Published May 20, 2021
Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) delivered a letter signed by more than 50 Connecticut scientists to Connecticut Attorney General William Tong expressing support for the state’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil. The suit alleges the company misled state consumers about its products’ climate change impacts.
As far back as the 1960s, ExxonMobil knew that the climate consequences of fossil fuel pollution were potentially catastrophic. Equipped with information critical to protect public health and safety, the corporation chose neither to inform the public nor to take actions that would address the problem. Instead, internal fossil fuel industry memos show how companies, including ExxonMobil, chose to spend millions of dollars leading a coordinated campaign of climate disinformation designed to keep the public hooked on oil and gas products.
Joe Biden, Culture Warrior
USA Today’s Michael Collins insisted, “but President Joe Biden seldom answers.” In the
Washington Post, Paul Waldman argued that because he has broken the link “between culture and policy,” Biden is “kryptonite to the Republican culture war.” Most of Biden’s policies must be viewed as part of a concerted “strategy to reduce the corrosive impact of hot-button social, cultural, and racial issues,” according to
New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall. And while “Republicans are busy trying to bait Democrats on culture war issues,” the Week’s Damon Linker contended, the party in power is “refusing to play along” and getting high marks from voters as a result.
. It involved 80 scientists from around the world, including Professor Nicholas Golledge and Associate Professor Brian Anderson, both from the ARC, and Dr Dan Lowry, ARC adjunct research fellow.
The study uses computer models and statistical techniques to make predictions based on a range of socio-economic scenarios. The results will inform the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, which will be published later this year.
The research predicts that if global warming is limited to 1.5°C, rather than the 3°C that global governmental emissions pledges currently commit us to, the contribution to sea level rise from melting ice could be cut from around 25cm to 13cm by 2100. This would greatly reduce the costs and impacts of coastal flooding around the world, including in New Zealand.