Massive protests erupt at world's biggest iPhone factory in China

Foxconn, Apple's principal subcontractor, saw a surge in Covid-19 cases at its Zhengzhou site in recent months, leading the company to shutter the vast complex in a bid to keep the virus in check.

The huge facility of some 200,000 workers — dubbed "iPhone City" — has been operating in a "closed loop" bubble. (AP Archive)

Large-scale protests have broken out at Foxconn's vast iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, central China, images circulating on Weibo and Twitter showed.

In the videos on Wednesday, hundreds of workers can be seen marching on a road in daylight, with some being confronted by riot police and people in hazmat suits.

Others show hundreds of people in hazmat gear standing on a road near what appears to be factory residential buildings, while the person filming the clip from an adjacent apartment building says: "It's starting again, from last night to this morning."

Video from a separate livestream showed dozens of workers at night confronting a row of police officers and a police vehicle with flashing lights, shouting: "Defend our rights! Defend our rights!"

The Weibo hashtag "Foxconn Riots" appeared to be censored by Wednesday noon, while some text posts referencing large-scale protests at the Foxconn factory remained live.

Beijing's unrelenting zero-Covid policy has caused fatigue and resentment among wide swathes of the population, some of whom have been locked down for weeks at factories and universities, or unable to travel freely.

READ MORE: World's largest Apple iPhone plant under lockdown in China

Foxconn admits overtime by student interns in China factory

'Closed loop' bubble

Foxconn, Apple's principal subcontractor, saw a surge in Covid-19 cases at its Zhengzhou site in recent months, leading the company to shutter the vast complex in a bid to keep the virus in check.

Since then, the huge facility of some 200,000 workers — dubbed "iPhone City" — has been operating in a "closed loop" bubble.

Foxconn, also known by its official name Hon Hai Precision Industry, is the world's biggest contract electronics manufacturer assembling gadgets for many international brands.

Foxconn is China's biggest private sector employer, with over a million people working across the country in about 30 factories and research institutes.

Zhengzhou is the Taiwanese company's crown jewel, churning out iPhones in quantities not seen anywhere else.

READ MORE: Pinduoduo: China’s Tech culture under scrutiny after suicides

Source: AFP

Violence erupts between workers and the police at Foxconn's plant in Zhengzhou

Karthik Mudaliar @heykarthikm · Nov 23, 2022 

China's Zhengzhou district witnessed a violent clash between hundreds of Foxconn workers and the police on Wednesday. The district, which is also dubbed as "iPhone city" due to Foxconn's largest factory, has been under strict COVID curbs since mid-October.

The clash began after hundreds of workers started a protest overnight over unpaid wages and fear of an infectious outbreak at the plant. Many workers were seriously injured after their squabble with the police.

Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant is the company's largest factory in the world that employs more than 200,000 workers. However, due to China's zero-COVID policy, the whole district of Zhengzhou has been under strict lockdown.

The violence is part of the growing tension at the district due to the lockdown. Many workers have also fled the factory, and the district itself over frustrations about how the virus outbreak is being handled by China and insufficient food rations for the residents.

The policy has resulted in supply shortage of the iPhone 14 series before the holiday season. Both Apple and Foxconn are taking preemptive steps to reduce the short supply by boosting productions in Foxconn's Shanghai, China and Chennai, India plants.

Foxconn riots: what is happening at Zhengzhou factory, why are workers protesting at company’s iPhone plant?

Large-scale protests have broken out in Foxconn Technology’s plant in China that produces Apple’s iPhones

By Suswati Basu

Large-scale protests have broken out in Foxconn Technology’s plant in China that produces Apple’s iPhones (Twitter / NationalWorld)

Images circulating on social media show violent protests at Foxconn’s vast iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, central China, amid frustration over treatment of employees and how Covid-19 cases were being handled, including what they said were insufficient provisions of food.

The Zhengzhou plant is the world’s largest iPhone factory with some 200,000 workers. The unrest comes as the Taiwanese firm, Foxconn, recruited an additional 100,000 staff earlier this month, due to an exodus blamed on alleged poor treatment of workers. The hiring spree comes at a time when Apple is facing significant supply chain constraints at the assembly facility and expects iPhone 14 shipments to be hit just as the key holiday shopping season begins.

Foxconn executive Yang Han told Sina Finance: ‘’The quota is finally full, and the recruitment work is temporarily suspended", adding “we still have to do a good job in epidemic prevention in the park. This part is really challenging”.

At the same time, it was reported that Foxconn had changed the subsidies that workers would receive under the new recruitment drive in order to quell anger. The company said it had quadrupled daily bonuses for workers at the plant this month.

What is happening at the Zhengzhou factory?

Videos shared on Weibo and Twitter on Wednesday (23 November) showed hundreds of workers marching on a road. Some are seen being confronted by riot police and people in hazmat suits. Social media users livestreaming the protests said workers were beaten by police and people in white suits carrying riot shields.

NationalWorld cannot independently verify the media, however, there were claims that workers were not being paid fair wages and footage showed witnesses reporting that people were being beaten by authorities. The rare scenes of open dissent mark an escalation of unrest that has come to symbolise a dangerous build-up of discontent with China’s strict Covid-19 rules as well as clumsy handling of the situation by the world’s largest contract manufacturer

Some workers were seen chanting “give us our pay” as they were surrounded by people carrying batons, according to footage from one video, whilst another shows people attempting to damage official booths.

Why are workers protesting at the company’s iPhone plant?

Advertisement

There have been reports of contract disputes over pay as well as workers expressing concerns over sharing dormitories with those who tested positive for Covid-19 and inept distribution of food.

In a statement, the company described rumours that new recruits were being asked to share dormitories with workers who were Covid-positive were "patently untrue". Foxconn told Chinese media Yicai: "Before new colleagues move in, these dormitories are sanitised and approved by the government before new employees can be accommodated, and there is no mixing with the original employees."

People seen in hazmat suits allegedly assaulting workers at Foxconn Zhengzhou iPhone plant in this screen grab obtained from a video released 23 November, 2022. (Twitter user @guhj797)

There are estimates that thousands fled the factory campus late last month during a new Covid-19 outbreak. Some employees climbed over fences and walked home hundreds of kilometres on foot to escape the plant.

To retain staff and lure more workers the company has had to offer bonuses and higher salaries. The veteran affairs bureau in Changge, a county under the administration of the city of Xuchang in Henan, posted an open letter urging retired Chinese Army personnel to “answer the government’s call” and “take part in the resumption of production” at Foxconn’s manufacturing complex in Zhengzhou. The letter suggested that they “show up where there’s a need”.

Image appears to show notice to former Chinese Army personnel to join Foxconn plant at Zhengzhou due to staff shortages (Weibo)

Advertisement

Does Apple still use Foxconn?

Foxconn is Apple’s biggest iPhone maker, accounting for 70% of iPhone shipments globally. It makes most of the phones at the Zhengzhou plant, though it has other smaller production sites in India and in other parts of China. The Zhengzhou plant was responsible for about 60% of Henan province’s exports in 2019, Yicai Global reported. It is still used as a major supplier for Apple.

China’s stringent Covid-19 policies have been scrutinised heavily. Earlier in November, visitors to Shanghai Disneyland were filmed trapped inside the park after authorities announced a sudden lockdown, with people unable to leave without a negative test. More recently, the southern city of Guangzhou locked down its largest district in an effort to control another major outbreak.

Protests at largest iPhone factory in China: 

Violence, insufficient food, and unpaid 

bonuses


By José Adorno
November 23rd, 2022 



Hundreds of workers at Foxconn’s largest iPhone factory in Zhengzhou province, China, are protesting due to delayed bonus payment, insufficient food, and frustration with the country’s harsh COVID-19 rules. These protests come amid a severe lockdown early this month, with workers having to sleep in the factory while trying to produce the new iPhone 14 series – currently low in stock worldwide.

According to Reuters, online images show hundreds of Foxconn workers protesting with surveillance cameras and windows smashed by men with sticks. The publication says this protest “symbolizes a dangerous build-up in frustration with the country’s ultra-harsh COVID rules as well as inept handling of the situation by the world’s largest contract manufacturer.”

Footage of the protest shows that Foxconn workers are demanding the payment of their bonus to work during this month’s COVID-19 lockdown, tear gas being deployed, and workers taking down quarantine barriers.

In a statement, Foxconn said that it has paid workers and that information about infected staff living on campus alongside new recruits was “untrue.”


“Regarding any violence, the company will continue to communicate with employees and the government to prevent similar incidents from happening again,” the company added.

A person familiar with the matter said that even with the protests, the plant was “unaffected,” meaning that iPhone 14 production is still up.

Previously, Reuters reported Foxconn’s plans to resume the iPhone 14 total production by the second half of November. One of the publication’s sources said the manufacturer is unlikely to hit the target due to “disruptions triggered by the unrest” as it impacts “particularly new recruits who were hired to bridge the gap in the workforce.”

Early this month, Apple provided an unusual statement regarding the situation with its supply chain by saying people are willing to buy the iPhone 14 Pro models, but the company can’t keep up with demand.

We continue to see strong demand for iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models. However, we now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated and customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.

BGR will keep reporting on Foxconn’s largest iPhone factory protest as we learn more about it.

Watch this Earth rise as seen from the Orion spacecraft

By Trevor MoggNovember 22, 2022 

Following its spectacular launch atop NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, November 16, the non-crewed Orion spacecraft on Monday performed a flyby of the moon that took it to within just 81 miles of the lunar surface.

During what is the first mission in NASA’s Artemis program, the flight is testing key technologies for upcoming crewed missions to the moon and beyond.

On Saturday, the Orion will pass the furthest point from Earth traveled by a human-rated spacecraft. That record was set by the Apollo 13 spacecraft 52 years ago when it took three astronauts 248,655 miles beyond Earth.

Related

• Japan admits defeat with its moon-bound CubeSat
• NASA team pauses efforts to deploy Lucy spacecraft’s unlatched array
• How NASA is dealing with micrometeoroids threatening James Webb

Two days later, on Monday at 4:06 p.m. ET, the Orion will set a new record when it reaches a point 268,552 miles from Earth.

In the meantime, enjoy this sublime footage (below) captured by one of the Orion’s cameras, showing Earth emerging from behind the moon.

“Earth rises from behind the moon in this video captured by a camera on one of Orion’s solar array wings,” NASA said in a comment accompanying the video. “The video was taken at 8:05 a.m. ET on flight day six of the 25.5 day Artemis I mission, shortly after the outbound powered flyby and six minutes after the spacecraft regained connection with NASA’s Deep Space Network.”

NASA said recently that the Artemis I mission has, so far, exceeded expectations. The spacecraft is set to splash down off the coast of California on December 11. After that, NASA will send the Orion on the same journey as part of the Artemis II mission, but this time, with astronauts on board. And then, Artemis III will see NASA put the first woman and first person of color on the lunar surface in what will be the first astronaut lunar landing since the final Apollo mission in 1972.

Earth's earliest mass extinction uncovered in fossil record

By Michael Irving

November 22, 2022

• Facebook
• MAGES

Scientists believe that the Earth is currently in the midst of its sixth major extinction event, but a new study suggests that’s not the case – it may actually be the seventh. Scientists have found evidence of a previously unknown mass extinction event that struck half a billion years ago.

While patterns of extinction rise and fall over time, it’s generally accepted that there are five major outliers where more than 70% of life on Earth was wiped out. The first occurred about 450 million years ago at the end of the Ordovician period, wiping out up to 85% of all species alive at the time. The worst came at the end of the Permian, when up to 96% of all life died out. And the most recent occurred 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous, which famously killed off the dinosaurs.

But in the new study, scientists at UC Riverside and Virginia Tech have found evidence of another mass extinction event that took place about 100 million years earlier than the currently accepted first. This places it during the Ediacaran period about 550 million years ago, which is when complex multicellular life really took off for the first time.

Fossil records from this time are murky for a number of reasons. For one, the creatures that lived then were largely soft-bodied and so didn’t fossilize too well. Plus, the sheer amount of time that’s passed since then means that many Ediacaran fossils will be very deep down or will have been destroyed.

That makes it hard to detect the hallmarks of a mass extinction event, but the record does seem to show a drop in diversity of life from the middle to late Ediacaran. But whether this is a sampling bias, a lack of preservation, or an extinction event has been tricky to determine.

So for the new study, the researchers assembled a database of almost all known Ediacaran animals from around the world, and across the tens of millions of years of the period. They examined when these creatures lived and disappeared, as well as their environments, body sizes and shapes, diets, habits and whether they could move around or not.

In doing so, the team found that around 80% of the animals alive during the middle Ediacaran had gone extinct by the late Ediacaran. The specific modes of preservation and material deposits didn’t change in that time, which the researchers say is an indication that it wasn’t a sampling bias.

“We can see the animals’ spatial distribution over time, so we know they didn’t just move elsewhere or get eaten – they died out,” said Chenyi Tu, co-author of the study. “We’ve shown a true decrease in the abundance of organisms.”

The researchers also think they have evidence for what caused the extinction event. Geological records showed signs of a decline in ocean oxygen levels around that time, and interestingly, the animals that did survive seemed to be those adapted for low-oxygen life. This is measured by a creature’s ratio of surface area to volume.

“If an organism has a higher ratio, it can get more nutrients, and the bodies of the animals that did live into the next era were adapted in this way,” said Heather McCandless, co-author of the study.

The research was published in the journal PNAS.

Source: UC Riverside

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

UK competition watchdog investigates Apple and Google 'stranglehold' over the mobile market

Apple doesn't want to bite

Thomas Claburn
Wed 23 Nov 2022 

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a market investigation into cloud gaming and mobile browsers after its study found Apple and Google constitute a duopoly that controls the mobile ecosystem.

The CMA in June concluded a year-long study of the market for mobile software, hardware, and services. Based on its findings – that Apple and Google have "a stranglehold over operating systems, app stores and web browsers on mobile devices" – the UK competition watchdog said at the time that it intended to escalate by opening a formal investigation.

That inquiry has now begun and it should conclude in no more than 18 months. At that point, the CMA may choose to impose remedies, such as demanding a change in the way certain products are sold, requiring the divestment of business units, or insisting upon the removal of anti-competitive restrictions.

"Many UK businesses and web developers tell us they feel that they are being held back by restrictions set by Apple and Google," said Sarah Cardell, interim Chief Executive of the CMA, in a statement. "When the new Digital Markets regime is in place, it’s likely to address these sorts of issues."

"In the meantime, we are using our existing powers to tackle problems where we can. We plan to investigate whether the concerns we have heard are justified and, if so, identify steps to improve competition and innovation in these sectors."

Separately, the CMA is looking into Google's ad business and its Chrome "Privacy Sandbox" initiative, while another UK agency, Ofcom, is looking into how Amazon, Microsoft and Google affect competition in the cloud service business.

The CMA in this instance is focused on Apple's and Google's control over operating systems, app stores, and web browsers on mobile devices. The watchdog says, "97 percent of all mobile web browsing in the UK in 2021 happens on browsers powered by either Apple's or Google's browser engine," which makes restrictions related to browser engines significant in the context of competition.

The agency also observes that the 800,000 users of cloud gaming services in the UK are affected by restrictions that Apple and Google place on mobile cloud gaming services.

One of the main focuses of the CMA investigation is on Apple's requirement that all mobile browsers on iOS devices use its own WebKit rendering engine rather than competing browser engines like Google's Blink (the basis of Chrome) or Mozilla's Gecko (the basis of Firefox).

"Web developers have complained that Apple’s restrictions, combined with suggested underinvestment in its browser technology, lead to added costs and frustration as they have to deal with bugs and glitches when building web pages, and have no choice but to create bespoke mobile apps when a website might be sufficient," the CMA said.

The CMA's market investigation reference [PDF] also says the agency will look at the use of in-app browsers – pseudo-browsers implemented within native apps that aren't subject to the same limitations as stand-alone browsers.

Rivals and investigators line up

In response to the CMA's consultation process, various companies that compete with Apple and Google, advocacy groups, and individual developers voiced their concerns about Apple's and Google's practices in comments submitted in June that have just been published.

Microsoft endorsed [PDF] the CMAs findings and specifically expressed support for "removing Apple’s restrictions on competing browser engines on iOS devices, mandating access to certain functionality for browsers (including supporting web apps), requiring Apple and Google to provide equal access to functionality through APIs for rival browsers, requirements making it more straightforward for users to change the default browser in their device settings, and offering choice screens to overcome the distortive effects of pre-installation."

Mozilla likewise expressed support [PDF] for the CMA's conclusions about the problems arising from Apple's iOS WebKit restriction and urged the CMA to extend its scrutiny to Chrome's desktop dominance. Meta meanwhile asked the CMA to expand the scope of its inquiry to cover Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy settings, which interfere with business models based on ad revenue [PDF].

The Electronic Frontier Foundation observed [PDF], "Apple has a history of invoking security as a procompetitive rationale for its policies, when many of the company’s practices are, in fact, anticompetitive."

The advocacy organization said it has historically counseled that the answer to restrictive apps stores is competing app stores but it now contends that's not possible given the market power of Apple and Google.

The EFF wrote, "[T]he dominant mobile platform vendors have woven together a thicket of legal doctrines – including anti-circumvention elements of copyright law, software patent, trade secret, badly drafted cybersecurity laws, onerous contract terms, and exotic tortious interference theories at common law – that create unbearable legal risks for anyone who would offer device owners alternative app stores."

Open Web Advocacy, a developer rights group, provided 70 pages of analysis [PDF] that cites Apple's financial interest in maintaining the primacy of native iOS apps (which may generate gatekeeper revenue) over web apps (which can't be controlled through App Store rules).

"By requiring all browsers on iOS to use the WebKit browser engine, Apple is able to exert control over the maximum functionality of all browsers on iOS and, as a consequence, hold up the development and use of web apps," the group said. "This limits the competitive constraint that web apps pose on native apps, which in turn protects and benefits Apple’s App Store revenues."

Various web developers weighed in with comments objecting to Apple's and Google's practices. Among these, an individual identified as Mike Padgett offered perhaps the most uninhibited take on the situation.

Padgett wrote [PDF], "It's insane that I even have to write this email.... somebody please stop Apple from waving their dick around with this ridiculous monopolistic BS concerning the trash ass Safari kit on iOS."

"There is literally no reason for Apple to maintain this stance, other than pure anti‐competitive greed."

The Register asked Apple and Google to comment but neither responded.

Both companies however submitted lengthy defenses of their practices earlier this year in response to the CMA's consultation process.

Google in its comments [PDF] said it welcomes the CMA's investigation where there are real competition issues – Apple's iOS rules rather than Android where there's "scant evidence" of adverse effects on competition.

Apple meanwhile took a less conciliatory tone and rejected the CMA's findings as flawed.

"Apple considers that a balanced review of the evidence would lead to the conclusion that competition with respect to both mobile browsers and cloud gaming is robust and that, in particular, Apple’s approach provides users with a valuable choice, centered on security, privacy and performance, between ecosystems," the company said [PDF] through its law firm Gibson Dunn.

As if to underscore the EFF's observation about Apple's use of security as a justification for the status quo, Apple's 15-page submission includes 61 mentions of the word "security." ®

‘Straight line’ between anti-LGBTQ+ politics and Colorado Springs shooting, activists say

PATRICK KELLEHER NOVEMBER 22, 2022

People hold a vigil at a makeshift memorial near the Club Q nightclub on November 20, 2022. 

(Scott Olson/Getty)

The Colorado Springs shooting that took the lives of five people was a consequence of hatred whipped up against the LGBTQ+ community by the far-right, activists have said.

Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump and Ashley Paugh were all murdered in a mass shooting in Club Q, an LGBTQ+ venue in Colorado Springs, on Saturday (19 November). Another 25 people were injured by the shooter, who is facing murder and hate crime charges.

The horrific attack comes just six years after 49 people were killed in the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida.

Pulse should have been a catalyst for change, but the six years since that shooting have been painful and turbulent for queer Americans. From legislative attacks to physical violence, LGBTQ+ people have been reminded time and time again that they don’t matter – and that hatred can be weaponised by politicians to win public support.

“You can draw a straight line from the false and vile rhetoric about LGBTQ people spread by extremists and amplified across social media, to the nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year, to the dozens of attacks on our community like this one,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD.

“That this mass shooting took place on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, when we honour the memory of the trans people killed the year prior, deepens the trauma and tragedy for all in the LGBTQ community.”

A candle with a message burns at a makeshift memorial near the Club Q nightclub on November 20, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty)

Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of LGBTQ+ youth charity GLSEN, said the shooting was a “tragic consequence” of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from right-wing politicians.

“We’ve seen it time and again: hate speech, especially hate speech enshrined in state bills, fuels hate crime,” they explained.

“Our hearts go out to the victims of the Club Q shooting and their families and loved ones. For the rest of us, now is a moment to mourn our siblings, but also to translate our fear and rage and desire for solidarity into clear, direct action.”

They added: “We all must rise up against efforts to silence and remove LGBTQ+ people from public life, including this vicious and intentional slaughter of LGBTQ+ people.”

In the aftermath of the Colorado Springs shooting, Willingham-Jaggers would like to see “bold protections” to stop gun violence once and for all.

“We must demand that our leaders govern in ways that honour our communities, respect our lives, and support our safety and rights,” she said.

LGBTQ+ people need ‘humane policies’ after Colorado Springs shooting

Willingam-Jaggers’ plea shouldn’t be a big ask, but in the current climate, even a hint of kindness from some lawmakers would feel like a radical act.

Over the last number of years, viciously transphobic and homophobic pieces of legislation have been cropping up in state legislatures across America. Lawmakers have learned that they can garner public support by leaning into anti-trans talking points that double as conspiracy theories.

People leave flowers at the growing memorial at the scene of the shooting inside Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (Getty)

Legislatures have banned gender affirming care for minors while others have stopped trans kids from playing sport all in the name of “fairness”.

At a federal level, LGBTQ+ people endured four years of attacks from Donald Trump during his time in the White House. The former president worked diligently to roll back LGBTQ+ protections, and he repeatedly courted homophobia and transphobia in a bid to boost his popularity with his support base. The legacy of that is that the Republican Party remains intently focussed on leveraging transphobia to rally its base.

To end violence against trans and queer people, we need more humane policies that send the message that our community is inherently valuable.

In the wake of the Colorado Springs shooting, politicians have a choice to make: they can either loudly reject anti-LGBTQ+ policies and hate, or they can do nothing.

Shelby Chestnut, director of policy and programs at the Transgender Law Center, puts it simply: “What queer people need now as they mourn those lost in the Colorado Springs shooting is for politicians to step up.

“To end violence against trans and queer people, we need more humane policies that send the message that our community is inherently valuable.

“Our LGBTQ+ community is a gift to our society.”

Renewed Climate Disinformation Campaigns Threaten COP27 Progress

The pandemic and Russia’s war, experts say, have “turbocharged the disinformation ecosystem” with new conspiracies.

BY KRISTOFFER TIGUE & BOB BERWYN, ICN
11.22.2022
Top: The main gate of the Sharm El-Sheikh Climate Change Conference (COP 27) Visual: Matthew TenBruggencate/Unsplash

THE SLOW PACE of global climate talks were once again on display at COP27 last week and can be partially explained by a renewed blitz of climate disinformation, according to watchdog groups that analyze media ecosystems.

Last week, the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition released a new analysis of efforts to undermine climate action and found that false and misleading claims made by right-wing media outlets about global warming and clean energy continue to affect public perception about the climate crisis. The fossil fuel industry, the authors said, is riding that wave of disinformation into the climate talks to promote false solutions.


This story was originally published by the Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

“Misinformation has sowed uncertainty and impeded the recognition of risk…and the rise of climate misinformation is undermining climate action here at COP27,” Jacob Dubbins, a coauthor of the new report, said at a COP27 press conference.

The report said that Fox News remains a significant source of false and misleading information about the climate crisis, fueling unfounded public skepticism in a way that could even inspire violence against policymakers who advocate for strong climate action.

The report included a scientific survey on the media consumption habits of thousands of people in six different countries: Brazil, Australia, India, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It found that Americans, especially those who regularly watch Fox News, are the most likely among the study’s participants in all six countries to hold false beliefs about global warming.

People who watch Fox News at least five times a week, the survey found, were far more likely than the general public to believe a host of false climate narratives, including that renewable energy sources are unreliable and more expensive at generating electricity than fossil fuels and that the world’s science community is still debating the cause of global warming.

These “stark” findings, the report’s authors said, show that climate misinformation remains a rampant problem around the world and continues to be disproportionately spread by right-wing media. If more isn’t done to address the issue, they said, those false narratives will continue to hinder constructive debate, including at the United Nations’ COP27 global climate summit.

said, those false narratives will continue to hinder constructive debate, including at the United Nations’ COP27 global climate summit.

Americans, especially those who regularly watch Fox News, are the most likely among the study’s participants in all six countries to hold false beliefs about global warming.

“The misconception around climate change is too widespread and significant to ignore,” Erika Seiber, a press officer with environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth and a spokesperson for the coalition that produced the report, said in an interview. “One quarter of Americans think that climate change is a hoax, a consistent and false talking point from Trump and the GOP. We can’t do much to address the climate crisis with this level of discrepancy over reality.”

Harriet Kingaby, co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network, an organization trying to ensure ethics in advertising and one of the groups behind the report, said at the COP27 press conference that the problem extends far beyond the U.S.

“Climate disinformation is a global problem, and it is a huge problem for those of us who are supportive of, and working toward the kind of climate action that we need extremely rapidly now,” she said. “We have created an open letter with a series of asks that we think can play a huge role in solving this problem.”

The letter was submitted to the COP27 presidency, country delegations, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the CEOs of major tech platforms.

“We are on track for 2.8 degrees Celsius of global warming,” the letter said. “While emissions continue to rise, humanity faces climate catastrophe, yet vested economic and political interests continue to organize and finance climate misinformation and disinformation to hold back action.”

Addressing the issue in the final COP27 documents with language that acknowledges the threat of climate mis- and disinformation could create a positive cascade effect that would “incentivize tech platforms to embed this within their policy definitions,” Kingaby said.

RELATEDOpinion: The Davos Elite’s Climate Spin

Among the report’s most troubling findings was that a significant portion of the population across all six countries still believes that climate change isn’t being caused by humans, including nearly half of the 2,396 American participants. Of those survey respondents, false climate beliefs were even more prevalent among those who regularly watch Fox News.

Specifically, 59 percent of Fox News consumers believe that a significant number of scientists disagree on the cause of climate change, compared to just 35 percent of the broader U.S. sample. Additionally, 56 percent of Fox viewers think renewable energy is more expensive than energy from fossil fuels, compared to 34 percent of the bigger sample. And 60 percent of respondents who watch Fox say that renewables are unreliable energy sources, compared to 32 percent of the American sample as a whole.

Regular Fox viewers were also far more likely to believe that natural gas is needed to reduce climate-warming emissions, with 57 percent of those respondents agreeing with that premise, compared to 38 percent of overall U.S. respondents.

Those beliefs contradict what the vast majority of climate scientists have said in recent reports, including the latest major assessment from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A staggering 99.9 percent of peer-reviewed studies on global warming conclude that climate change is real and that humans are causing it by burning fossil fuels and clearing land for agriculture.

Additionally, improvements in long-life batteries have made renewable energy sources just as reliable as fossil fuel power plants, if not more reliable in some instances, many experts say. And solar is now the cheapest form of energy in history, according to the nonpartisan International Energy Agency, which has also said that all new fossil fuel development, including natural gas production, must immediately halt to achieve global climate goals.


We can’t do much to address the climate crisis with this level of discrepancy over reality,” said Seiber.

The findings of last week’s survey add to a growing body of evidence that suggests that the prevalence of climate falsehoods perpetuated by Fox News and other conservative media outlets have serious impacts on public opinion when it comes to climate change.

At the COP press conference, Jennie King, head of civic action and education with the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said that a recent surge in climate disinformation is likely linked with dramatic world events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

King, who was at COP27 to monitor climate information, said those events resulted in “major shifts in the information landscape … when it comes to trying to support climate action, by shifting the dynamics across social media platforms, both mainstream and fringe, and also mainstream media.”

The pandemic and the Russian aggression “turbocharged the disinformation ecosystem” and acted as a crucible for a number of conspiracies, movements and grievance politics movements to converge under one umbrella,” she said. “During that time, we saw the growth of a number of new conspiracies surrounding climate change, linking grievances or outrage around the public health response to the pandemic with a push back on environmentalism.”

That included conspiracies like a “climate lockdown, which claimed that the pandemic was manufactured as a pretext to implement a more insidious green agenda going forward,” she said. The Russian invasion also fueled a number of actors who “were already very vested in maintaining the status quo; maintaining reliance on fossil fuels, and preventing decarbonisation, or net zero transitions.”

“On that basis,” she said, “we have seen argumentation which suggests the idea that Putin was emboldened to invade Ukraine because of the West’s fixation on net zero agendas, and that it is our obsession with the Paris Agreement that is allowing conflicts like this to occur.”

The disruptions to supply chains and increased fuel and food prices also fed the fires of disinformation, she added.


“We were seeing delay-ism, or subtler forms of disinformation, but now we are seeing that out and out denial is making an absolute comeback,” King said.

“There has been an incredible effort by disinformation actors to frame that situation as the fault of green levies and other net zero policies,” she said. Those actors have leveraged those concerns to try and make people believe that price increases and other economic impacts are caused by policies aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, she added.

The next step in the climate disinformation campaigns is to try and get people to believe “that the climate agenda is dead, that people can’t afford it and that it’s going to bankrupt hardworking people,” she said. The subsequent message from the disinformation campaigns is to tell people that it is essential right now to maintain reliance on polluting technologies like oil and gas, she added.

“I think for our coalition, this has been extremely concerning, and in some way surprising, because up until this year, denialism still existed, but it had been pushed more to the periphery,” she said. “We were seeing delay-ism, or subtler forms of disinformation, but now we are seeing that out and out denial is making an absolute comeback.”

Using the uncertainty of the times, the voices of denial have become emboldened to frame their agenda in a broader anti-elitist context, particularly targeting institutions like the World Economic Forum, which aren’t particularly liked or trusted to begin with.

“The final thing I wanted to mention is a renewed energy and investment in fossil fuel greenwashing, being pushed very heavily by the fossil fuel lobby, which we’ve seen here at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh,” she said, noting the record number of fossil fuel lobbyists and other representatives at the climate conference. “In particular, the African gas lobby has been very vocal in making the suggestion that net zero transitions are a form of neocolonialism or Western imperialism, and that maintaining the use of fossil fuels is essential to human rights.”

There are the recent reports out by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, as well as from the University of Exeter, showing that fossil fuel companies are spending millions of dollars to run as many as 850 ads a day and getting tens of millions of views “that aim to confuse the public about what are viable climate solutions going forward,” she said.

Above all, they are trying to create the impression “that companies whose investment portfolios are almost entirely grounded in oil and gas, are somehow climate champions, and are going to lead the charge on a netzero transition.”

Kristoffer Tigue is a New York City-based reporter for Inside Climate News.

Bob Berwyn an Austria-based reporter for Inside Climate News.

After COP27, all signs point to world blowing past 1.5 degrees global warming limit. Here’s what we can still do about it

(© sveta - stock.adobe.com)

NOVEMBER 22, 2022
by The Conversation

By Peter Schlosser, Arizona State University

The world could still, theoretically, meet its goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level many scientists consider a dangerous threshold. Realistically, that’s unlikely to happen.

Part of the problem was evident at COP27, the United Nations climate conference in Egypt.

While nations’ climate negotiators were successfully fighting to “keep 1.5 alive” as the global goal in the official agreement, reached Nov. 20, 2022, some of their countries were negotiating new fossil fuel deals, driven in part by the global energy crisis. Any expansion of fossil fuels – the primary driver of climate change – makes keeping warming under 1.5 C (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times much harder.

Attempts at the climate talks to get all countries to agree to phase out coal, oil, natural gas and all fossil fuel subsidies failed. And countries have done little to strengthen their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the past year.




There have been positive moves, including advances in technology, falling prices for renewable energy and countries committing to cut their methane emissions.


But all signs now point toward a scenario in which the world will overshoot the 1.5 C limit, likely by a large amount. The World Meteorological Organization estimates global temperatures have a 50-50 chance of reaching 1.5C of warming, at least temporarily, in the next five years.

That doesn’t mean humanity can just give up.

Why 1.5 degrees?

During the last quarter of the 20th century, climate change due to human activities became an issue of survival for the future of life on the planet. Since at least the 1980s, scientific evidence for global warming has been increasingly firm , and scientists have established limits of global warming that cannot be exceeded to avoid moving from a global climate crisis to a planetary-scale climate catastrophe.

There is consensus among climate scientists, myself included, that 1.5 C of global warming is a threshold beyond which humankind would dangerously interfere with the climate system.

We know from the reconstruction of historical climate records that, over the past 12,000 years, life was able to thrive on Earth at a global annual average temperature of around 14 C (57 F). As one would expect from the behavior of a complex system, the temperatures varied, but they never warmed by more than about 1.5 C during this relatively stable climate regime.

Today, with the world 1.2 C warmer than pre-industrial times, people are already experiencing the effects of climate change in more locations, more forms and at higher frequencies and amplitudes.

Climate model projections clearly show that warming beyond 1.5 C will dramatically increase the risk of extreme weather events, more frequent wildfires with higher intensity, sea level rise, and changes in flood and drought patterns with implications for food systems collapse, among other adverse impacts. And there can be abrupt transitions, the impacts of which will result in major challenges on local to global scales.

Steep reductions and negative emissions

Meeting the 1.5 goal at this point will require steep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, but that alone isn’t enough. It will also require “negative emissions” to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide that human activities have already put into the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for decades to centuries, so just stopping emissions doesn’t stop its warming effect. Technology exists that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock it away. It’s still only operating at a very small scale, but corporate agreements like Microsoft’s 10-year commitment to pay for carbon removed could help scale it up.

A report in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined that meeting the 1.5 C goal would require cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 50% globally by 2030 – plus significant negative emissions from both technology and natural sources by 2050 up to about half of present-day emissions.

A direct air capture project in Iceland stores captured carbon dioxide underground in basalt formations, where chemical reactions mineralize it. (Credit: Climeworks)Can we still hold warming to 1.5 C?

Since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015, countries have made some progress in their pledges to reduce emissions, but at a pace that is way too slow to keep warming below 1.5 C. Carbon dioxide emissions are still rising, as are carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

A recent report by the United Nations Environment Program highlights the shortfalls. The world is on track to produce 58 gigatons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 – more than twice where it should be for the path to 1.5 C. The result would be an average global temperature increase of 2.7 C (4.9 F) in this century, nearly double the 1.5 C target.

Given the gap between countries’ actual commitments and the emissions cuts required to keep temperatures to 1.5 C, it appears practically impossible to stay within the 1.5 C goal.

Global emissions aren’t close to plateauing, and with the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, it is very likely that the world will reach the 1.5 C warming level within the next five to 10 years.

With current policies and pledges, the world will far exceed the 1.5 C goal. (Credit: Climate Action Tracker)

How large the overshoot will be and for how long it will exist critically hinges on accelerating emissions cuts and scaling up negative emissions solutions, including carbon capture technology.

At this point, nothing short of an extraordinary and unprecedented effort to cut emissions will save the 1.5 C goal. We know what can be done – the question is whether people are ready for a radical and immediate change of the actions that lead to climate change, primarily a transformation away from a fossil fuel-based energy system.

Peter Schlosser is the Vice President and Vice Provost of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.