Brazil scientists test frozen jaguar semen to help species
 

DIANE JEANTET and TATIANA POLLASTRI
Fri, October 29, 2021,

JUNDIAI, Brazil (AP) — Brazilian and American scientists on Thursday tranquilized a wild-born female jaguar now living in a protected area in Sao Paulo state. They're hoping the 110-pound feline named Bianca could make history for the second time in two years.

In 2019, Bianca gave birth to the first jaguar cub ever born from artificial insemination. Now, the 8-year-old could once again advance the cause of preserving her species. That is, if all goes according to plan and she becomes pregnant using semen that is frozen.

Scientists say frozen semen would be easy to transport, and so help ensure genetic diversity of jaguars whose populations are increasingly fragmented by habitat destruction, according to Lindsey Vansandt, a theriogenologist — a specialist in veterinary reproductive medicine — at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden.

“The population sort of becomes smaller and smaller, and then you get inbreeding which has lots of bad consequences,” Vansandt told The Associated Press moments after performing the procedure on an unconscious Bianca atop a surgery table.

“If we can take sperm from one male and inseminate a female from another location, we can keep their gene flow moving and keep the population more healthy," Vansandt said.

Wildlife experts from the Cincinnati Zoo, the Federal University of Mato Grosso and the environmental organization Mata Ciliar have for years developed their insemination program for the Western Hemisphere's largest feline. They work with individuals rescued from habitat loss in the Amazon rainforest, Cerrado savanna and Pantanal wetlands, all of which have suffered a surge of deforestation and fires in recent years.

Some jaguars badly injured by blazes in the Pantanal last year required transport to specialized facilities for care. Others either died or were displaced.

“Look what happened in the Pantanal, the Cerrado,” said Cristina Adania, a veterinarian and coordinator of Mata Ciliar. "They are being killed before we even get to treat them, so something has to be done.”

This year, a study published by wild cat conservation group Panthera, the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul and partners estimated that almost 1,500 jaguars were killed or displaced by fire and habitat loss in Brazil's Amazon from 2016 to 2019.

Displaced jaguars are unlikely to thrive in new environments, which may be the range of another territorial individual, according to Panthera. Plus, they are unfamiliar with where best to find prey, which can leave them hunting livestock, putting them in ranchers' crosshairs.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List classifies jaguars as “near threatened” — a grade above vulnerable — though their population is on the decline and their habitat “severely fragmented.”

Bianca was still a cub in the Amazon when she was rescued and delivered to Mata Ciliar. Like some of the wild-born cats living at the Brazilian Center for the Conservation of Neotropical Felines in Jundiai, she can't be reintroduced to the wild, Adania said. Another female jaguar at the facility, named Tabatinga, was also artificially inseminated on Thursday.

Unfrozen jaguar semen only stays good for a few hours, Vansandt said. Frozen semen can be used for years, but typically has a lower success rate for felines than with humans.

If Bianca's case is successful, it would remove the strain and stress of transporting carnivores that weigh as much as 300 pounds to mate in person. Even when a jaguar is transported, there's no guarantee it will get along with its would-be mate, said Adania.

“This is good for genetic diversity, but also towards that larger goal of increasing the number of jaguars,” said Vansandt. "The dream is to increase the numbers to a stable population.”

___ Jeantet reported from Rio de Janeiro. AP reporter David Biller contributed from Rio de Janeiro.

Veterinarians intubate a jaguar in preparation for an artificial insemination procedure at the Mata Ciliar Association conservation center, in Jundiai, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. According to the environmental organization, the fertility program intends to develop a reproduction system to be tested on captive jaguars and later bring it to wild felines whose habitats are increasingly under threat from fires and deforestation. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Brazil Jaguar BreedingA jaguar that was rescued from illegal captivity walks on a tree trunk at the Mata Ciliar Association conservation center, in Jundiai, Brazil, Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021. The association treats animals that have been victims of fires, environmental disasters or traffickers, and rehabilitates the wild animals in order to release them to their natural habitat. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)More

G-20 will back a global minimum corporate tax, a win for Biden, U.S. officials 
Chris Megerian
Fri, October 29, 2021,

President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden take part in a ceremony with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi in Rome on Friday, the eve of the start of the G-20 summit. (Gregorio Borgia / Associated Press)

World leaders are expected on Saturday to endorse plans for a global minimum tax on corporations during the first day of the G-20 summit, senior Biden administration officials said.

The policy is intended to prevent businesses from skipping from country to country in search of lower tax rates, an approach that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called a "race to the bottom."

"It’s a game changer for American workers, taxpayers and businesses," said one of the senior officials, who requested anonymity to speak before the announcement. "In our judgment, this is more than just a tax deal. It's a reshaping of the rules of the global economy."

The deal will buoy President Biden, who has been pushing for such an agreement since taking office. It's unclear if he'll be able to push the policy through a sharply divided Congress. Republicans are opposed to any tax increases, and some moderate Democrats are wary of such measures.

Biden will have a busy first day at the summit, which brings together world leaders to discuss economic and other issues. The president will meet with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, with whom Biden held a pre-summit sidebar Friday, to discuss how to proceed with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Although President Obama reached an international deal to prevent Tehran from building a nuclear bomb, President Trump withdrew from the pact.

Biden campaigned on reentering the agreement, and talks are scheduled to begin in November in Vienna.

Dutch, Canadian leaders hope for climate progress at G-20


Netherlands CanadaCanada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, and Dutch caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte, greet prior to a meeting in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. 

(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)More

Fri, October 29, 2021, 10:30 AM·2 min read

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Canada and the Netherlands are counting on the weekend Group of 20 summit in Rome to make significant progress toward clinching an acceptable deal at the United Nations climate meeting starting immediately afterward.

After a bilateral meeting Friday with his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte in The Hague, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that the timing of the G-20 summit in Rome could help the climate talks known as COP26 that start in Glasgow on Sunday.

“The fact that the G-20 is immediately before COP26 allows some of the major countries around the world responsible for significant emissions to actually meet and work in advance of hopefully what will be a very successful COP,” meeting, Trudeau said.

At the moment, plans from nations around the world submitted ahead of COP26 would still fall far short of the headline goal set in Paris six years ago: to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since that era.

Rutte estimated that plans combined so far ahead of the climate summit that runs Oct. 31-Nov. 12 in Glasgow would still mean a rise of 2.7 C.

“So there is still a gap. And there is still a lot we need to do,” he said.

Despite the daunting challenge, Rutte said he had two reasons for optimism: "One is that there’s no way not to do this because then we collectively have such a big problem and everybody understands,” he said.

“Secondly, because it is such a big opportunity — the huge opportunity we see in this country for creating so many new jobs and new economic prosperity at the same time. Building a clean country,” Rutte said.

US Democratic governors to participate in U.N. climate talks




KATHLEEN RONAYNE
Fri, October 29, 2021

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — U.S. governors want a seat at the table as international leaders prepare to gather in Scotland at a critical moment for global efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions and slow the planet's temperature rise.

At least a half dozen state governors — all Democrats — plan to attend parts of the two-week United Nations' climate change conference in Glasgow, known as COP26. Though states aren't official parties to talks, governors hold significant sway over the United States' approach to tackling climate change by setting targets for reducing carbon emissions and transitioning to renewable energy.

Take California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged to halt the sale of new gas-powered cars in the state by 2035, a move aimed at accelerating the nation's transition to electric vehicles. Or Washington, where Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee backed legislation requiring the state's electricity be carbon-neutral by 2030.

“Governors can do a lot," said Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institute. “When they're talking to people on the sidelines and sharing policies and ideas and helping to demonstrate the commitment of the U.S. as a whole, there's quite a bit that they can do."

Governors slated to attend are Inslee, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Hawaii Gov. David Ige, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. All six governors are part of the U.S. Climate Alliance, an effort started by Inslee and former Govs. Jerry Brown of California and Andrew Cuomo of New York in 2017 as the Trump administration backed away from U.S. climate goals. The alliance plans to announce “ambitious" new climate commitments in Scotland, though it hasn't shared specifics.

Newsom announced Friday he would participate virtually due to unspecified family obligations. California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis will instead lead the state's delegation, which includes more than a dozen lawmakers and top administration officials.

“All eyes will be on Glasgow, with the world asking the question: ‘What are we doing to do about (climate change)?’” Kounalakis said. “And California has answers.”

Other states sending officials include Maryland and Massachusetts, which have Republican governors.

Few U.S. states are as influential as California, which is home to nearly 40 million people and would be the world's fifth-largest economy if it were its own nation. It's led the nation in vehicle emissions standards, was the first state to launch a carbon pollution credit program known as cap-and-trade and has set some of the nation's most ambitious goals on reducing emissions.

It's the nation's seventh-largest oil producing state, though Newsom officials say the state has six times as many jobs in clean energy as it does in the oil industry. Newsom has made strides to lower demand and eventually end production, but some environmental groups say he's got to act significantly faster.

Several other state leaders heading to Glasgow also come from places that rely on oil and gas production as a key piece of the economy. New Mexico's Lujan Grisham travels to the climate conference as she juggles competing pressures from environmental activists and the fossil fuel industry while running for reelection in 2022.

New Mexico is one of the top oil states. Amid surging oil output, Lujan Grisham has pushed to rein in leaks and emissions of excess natural gas by the industry and signed legislation that mandates and incentivizes New Mexico’s own transition to zero-emissions electricity by 2045.

“We — as a state, as a nation, as a planet — must go further by pursuing bold, equitable and just climate solutions. I am looking forward to this significant opportunity for collaboration and action at the global level,” Lujan Grisham said in a recent statement.

In March, Lujan Grisham wrote President Joe Biden, asking to exempt New Mexico from an executive order halting gas and oil production on federal land. Oil field royalties, taxes and lease sales account for more than one-quarter of the state's general fund budget, underwriting spending on public schools, roads and public safety.

Edwards of Louisiana, a state that's suffered significant flooding and damage from hurricanes, plans to promote his state as a hub for clean energy projects. He's set a goal to cut the state's net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, though his administration is still putting together a strategy document for reaching that goal.

“No state in our nation is more affected by climate change than Louisiana, but it’s also true that no state is better positioned to be part of the solution to the problems facing our world," he said recently.

The governors will participate on panels through the U.S. Climate Alliance alongside members of the Biden administration. They'll also participate alongside 65 subnational governments in announcing “dozens" of new commitments on Nov. 7. The panel will also focus on politics that can “turbocharge greenhouse gas emissions reductions," according to an alliance press release.

“Governors and mayors around the world do not believe we should rely just on our federal governments," Inslee, of Washington, said during a Thursday news conference.

It's critical for U.S. and world leaders to move from planning to implementation of aggressive climate strategies, said Katelyn Sutter, senior manager for U.S. climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.

“We need policy to back up pledges to reduce emissions," she said. “That’s where a state like California, and now Washington and others that have momentum moving forward, can really be impactful."

As for California, Newsom administration officials said they hope to demonstrate that tackling the climate crisis can be good for the economy and that pollution targets should be made with historically underserved communities in mind. The administration recently proposed banning new oil wells within 3,200 feet (975 meters) of homes, schools and hospitals, and Newsom has directed the state's air regulator to develop a plan to end oil production by 2045.

“We can help push national governments to increase their ambition," said Lauren Sanchez, Newsom’s senior adviser for climate.

___

This story has been corrected to say the Republican-led states sending representatives are Maryland and Massachusetts, not Maryland and North Carolina.

___

Associated Press writers Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, N.M., Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, La., and John O'Connor in Springfield, Ill., contributed reporting.

COPOUT26

Scientists express doubt that Glasgow climate change conference will be successful

David Knowles

·Senior Editor

Thu, October 28, 2021

If there is a consensus about the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, it is that it represents, in the words of U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, the “last best hope” for the world to keep the worst consequences of global warming at bay.

But for many of the scientists whose work has informed the grim reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in recent years, the chances that an agreement will be reached to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels seem dim, at best. With the currently insufficient actions from developed countries to limit greenhouse gas emissions and fund developing nations in that pursuit, temperatures are forecast to smash through that threshold. And a growing body of research, some conducted by scientists who spoke with Yahoo News’ “The Climate Crisis Podcast,” shows that a cascade of dire consequences is all but certain to follow.

“Well, it is a critical time. You know, this is COP26, which means there have been 25 of these things already,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist, referring to the conference’s acronym. “We’re way behind the curve in acting on what we have known for many, many years to be the reality, which is that humans are changing the climate, that those changes are going to be bad, that they’re going to accelerate as we move forward if we don’t get emissions under control, and that we're running out of time to prevent the worst-case scenarios from occurring.”

A co-founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, Calif., Gleick has spent decades warning that rising temperatures have begun to wreak havoc with the water cycle, including more severe drought, deadly flash flooding and crop instability.

People in Milan, Italy, demonstrate for climate justice in advance of COP26 on Oct. 2. (Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)

“A lot of us are looking forward to COP26 as an opportunity to make some real progress, but of course we’re worried that COP26 will turn out to be like COP25 and COP24 and COP23 beforehand, before us, and not really produce the kinds of changes that we know are necessary,” Gleick said, referring to previous U.N. climate change conferences that have inspired good intentions but not substantial enough actions from the wealthier countries that produce most of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

As far as the scientific community is concerned, there’s little mystery about what’s responsible for climate change. A review published this week in the journal Environmental Research Letters looked at 88,128 scientific papers on climate change published between 2012 and 2020 and concluded that 99.9 percent of the studies agreed that human beings were responsible for the current spike in global temperatures.

For UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, the only real suspense heading into Glasgow concerns whether world leaders will forge a consensus on how to act on what, scientifically speaking, is an open-and-shut case.

The Windy Fire blazes through Sequoia National Forest near California Hot Springs, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)

“We know how to solve this problem. We know the kinds of specific things we need to be doing even to fix the problem,” Swain told “The Climate Crisis Podcast.” “But that will involve a significant amount of social and economic, you know, inertia, that needs to shift pretty quickly. And that’s hard to do.”

A lead author of one of the IPCC reports that have synthesized the research on climate change and helped guide policymakers on how to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius, Stanford University climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh has not been encouraged by the actions taken since COP21 in 2015, when many nations signed on to the Paris Agreement.

“The United Nations actually just issued a report in advance of the Glasgow negotiations that are coming up, basically tracking where the countries of the world are relative to the the Paris Agreement goals, and that puts the world on a trajectory that’s a lot above two and a half degrees [Celsius] of warming, and approaching three,” Diffenbaugh said.

This year, a string of deadly extreme weather events in the U.S. showed many Americans that the threat from climate change is real. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, weather-related disasters in 2021 have already totaled over $100 billion in damages and killed 538 people in the U.S.

President Biden at the White House on Tuesday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Yet a Yahoo News poll released last week finds that while 50 percent of Americans now view climate change as an “emergency,” there is a partisan divide on the question. Though 78 percent of Democrats see climate change as “an existential threat that requires major legislation,” just 24 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of independents do.

At the same time, armed with more advanced computer modeling and thousands of new studies to back them up, climate scientists have grown increasingly confident linking those events to climate change.

Researchers like Benjamin Strauss, president and CEO of Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes climate science, have long warned exactly what rising temperatures will mean for life on Earth. In 2012, Strauss testified before Congress on the number of homes in the U.S. that would be put at risk due to rising seas. He knows firsthand that domestic political gridlock on climate change could weigh heavily on Glasgow.

“I know that President Biden and the administration really want — as represented by John Kerry in the talks — to be ambitious and to encourage other nations of the world to be ambitious,” Strauss said. “And it’s going to be really hard to do if in the United States we don’t have some form of legislation or policy either in place or, you know, imminent, that’s going to be a big step in our own effort.”

While Congress continues to debate the legislation that will determine how aggressively the U.S. will go about the task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has already killed the most powerful weapon in the president’s plan to do so: the Clean Electricity Performance Program. 

People wade through a flooded street in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in July. (Munir Uz Zaman/AFP via Getty Images)

The failure to enact an agenda that would be seen as restoring American climate leadership on the world stage comes as a stark reminder that any promises of future U.S. emissions cuts will require action in Congress. Yet the inward focus of many Republicans and some moderate Democrats like Manchin worries climate experts. Klaus Jacob, a research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute who served for more than a decade on the New York City Panel of Climate Change, stresses that for new Glasgow commitments to have real impact, they’ll need to look beyond America’s borders.

“We’ve got to have a global plan that works both on the mitigation side, namely to reduce greenhouse gases as quickly as possible and get that financed internationally,” Jacob said, “and not just the main emitters — nations like the U.S., China, Brazil or Europe, and maybe India. But we also have to address it on the adaptation side, and just think about nations like Bangladesh or Vietnam, that have tens and hundreds of millions of people that by the end of the century will have to be moved.”

For many climate scientists, the mood ahead of Glasgow can best be described as one of grim realism. Despite that, many of those who spoke to Yahoo News also expressed a measure of optimism that human beings can still significantly slow climate change.

“We’re still where we were five or 10 years ago. You know, there’s a lot of pledges, there’s a lot of commitments that even then aren’t enough to solve the problem, but we aren’t really on track to meet a lot of those pledges that we’d previously made,” Swain said. “That's kind of the world that we live in right now, which is this tension between the fact that this is at a fundamental level a solvable problem, but we’ve so far not taken it seriously enough. I liken it more to being on a train, not a runaway train where the brakes don't work, but a train where the brakes are perfectly functional, but the conductor is just actively choosing not to apply them. So if we choose to apply the brakes, the train will slow down and come to a halt. But so far, we’re still just thinking about tapping the brakes lightly. It's not enough.”

Ben Adler contributed reporting to this story.

What Big Oil knew about climate change, 

in its own words


Benjamin Franta, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Stanford University
Fri, October 29, 2021

The oil industry was aware of the risks of climate change decades ago. 

Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images

Four years ago, I traveled around America, visiting historical archives. I was looking for documents that might reveal the hidden history of climate change – and in particular, when the major coal, oil and gas companies became aware of the problem, and what they knew about it.

I pored over boxes of papers, thousands of pages. I began to recognize typewriter fonts from the 1960s and ‘70s and marveled at the legibility of past penmanship, and got used to squinting when it wasn’t so clear.

What those papers revealed is now changing our understanding of how climate change became a crisis. The industry’s own words, as my research found, show companies knew about the risk long before most of the rest of the world.

On Oct. 28, 2021, a Congressional subcommittee questioned executives from Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute about industry efforts to downplay the role of fossil fuels in climate change. Exxon CEO Darren Woods told lawmakers that his company’s public statements “are and have always been truthful” and that the company “does not spread disinformation regarding climate change.”

Here’s what corporate documents from the past six decades show.

Surprising discoveries

At an old gunpowder factory in Delaware – now a museum and archive – I found a transcript of a petroleum conference from 1959 called the “Energy and Man” symposium, held at Columbia University in New York. As I flipped through, I saw a speech from a famous scientist, Edward Teller (who helped invent the hydrogen bomb), warning the industry executives and others assembled of global warming.

“Whenever you burn conventional fuel,” Teller explained, “you create carbon dioxide. … Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect.” If the world kept using fossil fuels, the ice caps would begin to melt, raising sea levels. Eventually, “all the coastal cities would be covered,” he warned.

1959 was before the moon landing, before the Beatles’ first single, before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, before the first modern aluminum can was ever made. It was decades before I was born. What else was out there?

In Wyoming, I found another speech at the university archives in Laramie – this one from 1965, and from an oil executive himself. That year, at the annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, the main organization for the U.S. oil industry, the group’s president, Frank Ikard, mentioning a report called “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment” that had been published just a few days before by President Lyndon Johnson’s team of scientific advisers.

“The substance of the report,” Ikard told the industry audience, “is that there is still time to save the world’s peoples from the catastrophic consequences of pollution, but time is running out.” He continued that “One of the most important predictions of the report is that carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by the year 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate.”

Ikard noted that the report had found that a “nonpolluting means of powering automobiles, buses, and trucks is likely to become a national necessity.”

Transportation is now the leading source of carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., followed by electricity. David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

As I reviewed my findings back in California, I realized that before San Francisco’s Summer of Love, before Woodstock, the peak of the '60s counterculture and all that stuff that seemed ancient history to me, the heads of the oil industry had been privately informed by their own leaders that their products would eventually alter the climate of the entire planet, with dangerous consequences.

Secret research revealed the risks ahead

While I traveled the country, other researchers were hard at work too. And the documents they found were in some ways even more shocking.

By the late 1970s, the American Petroleum Institute had formed a secret committee called the “CO2 and Climate Task Force,” which included representatives of many of the major oil companies, to privately monitor and discuss the latest developments in climate science.

In 1980, the task force invited a scientist from Stanford University, John Laurmann, to brief them on the state of climate science. Today, we have a copy of Laurmann’s presentation, which warned that if fossil fuels continued to be used, global warming would be “barely noticeable” by 2005, but by the 2060s would have “globally catastrophic effects.” That same year, the American Petroleum Institute called on governments to triple coal production worldwide, insisting there would be no negative consequences despite what it knew internally.

A slide from John Laurmann’s presentation to the American Petroleum Institute’s climate change task force in 1980, warning of globally catastrophic effects from continued fossil fuel use.

Exxon had a secretive research program too. In 1981, one of its managers, Roger Cohen, sent an internal memo observing that the company’s long-term business plans could “produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the earth’s population).”

The next year, Exxon completed a comprehensive, 40-page internal report on climate change, which predicted almost exactly the amount of global warming we’ve seen, as well as sea level rise, drought and more. According to the front page of the report, it was “given wide circulation to Exxon management” but was “not to be distributed externally.”

And Exxon did keep it secret: We know of the report’s existence only because investigative journalists at Inside Climate News uncovered it in 2015.

A figure from Exxon’s internal climate change report from 1982, predicting how much carbon dioxide would build up from fossil fuels and how much global warming that would cause through the 21st century unless action was taken. Exxon’s projection has been remarkably accurate.

Other oil companies knew the effects their products were having on the planet too. In 1986, the Dutch oil company Shell finished an internal report nearly 100 pages long, predicting that global warming from fossil fuels would cause changes that would be “the greatest in recorded history,” including “destructive floods,” abandonment of entire countries and even forced migration around the world. That report was stamped “CONFIDENTIAL” and only brought to light in 2018 by Jelmer Mommers, a Dutch journalist.

In October 2021, I and two French colleagues published another study showing through company documents and interviews how the Paris-based oil major Total was also aware of global warming’s catastrophic potential as early as the 1970s. Despite this awareness, we found that Total then worked with Exxon to spread doubt about climate change.
Big Oil’s PR pivot

These companies had a choice.

Back in 1979, Exxon had privately studied options for avoiding global warming. It found that with immediate action, if the industry moved away from fossil fuels and instead focused on renewable energy, fossil fuel pollution could start to decline in the 1990s and a major climate crisis could be avoided.

But the industry didn’t pursue that path. Instead, colleagues and I recently found that in the late 1980s, Exxon and other oil companies coordinated a global effort to dispute climate science, block fossil fuel controls and keep their products flowing.

We know about it through internal documents and the words of industry insiders, who are now beginning to share what they saw with the public. We also know that in 1989, the fossil fuel industry created something called the Global Climate Coalition – but it wasn’t an environmental group like the name suggests; instead, it worked to sow doubt about climate change and lobbied lawmakers to block clean energy legislation and climate treaties throughout the 1990s.

For example, in 1997, the Global Climate Coalition’s chairman, William O'Keefe, who was also an executive vice president for the American Petroleum Institute, wrote in the Washington Post that “Climate scientists don’t say that burning oil, gas and coal is steadily warming the earth,” contradicting what the industry had known for decades. The fossil fuel industry also funded think tanks and biased studies that helped slow progress to a crawl.

Today, most oil companies shy away from denying climate science outright, but they continue to fight fossil fuel controls and promote themselves as clean energy leaders even though they still put the vast majority of their investments into fossil fuels. As I write this, climate legislation is again being blocked in Congress by a lawmaker with close ties to the fossil fuel industry.

People around the world, meanwhile, are experiencing the effects of global warming: weird weather, shifting seasons, extreme heat waves and even wildfires like they’ve never seen before.

Will the world experience the global catastrophe that the oil companies predicted years before I was born? That depends on what we do now, with our slice of history.

This article was updated Oct. 28, 2021, with quotes from the hearing.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Benjamin Franta, Stanford University.

Read more:

4 key issues to watch as world leaders prepare for the Glasgow climate summit


A court ruling on Shell’s climate impact and votes against Exxon and Chevron add pressure, but it’s the market that will drive oil giants to change


Climate change is relentless: Seemingly small shifts have big consequences

Benjamin Franta has served as a consulting expert for climate change lawsuits in the US and internationally. His work has been supported by the Stanford University Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship, the Climate Social Science Network, and the Center for Climate Integrity.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Ecuador suspends mountain-climbing after deadly avalanche

Glaciers are seen on Ecuador's Chimborazo volcano 

MARTIN BERNETTI AFP/File

Issued on: 30/10/2021 -
Quito (AFP)

Ecuador suspended climbing on five mountains Friday due to bad weather, after an avalanche killed three climbers and left three others missing.

Climbers will not be able to access the snow-capped peaks of Cayambe, Cotopaxi, Illiniza Sur, Antisana and Chimborazo for at least a week, the Environment Ministry said.

An avalanche last Sunday struck a group of 16 mountaineers ascending Chimborazo, a volcano which is the highest peak in the country, leaving three dead and three missing.

The restrictions will remain in force until the weather improves, the ministry added.

Ecuador begins a five-day holiday on Saturday, the longest of the year, during which more than a milion people are ikely to travel, according to estimates.

Oil company CEOs duck and weave in climate change hearing

Ben Adler

·Senior Climate Editor

Thu, October 28, 2021

Congressional Democrats may have hoped that the House Oversight Committee hearing on Thursday with oil industry CEOs about the science of climate change would yield an epic moment that revealed their mendacity, akin to the famous hearings in 1994 when top tobacco executives testified under oath that nicotine is not addictive.

If so, they were probably disappointed. Democratic lawmakers’ irritation with the witnesses was palpable as they struggled to get the executives to either make demonstrably false claims about climate science or to admit to their respective companies' past attempts to mislead the public about the matter — or even their current efforts to obstruct action to mitigate climate change.

Instead, they testified via video that their companies were simply less well-informed in the past, but that they have always followed the science.

The witnesses of a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on the role of fossil fuel companies in climate change. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

“While our views on climate change have developed over time, any suggestion that Chevron is engaged in an effort to spread disinfo and mislead the public on these issues is simply wrong,” said Chevron CEO Michael Wirth in his opening statement.

The tobacco precedent was clearly on the minds of Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., chairman of the Subcommittee on the Environment, both of whom invoked it in their opening remarks.

“Twenty-seven years ago, seven tobacco executives appeared before Congress,” Maloney said. “Rather than admitting the truth about their product, the executives lied. This was a watershed moment in the public’s understanding of Big Tobacco. I hope that today’s hearing represents a turning point for Big Oil. I hope that today the witnesses will finally own up to the industry’s central role in this crisis and become part of the change we need.”

No such turn was taken. None of the witnesses, who included the presidents or CEOs of ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron, Shell and the American Petroleum Institute (API), denied the scientific consensus that burning the products they sell causes global warming. But they also steadfastly refused lawmakers’ entreaties to admit that they were wrong to claim publicly for decades that human-induced climate change wasn’t necessarily occurring, even as their own internal scientists sometimes said otherwise.

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods testifies via video. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

When Maloney asked ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods about advertisements casting doubt on climate science that ran as recently as the early 2000s — decades after internal documents show Exxon was well aware of the greenhouse gas effect — Woods refused to admit wrongdoing. “That was consistent with what the scientific consensus was at the time,” he insisted. “And as time has progressed, we’ve continued to maintain a position that has evolved with science and is today consistent with the science.”

Nor were they willing to participate in Maloney’s and Khanna’s effort to get them to oppose their own industry’s lobbying against government action to facilitate a transition to cleaner energy sources. When Maloney asked for a promise to stop opposing climate action, Shell president Gretchen Watkins claimed her company already supports climate action, even though the groups to which it belongs, including API and the Chamber of Commerce, have lobbied hard against the climate provisions in President Biden’s Build Back Better proposal.

Khanna pleaded with Watkins to ask API CEO Mike Sommers to stop lobbying against a fee on oil and gas producers for leaking methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

“You say you're for a well-crafted methane fee. You know who's advertising against a methane fee? API!” said Khanna. “Can you please, please ask API to stop advertising against the methane fee!”

Watkins, however, demurred. She said her company doesn’t always agree with every stance the trade association takes, something BP U.S. Lower 48 Onshore CEO David Lawler — whose company also tries to position itself as enlightened on environmental matters — emphasized.

David Lawler, CEO of BP's U.S. Lower 48 Onshore business. (Joe Amon/Denver Post via Getty Images)

This frustrating outcome was expected even by the committee chairs who called the witnesses themselves. In his opening statement, Khanna preemptively warned the public that the witnesses would disingenuously claim to support climate science.

“You will say your companies have contributed to academic research on climate science,” Khanna said, nominally to the assembled executives. “That is true, but that is not the issue at hand. Despite your early knowledge of climate science, your companies and the trade associations you fund chose time and again to loudly raise doubts about the science and downplay the severity of the crisis.”

Even some of the Democrats’ usually effective questioners were unable to draw blood. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., got Woods of ExxonMobil to admit that he has spoken to members of Congress about the budget and infrastructure bills currently under consideration, but when she asked whether campaign donations have ever come up in those conversations, he unequivocally said no. She also tried unsuccessfully to get him to admit that increased fossil fuel production increases his compensation.

Ultimately, she pivoted to speaking broadly about the issue at hand. “Some of us have to actually live the future that you all are setting on fire for us,” she told the witnesses. “We do not have the privilege or luxury of lobbyist spin.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In what was probably the most compelling exchange of the day, Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., used candy in Mason jars to illustrate the discrepancy between what Shell, which claims to support renewable energy investment, spends on developing renewables such as wind and solar versus oil and gas. Porter also highlighted that Shell has not lived up to its past promises of renewable energy spending and cleverly used Watkins’s own words from her opening statement — in which she called climate change “one of the defining challenges of our time” and said renewable energy development is a “huge undertaking” for the company — against her.

"Ms. Watkins, does this look like a ‘huge undertaking’ to you?" Porter asked, brandishing an almost empty jar. “To me, this does not look like an adequate response to ‘one of the defining challenges of our time.’ This is greenwashing. Shell is trying to fool people into thinking it’s addressing the climate crisis when it’s actually continuing to put money into fossil fuels.”

In contrast with both the Democratic lawmakers’ grilling and the fossil fuel executives’ modest evasions, the Republican committee members on Thursday treated the witnesses with a deference bordering on idolatry.

“The oil and gas industry provide good-paying jobs and help Americans reliably heat their houses, power their cars and keep the lights on through the storm when the sun doesn’t shine,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing last week. (Greg Nash/Pool via Reuters)

“God bless Chevron for saying they’ll increase production,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, after Wirth, the Chevron CEO, was asked why his company intends to produce more gas and oil when the climate crisis necessitates drawing down dependence on fossil fuels.

"You need an apology because what I witnessed today was just rank intimidation by the chair of this committee,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., referring to Khanna’s attempt to get the witnesses to pledge to stop funding advocacy campaigns opposing action to address climate change. “Trying to get you to pledge on what you're going to spend your money on is a gross violation of the First Amendment,” Donalds claimed, inaccurately.

The only Republican-called witness was a worker who was laid off from a job building the Keystone XL oil pipeline extension, a project President Biden has stopped from moving forward. The witness was used to illustrate the talking point, repeated often, that oil and gas companies provided jobs that outweighed concerns about the warming planet and whether the companies lied to the public.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the ranking Republican on the committee, argued that the whole endeavor was illegitimate. “The purpose of this hearing is clear: to deliver partisan theater for primetime news,” he said.

Whether or not that was truly the hearing’s only purpose, more dramatic theater was certainly something Democrats would have liked to see happen.

Top Dem says Big Oil put Earth on "brink" of catastrophe




Ben Geman
Thu, October 28, 2021

Don't expect a sedate House hearing Thursday on allegations that Big Oil has intentionally sown doubt about climate change.

What they're saying: "For far too long, Big Oil has escaped accountability for its central role in bringing our planet to the brink of a climate catastrophe. That ends today," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, intends to say in her opening remarks shared with Axios.

She'll note it's a landmark event because it's the first time "top fossil fuel executives are testifying together before Congress, under oath, about the industry’s role in causing climate change — and their efforts to cover it up."

The big picture: Maloney's statement provides a glimpse into how senior Democrats leading the investigation into the industry's past on climate will approach the virtual hearing that's slated to be getting underway later this morning.

What we don't know (yet): That's whether the panel's probe has, thus far, unearthed anything that wasn't part of past investigations.

Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times have run stories showing that major companies knew decades ago that their products could cause harmful climate change, but many of them funded campaigns to downplay or deny these risks.

What they're saying: We'll have more on the event soon. But for now, here's a little more to watch.

The executives will emphasize the present day, including their company's support for emissions targets, policies like carbon pricing, and investments in cleaner tech.

"Shell shares the Committee’s concern about the urgent need for society to take action on climate change by accelerating the transition to a lower-carbon energy future," Gretchen Watkins, Shell's top U.S. official, says in written testimony.

Part of Chevron's prepared testimony looks to rebut a premise of the inquiry. "While our views on climate change have developed over time, any suggestion that Chevron is engaged in a coordinated effort to spread disinformation and mislead the public on these complex issues is simply inaccurate," CEO Mike Wirth says in remarks submitted to the panel.

Go deeper: Climate reckoning for oil and gas CEOs

COP26: What do the poorest countries want from climate summit?

Daniel Kraemer - BBC News
Fri, October 29, 2021

People walking through a flooded area

Developing countries are the most vulnerable to the damage caused by climate change, such as floods, droughts and wildfires.

Addressing the needs of less wealthy and smaller countries is vital for the COP26 climate negotiations in Glasgow, where leaders are being asked to agree on new commitments to tackle climate change.

What do developing countries want?

The least developed countries have set out their priorities for negotiations. They want richer and developed countries to:

fulfil a pledge to provide $100bn (roughly equivalent to £73bn at current exchange rates) each year in finance to help reduce emissions and adapt to climate change

agree to net-zero targets on greenhouse gases well before 2050, with specific targets for major emitters such as the US, Australia and countries in the EU

acknowledge the loss and damage they have experienced, such as the effects of rising sea levels or frequent flooding

finalise rules on how countries will implement previous agreements

Which countries are most at risk from the effects of climate change?

Developing countries have historically contributed a very small proportion of the damaging emissions that drive climate change - and currently the richest 1% of the global population account for more than twice the combined emissions of the poorest 50%.

These poorer countries are also more vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather because they are generally more dependent on the natural environment for food and jobs, and have less money to spend on mitigation.

Over the last 50 years, more than two out of three deaths caused by extreme weather — including droughts, wildfire and floods — occurred in the 47 least developed countries.

What the COP26 climate summit could mean for us all

Countries such as Bangladesh have been on the front line of the effects of global warming
What are the richer countries doing to address the situation?

In 2009, richer countries committed to finding $100bn a year by 2020 from public and private sources, to address the needs of developing countries.

The money is to help pay for measures to reduce dangerous emissions and protect from the effects of extreme weather, such as better flood defence systems and investment in renewable energy sources

However, total commitments had only reached $80bn by 2019, and the $100bn target is now unlikely to be met before 2023.

Climate finance chart

Securing an agreement on how to meet the commitments - and potentially go further - is crucial if the world is going to achieve its aim to keep global temperature rises below 1.5C.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put reaching $100bn as one of his four priorities for the negotiations in Glasgow.

He said that richer nations had "reaped the benefits of untrammelled pollution for generations, often at the expense of developing countries", and that they have a "duty" to support developing nations with technology, expertise and money.
What are the obstacles for smaller countries attending the summit?

"We are negotiating for our survival," says Tagaloa Cooper, of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme - an organisation made of up members from Pacific island countries and territories.

Rising sea levels make some of these island nations the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but Ms Cooper says a lack of resources means they don't have the "luxury" of sending large delegations.

"Some of our most vulnerable will struggle to have a voice, and be heard, in these negotiations."

More than 120 world leaders are expected to descend on Glasgow for climate negotiations

Navigating Covid-safe travel to the Glasgow conference has been an obstacle for many delegations, particularly the Pacific islands, where infection rates have remained low during the pandemic.

Only four Pacific island heads of state are reported to be travelling to the summit, with others being represented by smaller teams and ambassadors.

Negotiators staying behind and participating remotely may be disadvantaged by unreliable internet access and time differences. Samoa, for instance, is 13 hours ahead of the UK.
How do developing countries negotiate at climate conferences?

Developing countries usually have less of a voice on the international stage, so it helps to form groups or blocks to amplify their cause.

The Least Developed Countries group is a 46-nation bloc that includes Senegal, Bangladesh and Yemen and represents one billion people.

These countries can create stronger negotiating positions when "priorities and interests are aligned", says Sonam Wangdi, the current chairman, from Bhutan.

They have been working together throughout the year and will meet daily in Glasgow.

Bhutan has committed to keeping at least 60% of the country under forest cover

If there is to be a final agreement, all 197 UN member states that are signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have to sign.

That means the final agreement must be acceptable to both richer and developing countries.

World leaders failed to secure a legally binding agreement in Copenhagen in 2009, partly because a handful of developing countries including Sudan and Tuvalu opposed the final agreement.

Additional research by Esme Stallard

She-zam! Women Show Why Magic Has Been Missing A Trick

By Andrew MARSZAL
10/29/21 AT 10:09 PM

Sitting behind a card table in the secretive Magic Castle, Kayla Drescher widens her eyes and nods exasperatedly when asked about being called a "female magician."

"Yes, I am very, very sick of being asked what it's like to be a woman in this industry," she says.

"'Female magician' feels like I'm being placed in a subcategory of magic... I'm being placed in a metaphorical box, not just an illusion."

But while the label is "exhausting" and "annoying" for Drescher, "we still have such a small percentage of women in this industry -- I think it does still need to be talked about."

Magician Kayla Drescher has been performing since she was seven years old 

Photo: AFP / VALERIE MACON

The stereotype of a magician in a top hat sawing his glamorous, sequinned female assistant in half endures among the wider public, who can rarely name performers beyond Harry Houdini, David Copperfield and David Blaine.

While the outfits have changed, still just seven percent of magicians operating today are female -- roughly the same proportion as the membership of the elite "Academy of Magical Arts" that calls the Magic Castle home.

Drescher is one of two billed female headliners on the night of AFP's visit to the cavernous members-only institution on a hill above Hollywood which is devoted to the art of illusion.

As the reaction of a spellbound audience to Drescher's baffling card tricks and subtle sleights of hand later in the evening will show, women may be a minority in magic but are no less of a draw.

Drescher, 31, has been performing since she was seven, and has long found that audiences -- like the aficionados and rowdy wine-drinking Halloween parties filling the "Close Up Gallery" -- tend not to care about a performer's gender.

The Magic Castle, a cavernous members-only institution devoted to magic, 

is perched on a hill above Hollywood 

Photo: AFP / VALERIE MACON

Instead, it is the "shocking old-fashioned" mindset of magicians that is keeping the number of women in her trade low -- and that is something she feels is important to keep "yelling about."

Drescher has long dealt with male magicians excluding her, assuming she is someone's girlfriend, or even one time requesting she "do magic by a poolside in a bikini" in Las Vegas.

"Magic is very much written by men and for men, so suits, large trouser pockets, big hands, all these different elements, very masculine-style stuff," said Drescher, who hosts the "She-zam" podcast.

"You have to get through, jump over, a lot of hurdles in order to be respected in the community for being a magician and not just a woman. And that's always annoying."

Magician Mari Linn performs with her teenage daughters Hailee, 13, and Jasmyn 16

 Photo: AFP / VALERIE MACON

According to Drescher, if the assistant could just as easily be replaced with an inanimate object like a lamp or a table "she doesn't need to be there... she's a prop."

"The mutilation of women..." she sighs. "It just feels really gross in 2021. But luckily it is shifting."

The last few years and #MeToo have massively boosted demand for female magicians, says Drescher.

Magician Kayla Drescher believes attitudes toward gender are slowly shifting in her industry

 Photo: AFP / VALERIE MACON

But in-built obstacles remain, including the powerful status of reform-resistant, generally male-dominated magic "clubs."

The Academy of Magical Arts itself faced allegations of sexual harassment in a Los Angeles Times investigation last year.

Its general manager resigned, and his replacement Herve Levy told AFP that policies to improve "diversity and inclusion" have been put in place, including training for staff to prevent sexual harassment.

The group now has 36 women on its magicians' roster.

The other female headliner on the evening of AFP's visit is Mari Lynn, who performs with her husband John Shryock.

"We're more of an illusion team. I always call myself a co-star, rather than an assistant," she says.

The couple from Arizona used to perform a trick in which she would turn the tables by locking him up, known as "The Assistant's Revenge."

When she started out, Lynn found some audiences were "much more critical of the females trying to take the male roles."

"But I am really happy to see that things are changing. It's coming around slowly."

Tonight Lynn and Shryock are perfoming "The Great Escape," which sees them joined center-stage by their two daughters.

Sixteen-year-old Jasmine wants to be a solo magician herself one day, while 13-year-old Hailey has her heart setting on becoming a doctor.

"I'm really optimistic going forward that Jasmine will not have as hard of a time as I did," says her mother Lynn.

While Jasmine learnt by performing with her parents "in every magic show since I was born," she noticed early on that most of her friends who were also interested in magic were boys.

"There have been times where someone in the class will be like, 'oh girls can't do magic as good as boys do,'" she says.

"And then they're proven wrong."