Posted on 20 October 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz

Story of the week

Here's another week of stories describing how our species has become a force of nature by creating a mighty industry now spewing unintended consequences, spanning from the upper atmosphere down to the rotational behavior of our entire planet Earth. In the middle: us and our fellow creatures, buffeted by violent weather, pestilence, starvation, dehydration and various other horrors, all made more dire by our big accident of changing our climate.

We've accidentally taken on god-like powers. But we're more like Greek gods; our efforts seemingly end in hubristic folly as much as they do acts of virtue. The Greeks wrote fables of gods as commentary on human nature and we remain obedient to this plot device— but at scale and type now uncomfortably close to the literal as opposed to metaphorical text of these ancient stories. Our human nature is now a seemingly inexorable force of nature; we don't seem to know how to control what we've become, what we've created. 

If human nature rather than technological prowess is the root cause of our problem, it seems reasonable that better understanding of human nature rather than yet more engineering is key to threading our way out of our climate problem. This isn't a novel idea; social scientists have been working intensively on the psychological underpinnings of our climate problem for decades and we're beginning to get a solid grip on the common, basic fallibilities that lead us to commit and sustain titanic blunders such as randomly changing our planet's geophysics for the worse.

Perhaps more importantly, researchers are working specifically on why we'd continue to behave in ways that we know are causing ourselves harm. One such avenue leads to the concept of "energy transition justice," a term including workers in the fossil fuel industry.

Workers in the fossil fuel industry facing energy transition are a subject of intensive academic investigation, with a cursory check revealing over 13,000 publications for 2024 alone. Interest in this group includes not only matters of fairness and equity but also the possibility that as a matter of policy needing to be bracketed by operational politics, a large group of workers threatened with economic disenfranchisement can be a showstopper for for climate mitigation policy implementation. Again as a matter of human nature, people being governed by fear don't make good decisions, so understanding and discovering how to take away the cause for fright makes entirely good sense.

But it's rarely or never the case that people embedded in the fossil fuel industry are visited by researchers with a Margaret Mead level of commitment to sharing how these lives are lived, identifying connections of empathy to help provide us with the insight we need to ease fear and thus foster cooperation for the greater good. 

To help us better understand people who have grown up in a multigenerational dependency on the economic feature called the fossil fuel industry and are quite naturally responding with fear, loathing and resistance to the end of their accustomed lifestyle— due to circumstances beyond their direct control— we could benefit from some embedded cultural anthropology. Thanks to Citizens Climate Lobby, we have news about what is essentially just such an effort, even if it's not flying the cultural anthropologist flag. Connecting about climate change with the most skeptical people in the USA is our Story of the Week, written by CCL intern author Kate Derbas and delving into Ben Stillerman's residence in Utah's coal-dependent Emery County. Stillerman lived in Emery County while filming interviews and conversations with people thoughtlessly included in the term "dirty energy." 

Of course folks in Emery County are not dirty. They're not top industry executives engaged in concerted lying campaigns. But as a matter of human nature they're responding to being characterized in that way quite poorly. This in combination with what they see as an existential threat and what will certainly be a large upheaval in their lived experience combine to produce anger and fear, and neither of those emotions is conducive to cooperation or clear thinking.

Consider: if anybody has a good reason to believe the lies we're told about climate change by the fossil fuel industry, it's hands-on workers in the fossil fuel industry— with mortgages and hungry children— depending on sincere belief that one is living a good life, being good. This is a magnet for motivated reasoning, for naturally uncritical acceptance of comforting beliefs. They're victims, same as the rest of us.

It doesn't take an Einstein to understand that even if one doesn't give a toss about fairness, as a matter of pure pragmatism we need to treat these people well, treat them as we'd prefer for ourselves. Emery County is multiplied across the United States, and across the entire globe. This collective locus of hurt feelings and economic fright is already a drag on sorting out our climate problem. Left unaddressed, it will only become worse. 

It's better— easier and more productive— to pay attention to fairness, to empathize. Stillerman's entire documentary series on Emery County titled True False Hot Cold is available on Youtube. 

Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:

Before October 13

• Hurricanes Amplify Insurance Crisis in Riskiest Areas, Business, New York Times, Emily Fitter. "After Helene and Milton, some small Florida companies risk bankruptcy. Larger ones will be in the hot seat with lawmakers and consumer groups."
• Atmospheric rivers are shifting poleward, reshaping global weather patterns, Environment & Energy, The Conversation US, Zhe Li.
• Hurricane Milton's downpour around Tampa Bay was a 1-in-1,000-year rain event St. Petersburg had 18.31 inches of rain — or more than 1.5 feet — in 24 hours., Science, NBC News, Denise Chow. "St. Petersburg had 18.31 inches of rain — or more than 1.5 feet — in 24 hours."
• Climate Change Made Hurricane Milton Stronger, With Heavier Rain, Scientists Conclude, Inside Climate News, Sean Sublette. A rapid analysis of rainfall trends and Gulf of Mexico temperatures shows many similarities to Hurricane Helene less than two weeks earlier.
• Why Disasters Like Hurricanes Milton and Helene Unleash So Much Misinformation, Scientific American, Ben Guarino. "Falsehoods spread when uncertainties—and emotions—are high after hurricanes"
• Hurricanes do little to move Republicans on climate, Climatewire, E&E News, Emma Dumain. "Recent storms have devastated numerous conservative districts. That doesn’t mean their lawmakers will change course."

October 13

• 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #41, Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler, Doug Bostrom & John Hartz. A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 6, 2024 thru Sat, October 12, 2024.
• Climate Disasters Only Slightly Shift the Political Needle, Politics, Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn. "Researchers tracking the social and political impacts of storms, floods and heat waves say their effects are often transient and short-lived."
• The Observer view on climate change: Hurricane Milton is a portent – but it’s not too late, Comment is Free, The Guardian, Observer Editorial. "We are losing in the fight against global warming, it is time to put effort into controlling what we pump into the atmosphere"

October 14

• Welcome to the world of personal air conditioning, The Climate Brink, Andrew Dessler. As the climate warms, the rich will live in cool bubbles of comfort. The poor, not so much.
• Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?, Environment, The Guardian, Peter Greenfield . "The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating"
• New evidence says gas exports damage the climate even more than coal. It’s time Australia took serious action, Environment, The Guardian, Adam Morton. "A US study estimates the total climate pollution from LNG was 33% greater than that from coal over a 20-year period. This should have major ramifications for emissions policy"
• Europe’s medical schools to give more training on diseases linked to climate crisis, Global development, The Guardian, Kat Lay. "New climate network will teach trainee doctors more about heatstroke, dengue and malaria and role of global warming in health"

October 15

• What happens to the world if forests stop absorbing carbon? Ask Finland, Environment The Guardian, Patrick Greenfield in Inari, Finland. Natural sinks of forests and peat were key to Finland’s ambitious target to be carbon neutral by 2035. But now, the land has started emitting more greenhouse gases than it stores
• Guest post: The growing threat of climate-sensitive infectious diseases, Carbon Brief, Guest Author Dr Madeleine Thomson. Ahead of the Paris Olympic Games this summer, the organising committee was concerned about two principal diseases: Covid, which Europe is fully familiar with, and dengue fever.
• A US university has a new requirement to graduate: take a climate change course, Environment, The Guardian, Katharine Gammon. "UC San Diego has added an innovative prerequisite to ‘prepare students for the future they really will encounter’ "
• September 2024: Earth’s 2nd-warmest September on record, Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters. "The year 2024 is virtually certain to surpass 2023 as Earth’s warmest year on record."
• 3,000 risk experts and 20,000 citizens name climate change as number one threat facing the world, Euronews Green, Saskia O'Donoghue.
• Why might people believe in human-made hurricanes? Two conspiracy theory psychologists explain, The Conversation, Iwan Dinnick & Daniel Jolley.

October 16

• The 2024 Presidential Election Will Make or Break U.S. Climate Action, Scientific American, Andrea Thompson. "Harris would continue the Biden administration’s landmark climate efforts; Trump would roll the country back to more oil and gas"
• Global water crisis leaves half of world food production at risk in next 25 years, Environment, The Guardian, Fiona Harvey. "Landmark review says urgent action needed to conserve resources and save ecosystems that supply fresh water"
• The system that moves water around the Earth is off balance for the first time in human history, Climate, CNN, Laura Paddison.
• Mass bird deaths in botulism outbreak are linked to climate crisis, Environment The Guardian, Douglas Main. More than 94,000 birds have died at Tule Lake wildlife refuge in northern California, its worst recorded epidemic

October 17

• Odds of another October Atlantic named storm are fading fast, Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Connection, Jeff Masters & Bob Henson, . "Floods and mudslides may hit parts of Central America and southeast Mexico over the next few days, but the hurricane risk appears minimal."
• Hurricane Milton’s losses of up to $34 billion could make it one of the costliest storms in US history, Business, CNN, Chris Isidore.
• Humans do not have the technology to manipulate hurricanes, Science Feedback, Rahul Rao.
• Oil Companies Insist Carbon Capture Is Safe - So Why Are Albertans Saddled with the Risks?, DeSmog, Mitch Anderson. Proposed new rules for CCS projects transfer long-term liabilities to the province.
• Water challenges — made worse by rising temperatures — are threatening the world’s crops, Grist, Frida Garza. “We have to be smarter about what we grow, and we can be smarter about how we grow what we're growing.”

October 18

• Connecting about climate change with the most skeptical people in the USA, Citizens' Climate Lobby, Flannery Winchester.
• Terrifying': Leak Shows Industry Plot to Worsen Methane Emissions—If Trump Wins, Common Dreams, Edward Carver. "They want to take climate out of the policy process entirely."

October 19

• Science is not value free, RealClimate, Gavin Schmidt.