Disappearing Data

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute."   -- George Orwell, 1984

A number of posts have discussed presidential documents, official data, and government websites.

 Liza Featherstone at TNR:

To declare that Trump has been right and the scientists have been wrong about climate change is so counterfactual that it requires a massive suppression of available data. Good thing Trump has thought of that. Through a combination of layoffs and weird directives, his administration has dramatically reduced its ability to collect data on industrial pollution that causes climate change, extreme weather caused by climate change, greenhouse gases contributing to climate change—really any facts related to the climate crisis. To take just one example, an effort launched by the Biden administration to collect emissions data was canceled by Trump on his first day in office. The same could be said about his Tylenol claims; lucky for him he has made significant cuts to autism research.

...

Trump’s commitment to falsehood—and to eradicating facts at their roots—is not limited to science and public health. This summer he claimed that his policies were leading America into “another golden age” and that economic growth under his presidency “shatters expectations.” The data said otherwise: Whether you’re talking about job growth, inflation, or just about any other measure, the numbers did not chart in a direction favorable to the president. Here again, Trump is not willing to tolerate the facts: When the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month reported numbers that contradicted his sunny narrative, he fired the head of the agency

...

Trump’s administration has greatly reduced its own ability to collect and disseminate accurate information about crime, removing research staff, as well as impeding the public’s access to crime data, making it increasingly easy for Trump and his administration officials and supporters to freely fearmonger about any vulnerable minority.

 ...

This week, Trump’s Agriculture Department cut its annual food insecurity survey, so Americans won’t know how many people are going hungry as a result of Trump’s cuts to food stamps and other vital assistance programs, not to mention his inflationary tariffs.

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We won’t know how badly our children are faring in school as a result of the massive cuts to K-12 education, since he has gutted the Department of Education’s research offices, including the irreplaceable National Center for Education Statistics.

Saving Public Data

 Ryan Quinn at Inside Higher Ed:

In the first few days of Donald Trump’s second term as president, the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST, for short) disappeared from government websites. It was an interactive map of U.S. Census tracts that are “marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution,” as the pre-Trump federal government put it—something researchers and the public could use to quickly locate and zoom in on specific communities and analyze the problems they face.

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine stored a copy of the webpage, but even there, the map was gone. However, thanks to a team of researchers from multiple universities and other organizations, a new working version was posted online Friday.

“One of the first tools the Trump admin took down was CEJST. It sure would be frustrating to the administration’s anti-EJ, anti-climate goals if someone had … saved it,” Jonathan Gilmour, a data scientist at Harvard University’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote in a post on LinkedIn—a post sharing a link to a copy of the tool. After the post, he told Inside Higher Ed, “I got an incredible outpouring of gratitude, messages from folks in the community who were saying, ‘We use this every day in our work to help better serve our community.’”

Gilmour is part of the Public Environmental Data Project, a coalition working to preserve data resources that have been, or may soon be, taken off-line by an administration that has targeted environmental initiatives and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts from the first day Trump returned to the White House.

Members of the group said other resources have gone off-line since Trump’s return. Those include the Environmental Justice Scorecard, which, according to the Biden administration, had shown federal agencies’ actions “to advance environmental justice” and helped enforce “environmental and civil rights laws.” Gone too is the entire website of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. Also missing are multiple resources hosted by the Department of Energy, including the Energy Justice Mapping Tool for Schools and the Energy Affordability Resource Map.

Hurricanes, Climate Change, and Public Policy

  A number of posts have discussed climate change and hurricanes.

Florida is suffering the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton: Carolyn Gramling at Science News:

The rapid intensifications of both storms were fueled by the Gulf’s extremely warm water. Developing tropical storms can suck up heat from warm seawater, dragging the humid air upward where it condenses, releasing that heat into the storm’s core. As the storm moves forward, it pumps more and more water and heat into the air, and the spiraling winds will move faster and faster. Milton’s particularly explosive rate of growth may also be linked to its relatively compact size, compared with Helene (SN: 9/27/24).

Two separate reports published this week find that those warm Gulf waters were made hundreds of times more likely by human-caused climate change.

An analysis by the international World Weather Attribution, or WWA, initiative, released October 9, analyzed the role of climate change in contributing to Hurricane Helene’s intensification and its torrential rainfall, including as it moved inland across the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures in the path of the storm were, on average, about 1.26 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than they would have been in a world without climate change, the WWA researchers found. Or, to put it another way, the anomalously high temperatures along Helene’s path from development to landfall were made 200 to 500 times more likely due to climate change.

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Climate Central, based in Princeton, N.J., contributed to the WWA’s sea surface temperature analysis for Helene. And, in a separate alert released October 7, Climate Central reported that elevated sea surface temperatures in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico were also behind the “explosive” increase in intensity of Hurricane Milton. The analysis found that the sea surface temperatures in the Gulf were made 400 to 800 times more likely over the past two weeks due to human-caused climate change

Arian Campo-Flores, Deborah Acosta,and  Eric Niiler at WSJ:

The Tampa and St. Petersburg metro area is the most vulnerable to flooding damage in the U.S., according to a 2015 study by risk modeler Karen Clark & Co. Among the reasons the report cited: a shallow continental shelf off the coast and a funnel effect in Tampa Bay that together create the potential for a huge buildup of water that can inundate neighborhoods.

In addition, the metro area has experienced a building boom in recent decades that has sent the population soaring to about 3.2 million. Much of the development is on low-lying ground, with poorly developed drainage systems. A third of the area’s residents live within storm-surge zones.

“It’s the recipe for a huge storm-surge disaster,” said Jeff Masters, a former hurricane scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and now a contributor at Yale Climate Connections, a news service.

In 2010, the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council drew up the Tampa Bay Catastrophic Plan, in which a hypothetical Category 5 storm dubbed “Hurricane Phoenix” hit downtown Tampa with 160 mph winds and a 26-foot storm surge. The study projected that the city would have about 2,000 deaths and nearly $250 billion in damage.

In Tampa Bay, nearly 17,000 commercial properties and apartment buildings spanning 182 million square feet are in areas at high risk of flooding, according to real-estate data company CoStar Group. Billions of dollars of private and public funds have been invested in the redevelopment of downtown Tampa’s waterfront in recent decades. Many of these buildings are in vulnerable low-lying areas, according to data from CoStar.

Newer construction that was built to Florida’s current stringent building codes should stand up well to hurricane-force winds, storm specialists say. Other, more-established neighborhoods with older structures, however, are more susceptible.

Polarization Over Time

Many posts have discussed partisan polarization.

Jenn Hatfield at Pew:

On several issues, the pattern is not just that Americans’ views have changed markedly over the past two decades. It’s that Democrats and Republicans have grown further apart in their views, eroding areas of common ground between the parties. (In this essay, as in most Center publications, “Democrats” and “Republicans” refer to people who identify with or lean toward that party.)

Consider climate change. In 2009, Democrats were already 36 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say climate change is a major threat to the U.S. (61% vs. 25%). But by 2022, that partisan gap had grown to 55 points: 78% of Democrats, but just 23% of Republicans, considered climate change a major threat.

Globally, people in many advanced economies tend to have similar levels of concern to U.S. Democrats. A median of 75% of adults across 19 countries we surveyed in 2022 said climate change is a major threat to their country.

The topic of guns has become increasingly partisan, too. In 2003, 56% of Republicans and 29% of Democrats said it was more important to protect Americans’ right to own guns than to control gun ownership, a 27-point gap. But by 2022, that gap had swelled to 63 points (81% vs. 18%).

These changes coincided with major court rulings, including the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to have a gun.

Abortion is another subject where partisan divisions have grown. In 2007, 63% of Democrats said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That share has grown to 85% today, following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had enshrined the constitutional right to abortion in 1973.

By comparison, there has been relatively little change in opinion among Republicans: About four-in-ten continue to say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. As a result, the partisan gap has soared from 24 points in 2007 to 44 points today.

Home Insurance

Patrick Cooley at WP:

One 2023 estimate, released by the industry group Insurance Information Institute, concluded that 12 percent of homeowners had no insurance in 2022, up from just 5 percent in 2019.

Another more recent study, released by the Consumer Federation of America this past March, reported a lower share of uninsured — 7.4 percent — but that estimate is based on 2021 data from the American Housing Survey, which the Census Bureau conducts every two years. The organization is certain to revise that share upward once 2023 numbers come out, said the CFA’s director of housing, Sharon Cornelissen.

Most uninsured homeowners are those who have paid off their mortgage and are no longer required to have insurance. Among those who own their home outright, the CFA estimates roughly 14 percent are uninsured, with low-income and minority homeowners especially at risk. Among mortgage holders, only 2 percent opt to go without coverage.

Experts say this trend is driven by the escalating threat of climate change — which has forced insurers  to make larger and larger payouts — and skyrocketing housing prices. Both trends are pushing the cost of policies up. On average, home insurance policies rose 11.3 percent in 2023, according to S&P Global.

Compounding the problem, some insurance providers, driven by rising payouts, are pulling out of disaster-prone areas — leaving former policyholders with fewer and more expensive alternatives.

Earth Day and Net Zero

Many posts have discussed energy and the environment.

 On Earth Day, note Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot:

Is it really possible to hit net zero by 2050? Is it really possible to eliminate fossil fuels that fast? The answer is that, for both technical and political reasons, it is not possible (outside of edge “solutions” like crashing industrial civilization or world authoritarian government to ration energy usage).

The insistence on trying to do so anyway is why “be realistic—demand the impossible!” is, astonishingly, not so far from the guiding philosophy of much of today’s mainstream left, including dominant sectors of the Democratic Party.

Consider the technical feasibility of this program. As the polymath, Vaclav Smil, universally acknowledged to be one the world’s premier energy experts, has observed:

[W]e are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years. Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat…

And as he tartly observes re the 2050 deadline:

People toss out these deadlines without any reflection on the scale and the complexity of the problem…What’s the point of setting goals which cannot be achieved? People call it aspirational. I call it delusional.

Smil backs his argument with a mountain of empirical evidence in a new and hugely important paper, “Halfway Between Kyoto and 2050: Zero Carbon Is a Highly Unlikely Outcome.” The paper is a gold mine of relevant and highly compelling data. Smil outlines the realities of the net zero 2050 challenge:

The goal of reaching net zero global anthropogenic CO2 emissions is to be achieved by an energy transition whose speed, scale, and modalities (technical, economic, social, and political) would be historically unprecedented…[T]he accomplishment of such a transformation, no matter how desirable it might be, is highly unlikely during the prescribed period….In terms of final energy uses and specific energy converters, the unfolding transition would have to replace more than 4 terawatts (TW) of electricity-generating capacity now installed in large coal- and gas-fired stations by converting to non-carbon sources; to substitute nearly 1.5 billion combustion (gasoline and diesel) engines in road and off-road vehicles; to convert all agricultural and crop processing machinery (including about 50 million tractors and more than 100 million irrigation pumps) to electric drive or to non-fossil fuels; to find new sources of heat, hot air, and hot water used in a wide variety of industrial processes (from iron smelting and cement and glass making to chemical syntheses and food preservation) that now consume close to 30 percent of all final uses of fossil fuels; to replace more than half a billion natural gas furnaces now heating houses and industrial, institutional, and commercial places with heat pumps or other sources of heat; and to find new ways to power nearly 120,000 merchant fleet vessels (bulk carriers of ores, cement, fertilizers, wood and grain, and container ships, the largest one with capacities of some 24,000 units, now running mostly on heavy fuel oil and diesel fuel) and nearly 25,000 active jetliners that form the foundation of global long-distance transportation (fueled by kerosene).

Insurance, Disaster, and Climate Change

 Jacob Bogage at WP:

In the aftermath of extreme weather events, major insurers are increasingly no longer offering coverage that homeowners in areas vulnerable to those disasters need most.

At least five large U.S. property insurers — including Allstate, American Family, Nationwide, Erie Insurance Group and Berkshire Hathaway — have told regulators that extreme weather patterns caused by climate change have led them to stop writing coverages in some regions, exclude protections from various weather events and raise monthly premiums and deductibles.

Major insurers say they will cut out damage caused by hurricanes, wind and hail from policies underwriting property along coastlines and in wildfire country, according to a voluntary survey conducted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group of state officials who regulate rates and policy forms

 Robert Gebelhoff at WP:

More than 30 insurers have left the state or limited their coverage options in the past three years, and more are expected to leave soon. That’s partly due to an insurance scam in the state that has tied up insurers in frivolous, expensive litigation, which the state government enacted legislation to address. But the much larger problem — that powerful hurricanes are becoming more frequent — looms large.

With fewer coverage options, Florida homeowners are scrambling to find affordable policies. The state-backed Citizens Property Insurance, ostensibly a last-resort option, is now Florida’s largest home insurer, stressing the company’s solvency. Some Floridians have taken the much riskier route of going without insurance, setting up the local economy for serious pain the next time a powerful storm hits.

And it’s not just Florida. In California, worsening wildfires have also driven insurers from the state or forced them to scale back policies. Residents of Washington, Montana and Colorado are watching their coverage options shrink, too.

Exxon Scientists Foresaw Global Warming, but Exxon Did Not Admit it

 G. Supran, S. Rahmstorf, N. Oreskes, "Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections," Science, January 14, 2023. 

The abstract:

Climate projections by the fossil fuel industry have never been assessed. On the basis of company records, we quantitatively evaluated all available global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003. We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations. Their projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models. Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp also correctly rejected the prospect of a coming ice age, accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected, and reasonably estimated the “carbon budget” for holding warming below 2°C. On each of these points, however, the company’s public statements about climate science contradicted its own scientific data.

Religion and Climate Change Opinion

Becka A. Alper at Pew:

Most U.S. adults – including a solid majority of Christians and large numbers of people who identify with other religious traditions – consider the Earth sacred and believe God gave humans a duty to care for it, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

But the survey also finds that highly religious Americans (those who say they pray each day, regularly attend religious services and consider religion very important in their lives) are far less likely than other U.S. adults to express concern about warming temperatures around the globe.

The survey reveals several reasons why religious Americans tend to be less concerned about climate change. First and foremost is politics: The main driver of U.S. public opinion about the climate is political party, not religion. Highly religious Americans are more inclined than others to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and Republicans tend to be much less likely than Democrats to believe that human activity (such as burning fossil fuels) is warming the Earth or to consider climate change a serious problem.

Religious Americans who express little or no concern about climate change also give a variety of other explanations for their views, including that there are much bigger problems in the world today, that God is in control of the climate, and that they do not believe the climate actually is changing. In addition, many religious Americans voice concerns about the potential consequences of environmental regulations, such as a loss of individual freedoms, fewer jobs or higher energy prices.

Finally, climate change does not seem to be a topic discussed much in religious congregations, either from the pulpit or in the pews. And few Americans view efforts to conserve energy and limit carbon emissions as moral issues.

Climate Change and September Heat

Natalie Jones and Jason Samenow at WP:

California and the western United States are immersed in a historically severe September heat wave that is predicted to intensify early this week. The record-breaking temperatures are stressing power grids, fueling fires and endangering health.

The prolonged heat wave began on Aug. 30 and is forecast to peak on Monday and Tuesday before gradually easing during the second half of the week. Dozens of high temperature records have already been broken from California to Montana and dozens more are forecast.

On Saturday, numerous cities in the Intermountain West endured their highest temperatures on record not only for Sept. 3 but for the entire month. Salt Lake City (which hit 103 degrees), Pocatello, Idaho, (102 degrees), and Great Falls, Mont. (102 degrees) were among them.

“This is the worst September heat wave in Western USA history no doubt,” tweeted Maximiliano Herrera, a world weather historian, on Saturday night.

In Death Valley, Calif., the temperature has topped 120 degrees on five straight days, and is predicted to come close to the world record September temperature of 126 degrees Tuesday.

Climate scientists have found human-caused climate change is increasing the intensity, frequency and duration of heat waves such as this one. Nearly 50 million people are under excessive heat warnings or heat advisories through the early part of the week from California to Idaho.

Polarization and the Environment

 Megan Brenan at Gallup:

Party is a greater differentiator than age in Americans' views about the environment, as the gaps on multiple measures between young and older Republicans are smaller than the gaps between every age group of Republicans and their Democratic counterparts. Still, unlike the homogeneity of Democrats when it comes to concerns about the environment, young Republicans worry more and are more likely than older members of their party to believe that the effects of climate change have begun.

Independents are similarly divided by age in their worry about the environment, though their degree of concern is higher than Republicans'. Yet, majorities of independents across age groups believe global warming is already having an effect.

Republicans aged 18 to 34 are significantly more worried than older Republicans about the quality of the environment. https://t.co/hqFLROA4Uk pic.twitter.com/h8YACMiCnM

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) July 25, 2022

 

Climate Change Is Here

 From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

A. The Current State of the Climate

A.1 It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.

A.2 The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.

A.3 Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).

A.4 Improved knowledge of climate processes, paleoclimate evidence and the response of the climate system to increasing radiative forcing gives a best estimate of equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3°C, with a narrower range compared to AR5.

B. Possible Climate Futures

B.1 Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.

B.2 Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.

B.3 Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle, including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events.

B.4 Under scenarios with increasing CO2 emissions, the ocean and land carbon sinks are projected to be less effective at slowing the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.

B.5 Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.

Earth Day 2021: The Chamber of Commerce Flips on Climate Change

Corbin Hiar at E&E News:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's move from promoting climate science misinformation to now helping the Biden administration shape climate policy was a change years in the making.

The trade association's transformation followed an internal campaign from an unlikely coalition of health leaders, top bankers and logistics executives who were tired of taking heat for their membership in the Chamber, according to sources and experts. It's part of a broader effort by the lobbying juggernaut to remain relevant in a deeply polarized Washington.

"They didn't want to fall too far behind or excluded from the climate conversation altogether," said Shaun Goho, the acting director of Harvard's Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, who's written about the Chamber's history of climate obstruction.

With serious efforts to slash emissions now high on the political agenda, the implications of the Chamber's climate reversal are still unclear.

Will the Chamber — which spent nearly $82 million on federal lobbying last year and millions more on congressional races — back aggressive emissions cuts scientists say are necessary to avert the worst impacts of climate change? Or will the association seek to delay and water down the legislative and regulatory proposals under discussion?

The Chamber's newfound support for market-based climate policies is "exactly as genuine and lasting as its membership forces it to be," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told E&E News. "It's going to have to be pushed like a great big rock every inch, and it's going to want to fall back as soon as the members stop pushing or look elsewhere."

The Rhode Island Democrat, one of the trade association's most vocal critics, played a key role in catalyzing the Sisyphean effort to change the Chamber's climate policy, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

Foreign Policy: Experts and the Public

Jacob Poushter and Moira Fagan at Pew:

Foreign policy might not be the primary issue of the 2020 presidential election campaign, but Americans have clear ideas on the various threats facing the United States. Recent Pew Research Center surveys find that Americans are especially concerned about the spread of infectious diseases and are more likely than not to blame China for its role in the current COVID-19 pandemic.

But foreign policy experts have distinctly different perspectives. A September survey of 706 international relations scholars in the U.S. as part of the College of William & Mary’s Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) poll found that their assessment of the current crises facing America and the world are often at odds with those of the U.S. general public.

These experts are less concerned about terrorism, more concerned about climate change and much more positive about China’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, even as they are harshly critical of the U.S. response. However, scholars and the American people do agree that U.S. policy should work to promote human rights in China, even at the expense of economic relations.

Climate Change Hits Home (Literally)

Brian Kennedy at Pew:

More than six-in-ten Americans (63%) say climate change is currently affecting their local community either a great deal or some, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 29-May 5, 2020 – similar to the share who said this in surveys from 2019 and 2018.

As is the case on many climate-related issues, perceptions of whether and how much climate change is affecting local communities are closely tied with political party affiliation. More than eight-in-ten Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party (83%) say climate change is affecting their local community at least some, compared with 37% of Republicans and Republican leaners.

But politics is not the only factor related to these perceptions. Americans who live close to a coastline are more likely than those who live farther away to say climate change is affecting their local community. Seven-in-ten Americans who live within 25 miles of a coastline say climate change is affecting their local community at least some, versus 57% of those who live 300 miles or more from a coast.

Climate Change and Partisan Polarization

Brian Kennedy and Courtney Johnson at Pew:

A growing share of Americans say addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress, but most of the change has come among Democrats. Over the past four years, the share of Americans who say dealing with global climate change should be a top priority has increased from 38% to 52%. Among Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party, 78% say climate change should be a top priority, up 22 percentage points since 2016. But among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, there has been no statistically significant increase. Democrats are more than three times as likely as Republicans to say dealing with climate change should be a top priority (78% vs. 21%).

The share of Americans who say global climate change is a major threat to the well-being of the United States has also increased in recent years. But on this question too, the rise in concern has come primarily among Democrats, regardless of ideology. Among both moderate and conservative Republicans there has been no statistically significant change since 2013.

The Anti-Greta

Desmond Butler and  Juliet Eilperin report at The Washington Post:

For climate skeptics, it’s hard to compete with the youthful appeal of global phenomenon Greta Thunberg. But one U.S. think tank hopes it’s found an answer: the anti-Greta.

Naomi Seibt is a 19-year-old German who, like Greta, is blond, eloquent and European. But Naomi denounces “climate alarmism,” calls climate consciousness “a despicably anti-human ideology,” and has even deployed Greta’s now famous “How dare you?” line to take on the mainstream German media.

“She’s a fantastic voice for free markets and for climate realism,” said James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, an influential libertarian think tank in suburban Chicago...

In December, Heartland headlined Naomi at its forum at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where Taylor described her as “the star” of the show. Last month, Heartland hired Naomi as the young face of its campaign to question the scientific consensus that human activity is causing dangerous global warming.

“Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thunberg: whom should we trust?” asked Heartland in a digital video. Later this week, Naomi is set to make her American debut at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a high-profile annual gathering just outside Washington of right-leaning activists.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Heartland’s tactics amount to an acknowledgment that Greta has touched a nerve, especially among teens and young adults. Since launching her protest two years ago outside the Swedish parliament at age 15, Greta has sparked youth protests across the globe and in 2019 was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year,” the youngest to ever win the honor.

Hot Year

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

Earth’s warming trend continued in 2019, making it the second-hottest year in NOAA’s 140-year climate record just behind 2016.

The world’s five warmest years have all occurred since 2015 with nine of the 10 warmest years occurring since 2005, according to scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).

It was also the 43rd consecutive year with global land and ocean temperatures, at least nominally, above average.

The average temperature across the globe in 2019 was 1.71 degrees F (0.95 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average and just 0.07 of a degree F (0.04 of a degree C) cooler than the 2016 record.

Ocean heat content, which describes the amount of heat stored in the upper-levels of the ocean, was the highest ever recorded. High ocean-heat content can contribute to sea-level rise.

NASA scientists, who conducted a separate but similar analysis, concurred with NOAA’s ranking. NASA also found that 2010-2019 was the hottest decade ever recorded.

Disaster Declarations

Philip Bump at WP:

As the East Coast was keeping an eye on the fate of the Nationals and the fate of the nation, California was on fire.

Not all of California, but a lot of it, and not for the first time in recent years. Fires burned in wine country in the north, and fires burned near museums in the south. Tens of thousands of people went without power in the hope that shutting down electrical lines would prevent fires from breaking out with fire-favorable weather looming; to the extent that it worked that strategy didn’t prevent the Golden State from burning.

Since 1960, counties have been the focus of disaster declarations by the federal government more than 50,000 times. No individual county has had more such declarations than Los Angeles County, which has seen 72 such declarations over that period — more than one a year.

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 The publicly available data from FEMA (which predate FEMA’s own creation) shows how the number of declarations began to surge in about 1990, mostly as a function of the number of severe storms that prompt disaster declarations. This isn’t necessarily a function of more storms and may reflect a shift in the number of declarations issued. It is the case, though, that the number of heavy precipitation storms has increased across the United States in recent years, a trend tied to the warming climate.

Measuring Public Opinion on Climate Change

Andrew Freedman at Axios:

The monthly peak amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere in 2019 jumped by a near-record amount to reach 414.8 parts per million (ppm) in May, which is the highest level in human history and likely the highest level in the past 3 million years.

Matt Motta,Dan Chapman, Dominik Stecula, and Kathryn Haglin at WP:

We find that minor and seemingly arbitrary differences in the way public opinion researchers ask questions about climate change can have major effects on their findings.

For example, some surveys ask respondents to choose whether they think climate change is caused by human activity or natural causes (we call this a “discrete choice” question). Others ask respondents how much they agree or disagree with the idea that climate change is human caused, using Likert scales ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.

Because surveys take time to administer and ask questions about topics that some might find uninteresting, some people simply agree with questions they are asked — a phenomenon known as acquiescence bias. Likert-style questions can therefore inflate the number of people who say they “agree,” no matter what the question is about.

Surveys about climate opinion vary in other ways as well. For example, some explicitly tell respondents that they can say they “don’t know” their stance on an issue, while others do not.

And because many Americans do not consider climate change to be a high priority, some surveys explain what climate change is (“introductory text”) before asking respondents questions about it. On politically contentious issues, like climate change, the use of introductory text like this has been shown to increase partisan disagreement.