruled that the Nation’s Environment Minister and Government "has a legal duty not to cause harm to young people of Australia by exacerbating climate change when approving coal mining projects." While the case will eventually get to the High Court, it is hard to make a logical argument that expansion or creation of infrastructure that produces fossil fuel for consumption doesn’t also increase carbon emissions. 

Maybe the answer is literally staring at us in the face. Air is a gas, those that are actively promoting further environmental damage despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary are producing hot air. So is Morrison’s ‘gas-fired’ recovery just hot air and all about impressing those around him while trying to recover from the ‘damage’ he caused to the conservatives ‘small government’ and ‘budget surplus’ mantras?

 

Read more:

http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/posts.aspx?postid=7a619c92-20f7-4a44-843a-260d43e6e2a9

 

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Read also:

 

let's be serious about global warming...

 

warming on earth...

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-57756991

 

 

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sucking money...

 

We look at the corporate profiteering off people who lost their homes and loved ones to recent fires in California, where wildfires continue to rage amid record temperatures. A major investigation by KQED and NPR’s California Newsroom found a special trust set up to distribute $13.5 billion to survivors of wildfires caused by PG&E — the state’s largest utility company — instead spent lavishly on its own administration while distributing almost nothing to the 70,000 fire victims, many of whom still live in trailers. Those who profited while the fire victims waited for help included Wall Street bankers and prestigious law firms. The investigation has prompted a bipartisan call from state lawmakers for the state attorney general to investigate. “A lot of fire survivors are looking at this situation and wondering: Why is this taking so long?” says Lily Jamali, a co-host for KQED’s The California Report and the reporter behind the exposé. “They’re getting really impatient, and they’re very unhappy with the way this process has been run so far.”

 

 

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

As wildfires rage in California, we look now at the corporate profiteering off of those who lost their homes and loved ones to recent fires. A major investigation by the NPR and PBS station KQED in San Francisco found a special trust set up to distribute $13.5 billion to survivors of wildfires caused by PG&E, California’s largest utility company, instead spent lavishly on its own administration, while distributing almost nothing to the 70,000 fire victims. This includes victims of the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, many of whom continue to live in trailers. Those who profited while the fire victims waited for help include Wall Street bankers and prestigious law firms. KQED revealed the Fire Victim Trust is led by retired California Appeals Court Justice John Trotter, who billed $1,500 an hour for his work. The findings have prompted a bipartisan call from state lawmakers for the California attorney general to investigate.

For more, we go to Berkeley, California, to speak with the reporter behind this exposé. Lily Jamali is co-host and a correspondent for KQED’s The California Report. Her latest piece is headlined “A Year After PG&E Left Bankruptcy, Spending by Fire Victim Trust Remains a Mystery.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Lily. Congratulations —

LILY JAMALI: It’s so good to be on with you, Amy. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: And congratulations on this excellent report. Why don’t you lay it out for us? And for a global audience, explain what PG&E is and its role in these fires, and then go on from there.

LILY JAMALI: Sure. Well, this was a joint investigation that was done with us at KQED and with NPR’s California newsroom. And as you mentioned, PG&E is the largest utility in California. It’s actually the largest utility in the country, as well. And in the last half-decade, this utility has been responsible for causing several catastrophic wildfires. The worst took place in 2017 and 2018, but there are people who were affected by these fires all the way back to 2015. And so, after that last fire which you mentioned, the Camp Fire, which destroyed much of the town of Paradise — people might remember that. It killed at least 85 people, destroyed thousands of homes and left tens of thousands of people homeless. After that fire, PG&E chose to go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. And by doing that, they took all of these claims that people had against them, having lost their homes, having lost their businesses, and, in the worst cases, having lost their loved ones, they all got thrown into the bankruptcy process. And so, that’s sort of where the story that we have been reporting really begins.

About a year into the bankruptcy, PG&E struck a deal with fire survivors, 70,000 of them, through their lawyers, that basically called for them to have a special trust set up to distribute what was then marketed to them as being worth $13.5 billion, half of it in cash and half of it in PG&E stock, which, as you might imagine, is very unsettling for a lot of fire survivors, this idea of being asked to accept stock in the company that harmed them. But as we sit here today, through this trust, fire survivors do own 500 million shares of PG&E. And so, that is part of the reason why it has taken quite a bit of time to get this money into the hands of victims.

But our investigation also looked at the claims processing expenses that this trust, led by former appeals court Justice John Trotter — how much they have taken in in overhead. He is charging $150,000 a month. The top claims administrator charges $1,250 an hour. There’s a whole coterie of bankruptcy attorneys and financial advisers, many of whom are making well over $1,000 an hour. And so, you really have this giant entity that is taking in a lot of money. We showed that they took in $50 million in overhead in their first year of operations, while distributing just $7 million in the calendar year 2020 to these fire survivors.

The pace of those payments to fire survivors has picked up. At this point, they have distributed north of about $400 million. But their expenses have also risen to the range of about $80 to $90 million. And I think a lot of fire survivors are looking at the situation and wondering, “Why is this taking so long? If you are spending this kind of money on overhead, what are they getting in return?” And they’re getting really impatient, and they’re very unhappy with the way this process has been run so far.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the status of the bipartisan calls for the California attorney general to investigate this?

LILY JAMALI: Yeah. So, after our investigation — as you say, this was a bipartisan group of about a dozen state lawmakers here in California. Most of them — in fact, I think all of them — represent communities who have been affected by these catastrophic fires. And they went to Attorney General Rob Bonta and said, you know, “Look at this. Please take a look and review the claims processing, the way it works, and the amount of money that’s being spent on overhead. Please vet this.” We have reached out to the Attorney General’s Office a number of times to see if they are planning to pick that up and run with it. At this point, we don’t know. They’ve told us that they can’t comment even on a pending investigation or can’t comment on even if they’re thinking about opening up an investigation. But certainly, you know, our work, thankfully, was able to get this in front of some influential lawmakers, including members of Congress who expressed outrage after we released our findings. And, you know, we’ll see. We’ll see what comes next.

AMY GOODMAN: What about Paradise and the areas right around it being threatened again? I mean, we’re talking in the midst of more horrendous fires through California, Oregon, Washington state. And what kind of preparations are being made? You’ve also got PG&E last August instituting rolling blackouts that put 800,000 Californians into the dark. How can Governor Newsom — how he’s dealing with what’s happening right now?

LILY JAMALI: Yeah, I mean, I was so struck hearing your conversation earlier with Michael Mann, because you guys were talking about a climate emergency being here, and that is exactly what it feels like to live in California right now. The rolling blackouts of last year was actually instituted by the Independent System Operator here in California because they ran out of power. They didn’t have enough reserve in their system, so they ended up instituting these rolling blackouts over two days in August. But there is another kind of blackout that is called by the utilities, including PG&E, because their lines have caused so many fires. That’s one way that they now try to prevent their aging and poorly maintained equipment from sparking future fires. Generally, those kinds of — those outages come a little bit later in the fire season, when we see — for example, next month, we’ll see more wind events, and that’s when the situation becomes really dire.

But there’s no doubt about it: We are in a climate emergency here. And one of the fires that we have been tracking, among several, is the Dixie Fire, which just broke out this week, very close to the burn scar of the Camp Fire. In fact, it started very close to the ignition point of the Camp Fire. And I’ve been getting texts and emails —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

LILY JAMALI: — from people in Paradise who are very concerned. And they’re seeing this smoke in the air, and they’re worried. They’re worried about what to do and how to make sure they’re safe.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Lily Jamali, we want to thank you so much for your superb reporting, co-host and correspondent for KQED’s The California Report. We’ll link to her investigation, “A Year After PG&E Left Bankruptcy, Spending by Fire Victim Trust Remains a Mystery.”

And that does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Stay safe.

 

Read more:

 

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/7/16/pg_e_fire_victim_fund_profiteering

 

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Note: in exposing the "deal"... we show (or try to show) how DemocracyNow! has been conned into doing the bidding for the establishment... It's a bit perverse. See no-one is supposed to like Trump, especially in the liberal/leftist/progressive media. And this is the beauty of the trick. If you like Trump (he is an idiot) you're a stupid right-wing anti-progressive idiotic loonie. If you are against Trump, one has to make sure one does not fall into the traps set by the "establishment" akin to "you're with us or against us"... General Milley is the spokesperson for the establishment, but what he spruiks about Trump is complete bullshit. The "establishment" has perversely but publicly reversed the intent of The Donald — and made you swallow crap...

 

 

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musings about the fourteenth of july...

 

 

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EU on fire...

Europe is burning: Four reasons why 

 

Barely halfway through summer, the area burned by wildfires raging through the Balkans, Italy and the southeastern Mediterranean has already eclipsed yearly averages.

Wildfires burning across southern Europe in the last month — whether sparked naturally by lightning, or by arsonists — have been flamed by drought and extreme heat. 

Scientists have no doubt that climate change is the key driver of yet another extreme fire season. They also understand that climate adaptation in fire-prone countries is inadequate to deal with wildfires that are set to worsen.

We look at why Mediterranean and Balkan countries are so prone to wildfires and explore the consequences of a warming world.  

1. Why are Mediterranean regions so fire-prone?

Summer wildfires are a natural and often necessary part of the life of Mediterranean forests. In the decade before 2016, around 48,000 forest fires burned 457,000 hectares annually across the five southern European nations where wildfires are most prevalent: Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and Greece. According to the scientists, fire can also breed renewal and foster biodiversity in these regions.

Indeed, communities have learned to cope better with the average annual fires in hot and arid regions across southern Europe, with more sophisticated fire prevention strategies leading to an overall decline in the number and size of fires since 1980.

But too often in recent years, fire events have escalated way beyond their normal size and intensity.

Devastating 2017 and 2018 wildfires claimed hundreds of lives across an area stretching from Turkey to Spain, while countries in central and northern Europe, including Sweden, were also scorched. 

Such unprecedented fire events are inevitably linked to extreme droughts and heat waves. 

 

2. What is starting the fires?

The month of July was the second-hottest ever recorded in Europe (and the third hottest globally). The south of the continent has been the focus of this extreme heat, with temperatures in Greece this week expected to peak at 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit).

Greece and neighboring Turkey are in the midst of a heat wave that could be the worst in 30 years — invoking memories of the nightmarish 1987 fire season that claimed more than 1,500 victims in Greece alone.

In Turkey, almost 200 separate wildfires have raged through the country in just over a week, forcing some coastal residents and tourists to flee into the Aegean for safety.

So while arson and natural causes such as lightning are equally to blame for starting the fires, extreme heat has increased their intensity and is the real culprit for the destruction wreaked across fire-hit regions. This is why at least 55% more area has burned across Europe by August 5 than the average over the previous 12 years.

 

Read more:

 

https://www.dw.com/en/europe-is-burning-four-reasons-why/a-58771341

 

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freefree

fringe prof...

 

A University of Victoria economics professor who has spent years questioning whether global warming is “a real thing” is doing research supported by hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from the Canadian government. 

Gerrit Cornelis van Kooten holds the prestigious title of Canada Research Chair in Environmental Studies and Climate Change, a distinction reserved for “outstanding researchers acknowledged by their peers as world leaders in their fields.”

But as recently as 2018, van Kooten was publicly supporting a fringe scientific argument claiming “It is quite likely that future generations will benefit from the enrichment of Earth’s atmosphere with more carbon dioxide.” Last December, he authored a blog post entitled, “‘Renewable’ energy can’t replace fossil fuels,” which made the scientifically dubious claim that toxic chemicals contained in solar panels “are several orders of magnitude more hazardous than nuclear waste.”

Meanwhile his peers are producing leading-edge research about climate change. Several University of Victoria researchers recently released a paper calculating that the deadly atmospheric river which caused floods and landslides in southwestern B.C. last November was potentially made 60 percent more likely due to global warming. 

Van Kooten has spent years denying that human activities are warming the planet. Yet van Kooten is a “Tier 1 Chair,” meaning that his research on climate change and the environment qualifies the University of Victoria to receive $200,000 annually for seven years. 

He is currently serving his second term as Canada Research Chair. In order for his 2016 renewal to succeed, he had to demonstrate to a review board of three experts that his work is “producing lead-edge results that are making a significant impact at the international level.” 

This is a “rigorous peer review process,” a spokesperson for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada told DeSmog in an email. “Consequently, each Chairholder is expected to strive to follow best research practices honestly, accountably, openly, and fairly.”  

Van Kooten says his research into the economic impacts of lowering greenhouse gas emissions provides a much-needed perspective for decision-makers. “Climate science often ignores economic considerations, and climate models do not usually include interactive economic sectors, making it difficult to explore cost-effective policy responses to climate change and its consequences,” he writes in his program bio. Van Kooten said he was unavailable for an interview with DeSmog. “Unfortunately, I am totally bogged down with teaching,” he wrote in an email.  

It’s not clear from his public statements that he views global warming as a serious threat. 

In 2015, the University of Victoria professor spoke at a conference in Washington, D.C., organized by the Heartland Institute, a group that’s received over $1 million in contributions from Exxon, Koch Industries and the coal company Murray Energy. The Heartland Institute has previously led campaigns seeking to “cast doubt on the scientific finding that fossil fuel emissions endanger the long-term welfare of the planet,” according to leaked documents from the organization.   

 

READ MORE:

https://www.desmog.com/2022/02/24/canada-funding-van-kooten-denying-climate-science/

 

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MEANWHILE:

...

Greenwald may have been cast into the outer darkness by most of the mainstream liberal establishment, but he ultimately suffered little damage. His angry departure from the Intercept unleashed a media thunderclap, and from the moment he regained his editorial freedom on Substack, he began producing a series of lengthy and remarkably incisive columns, so that within a couple of weeks I read more of his work than I had in the previous five or six years. Others seem to have had the same reaction, and his personal Substack subscription revenue quickly exceeded a million dollars a year, an achievement that surely aroused enormous envy from the multitude of timorous and mercenary journalists content to churn out safe and inoffensive blather.

 

But while Greenwald probably ranked as the world’s most famous journalist, he was always paired in my mind with the world’s most famous publisher, and the latter had suffered a far worse fate the previous year. On April 11, 2019 British police physically dragged Julian Assange, bearded and disheveled, out of the room in London’s Ecuadorean Embassy that had become his refuge turned prison cell during the previous seven years.

Assange had founded the WikiLeaks website in 2006, allowing disgruntled individuals to anonymously deposit confidential information embarrassing to governments and other powerful entities, with that content then made available to journalists and activists across the world. In 2010, an American intelligence analyst had provided a huge cache of Iraq and Afghanistan War documents and videos that rocketed the website to worldwide fame and inflicted a massive propaganda defeat upon our national security establishment. Assange and his tiny band of volunteer collaborators immediately became the toast of left-liberals in America and throughout the world, hailed as a journalistic pioneer and hero. Such strong public support partly shielded Assange from immediate retaliation, but the minions of our Deep State regarded him as their sworn enemy, and they relentlessly began seeking revenge.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-giants-silenced-by-pygmies/#the-strategy-of-dynamic-silence

 

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