Sierra Club Woes

Many posts have discussed interest groups.  They must often grapple with internal factions.

Robin Bravender at Politico:

The Sierra Club would very much like to be in the news for its efforts to fight the Trump administration on climate change, save endangered species and close coal plants.

But lately, the iconic environmental group’s internal conflict is what’s been making headlines.

It’s a green-on-green food fight that couldn’t come at a worse time for the Sierra Club as the group and its environmental allies struggle to raise cash, worry they’ll be targeted by the Trump administration and scramble to combat environmental policy rollbacks.

The green group fired its boss, Ben Jealous, in August in what quickly devolved into a bitter public breakup. Sierra Club’s board said it fired Jealous “for cause following extensive evaluation of his conduct.” Jealous had been the subject of a sexual harassment complaint although the group hasn’t specified its reasons for the ouster.

Jealous and his allies are fighting back. Civil rights leader Al Sharpton got involved, warning of “serious racial implications” of firing. Jealous says he raised concerns about racial discrimination and retaliation during his tenure. He retained attorneys at a civil rights and employment law firm and said he was fighting the decision to fire him.

This was just the Sierra Club’s latest crisis in recent years.

There was the scorching public revelation that the organization had quietly accepted donations from the natural gas industry. The club grappled with its early leaders’ troubling views on race. Managers quarreled with the staff union. Sierra Club’s leader for a decade, Michael Brune, left in 2021 amid calls for increased diversity and staff complaints about workplace problems.

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.

...

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.

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).

Polarization: Econonomic Growth v. Environment

 Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Though Democrats and Republicans have long come down on different sides when considering the tradeoffs between economic growth and environmental protection, the gap between the parties has never been larger. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats, compared with 20% of Republicans, now believe environmental protection should be given the higher priority.

From 1984 to 1991, the parties expressed similar views on this matter, but by 1995 a divide became evident, which has since gradually expanded. At least half of Democrats have favored the environment over economic growth in all years of Gallup’s trend except during the economically challenged years of 2010 and 2011. Meanwhile, majorities of Republicans typically prioritized the environment from 1984 through 2000, but Republicans have not returned to that level since falling to 47% in 2001.

 

Citizen Science and the Great Backyard Bird Count

Many posts have discussed volunteering and civic virtue.

Julia Rubin at AP:

It’s a given that when the Great Backyard Bird Count begins Friday, Steve and Janet Kistler of Hart County, Kentucky, will be joining in. They’ve done so every year since the now-global tradition began 25 years ago.

For Moira Dalibor, a middle-school math teacher a couple hours away in Lexington, this will be the first count. She’s leading a group of students and parents to an arboretum for an exercise in data-gathering.

They’re expected to be among hundreds of thousands of people around the world counting and recording over four days. Last year, about 385,000 people from 192 countries took part in the Great Backyard Bird Count, or GBBC.

In India, which had the highest participation outside the U.S. last year, tens of thousands of people submitted bird checklists — a 28% increase from 2021.

This global data goes into the eBird database used by scientists for research on bird populations, which have declined sharply overall in past decades. It’s part of a rise in “citizen science” projects in which volunteers collect data about the natural world for use by researchers.

The Crazy Train, Continued

California's high-speed rail project is a fiasco -- predictable and predicted.

Dana Goldman and Alain Enthoven at CalMatters:

Instead of spending an additional $100 billion or more to drill rail tunnels through seismically active mountains and disrupt communities, the state should embark on a massive public works effort to meet its water needs. Advances in stormwater capture and recycling hold great promise. Los Angeles could meet 70% of its water needs locally by 2035 if enough investment is made in recycling and cleaning up its groundwater basins. Repairing and replacing leaky pipes, conservation, desalination and replumbing the state project are other pieces of a resilient, drought-resistant water system for California.

When voters approved a $10 billion bond issue in 2008 to help build the full rail line, the cost was estimated at $33 billion with completion by 2020. If the project started fresh today with a $113 billion price tag, would voters still support it?

Even the much-touted climate benefits of the bullet train are losing luster. California now mandates that every vehicle sold in the state must be electric by 2035. So if the bullet train is running by then, it would be replacing car trips that don’t produce greenhouse gas emissions. It might get some people out of planes, but the carbon impact will likely be less than envisioned as more fuel-efficient jets – possibly using biofuels – come online.

Meanwhile, construction itself will have produced plenty of pollution on its own.

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.

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.

Employment Challenges

Many posts have discussed inequality in employment and income.

Byron Auguste at WP:

While companies scramble to find talent amid perceived “skills gaps” and “labor shortages,” their job postings exclude millions of qualified Americans. These applicants do not face this dispiriting experience because of race, ethnicity, gender, age or disability — these reasons would be illegal, and rightly so. Instead, they are excluded because they’re among the roughly two-thirds of U.S. workers who lack a bachelor’s degree.

...

College-degree discrimination has become so widespread that many take it for granted. Almost three-quarters of new jobs from 2007 to 2016 were roles in which most employers typically “require” bachelor’s degrees — but fewer than 4 in 10 American workers have that credential. Going to war against arithmetic is a bad idea, and our post-pandemic skilled-worker shortage is a wake-up call.

Requiring a medical degree to treat patients or a civil engineering degree to design a bridge is common sense. By contrast, requiring a generic college degree to be considered for jobs such as office manager, sales representative, digital marketer or data-center technician may be common, but it makes no sense.

Noam Scheiber at NYT:

Building an electricity plant powered by fossil fuels usually requires hundreds of electricians, pipe fitters, millwrights and boilermakers who typically earn more than $100,000 a year in wages and benefits when they are unionized.

But on solar farms, workers are often nonunion construction laborers who earn an hourly wage in the upper teens with modest benefits — even as the projects are backed by some of the largest investment firms in the world. In the case of Assembly Solar, the backer is D.E. Shaw, with more than $50 billion in assets under management, whose renewable energy arm owns and will operate the plant.\

While Mr. Biden has proposed higher wage floors for such work, the Senate prospects for this approach are murky. And absent such protections — or even with them — there’s a nagging concern among worker advocates that the shift to green jobs may reinforce inequality rather than alleviate it.

...

While some of the new green construction jobs, such as building new power lines, may pay well, many will pay less than traditional energy industry construction jobs. The construction of a new fossil fuel plant in Michigan employs hundreds of skilled tradespeople who typically make at least $60 an hour in wages and benefits, said Mike Barnwell, the head of the carpenters union in the state.

By contrast, about two-thirds of the roughly 250 workers employed on a typical utility-scale solar project are lower-skilled, according to Anthony Prisco, the head of the renewable energy practice for the staffing firm Aerotek. Mr. Prisco said his company pays “around $20” per hour for these positions, depending on the market, and that they are generally nonunion.

Opinion of Federal Responsibilities

 From Pew:

As public trust in the federal government remains low, Americans continue to say the federal government has a responsibility to provide support and services for all Americans in a number of forms.

U.S. adults broadly agree that it is the federal government’s role to provide clean air and water (87%) and high-quality K-12 education (79%) for all Americans. More modest majorities say it is the government’s responsibility to provide health insurance (64%), adequate income in retirement (58%) and an adequate standard of living (56%).

Fewer than half – about four-in-ten – say it is a responsibility of the government to provide access to high-speed internet (43%) or a college education (39%).

A new Pew Research Center survey, conducted April 5-11 among a nationally representative sample of 5,109 adults who are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel, finds that public views about the federal government’s responsibilities are little changed since before the start of the coronavirus outbreak. One exception is that the share of Americans who say the government has a responsibility to provide access to high-speed internet has increased by 15 percentage points since September 2019 (from 28% to 43%)

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.

Quality of Life: US Ranks Number 28 and Dropping

Nicholas Kristof at NYT:

This should be a wake-up call: New data suggest that the United States is one of just a few countries worldwide that is slipping backward.

The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s.

“The data paint an alarming picture of the state of our nation, and we hope it will be a call to action,” Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and the chair of the advisory panel for the Social Progress Index, told me. “It’s like we’re a developing country.”

The index, inspired by research of Nobel-winning economists, collects 50 metrics of well-being — nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education and more — to measure quality of life. Norway comes out on top in the 2020 edition, followed by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand. South Sudan is at the bottom, with Chad, Central African Republic and Eritrea just behind.

The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence, ranks 28th — having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.

“We are no longer the country we like to think we are,” said Porter.

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.

Earth Day is 50

A number of posts have involved environmental issues. Today is its 50th anniversary of Earth Day.

From the Census Bureau:

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.