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ever since 1970, we've had irrefutable data that climate disaster was headed our way. who had this data? EXXON! astonishingly, exxon scientists had the most incredibly accurate climate modelling data -- sometimes MORE accurate than what academic scientists had regarding climate change and its human causes. (this came from last weekend's WNYC programming if you want to learn more)

climate disaster is no secret. it's no lie. we've known about it and publicly commented on it since, literally, 1900 and even earlier. as a kid growing up in a small farming community on west coast amerikkka, i CERTAINLY knew about it because i clearly remember my nightmares from back then.

this lack of journalistic rigour and -- let's face it -- lack of journalistic HONESTY regarding the causes of california's floods is no different than the reasons that trump still roams free: lies that are paid for by elites and corporations. it's outrageous and shameful and inexcusable that anything but the unbastardized TRUTH about climate collapse is being reported anywhere in the world today. even steve forbes, the CEO of my publication, went on the record last week in a short opinion video making a series of muddled claims and science-free arguments that the planet was not in any danger from human overconsumption.

but journalistic honesty does not serve the elites nor corporations, whose only goal, it appears, is to accumulate more of everything (especially money), by ripping it out of the hands of the working class whom they've forced into modern slavery. they also place the burden squarely on the shoulders of the working class to solve this MASSIVE problem, ignoring the FACT that one elite white man emits hundreds of times more carbon in their quest for more More MORE than, sometimes, entire nations.

the 1% should be ashamed at their insane levels of greed and consumption and waste, but they aren't. this is a badge of honour -- to them. meanwhile, we burn and drown and watch the planet become completely depauperate of any and all living things that don't create huge profits for the slave masters.

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It’s also a failure to not talk about the influence of advertisers on news content. Capitalism is a corrupt system not random. The news wields tremendous persuasion and propaganda power powered only by billions of dollars.

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Jan 16, 2023Liked by Robert Reich

Thank you. This is by far the most important threat we face, even greater than the global threats to democracy. We are existentially threatened by global warming caused by human activity, and the sixth global mass extinction is underway, no matter what we do or don't do. The fact that all of our general news media regularly ignore this threat and prioritize coverage of a royal family in England or athletic contests illustrates the absurdity of our times. I really can't imagine people in other centuries reacting to news of this kind with such indifference. To paraphrase Voltaire, if Greta Thunberg did not exist, we would have invented her.

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Sadly the media has been bought by the 1%. It must be frustrating being a journalist these days and being told what you can and cannot do. Who loses? All of us.

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To all Constitutional Americans:

Every one of us have multiple sources available to verify everything we are being told by our government, by the mainstream media, social media and friends and neighbors. DON’T ALLOW ONE SOURCE TO CLOUD YOUR JUDGMENT! Gaslighting has become the norm by some of our elected officials. We need to hold them accountable. After all we are their employers. THEY WORK FOR US! We all need to vet what we are being told.

There are many other sources available where we can fact check whether or not we are being gaslighted. If you find 10 sources and 9 of them give you the same story it’s probably true! If only one or two of them give you the same story it’s probably BS.

The Mainstream Media can no longer be counted on to give us truthful information in an unbiased way. We have to get the facts ourselves through other sources.

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Just follow the money!

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This is the most important topic of our age, maybe any age, and the reason we fail is relatively simple: it requires us to change. Corporations hate that. (Exxon could not face the need to change when it knew from it own studies in the 1970s that fossil fuels caused climate change). They use advertising to make sure we ignore the need to change. They pay politicians, legally but blindly, to make sure they ignore climate change. We have a government of fools, especially but not exclusively in the house, because those in power (those who have the money) paid to put them there.

Change is hard. If we don't change we will be destroyed. Already we cannot recover from our fossil fuel addiction easily. And while a substitute is available, it cannot carry us to a clean energy future that looks anything like our now uncomfortable present. Imagine a United States that uses 20% of the energy that we use now? Eighty percent of what we need to change involves avoiding energy use and the associated material consumption that goes with it. It means figuring out rather quickly how to degrow an economy without collapse. For this comment alone I, and the science community that agrees with this, will likely get criticism even on this site, but would stand completely condemned in mainstream media. We cannot face the reality of what we have done to the planet.

The event now in California was predicted. It happened in 1862, probably on a larger scale, and the evidence is that extreme atmospheric rivers happened historically about every 150 years. (See chapter 2 of Tom Philpott's Perilous Bounty) What climate change has done is change the frequency and extremes of climate behavior. Expect drought and atmospheric rivers to get more extreme. It is baked in already. All we can do now is reduce our contribution to the problem and learn to live with it. The other alternative, chosen by those in power, is to accelerate into the brick wall of ecological reality without airbags or seatbelts.

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As others mention, there is the issue of following the money. At a more basic level, there are issues of incomprehensible changes that lead to an instinctive denialsm.

Journalists often have limited lived experiences and must do their best to document complex issues within the "business model" of the publication (i.e. follow the money and its power). Also, the next natural disaster leads to a terrific set of stories on "how we will overcome" for tomorrow's front pages. It's a vicious cycle for sure.

Put simply, humans have no reference experiences in a planet with 3+C degrees over the baseline during our existence in the last 10,000 years or so. Indeed, there were no humans able to survive in those periods. We may want to begin to think of why.

A way to humanize this debate is have a discussion about why humans cannot survive when the average ambient temperature gets above 50C. It's rather simple and nasty. The walls of our cells jellify and we cannot be held together. We are seeing risks of this in many hotspots such as Pakistan, where temperatures of 50C (122F) are fairly common.

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Two years ago, my then 19 year old daughter, who is majoring in Environmental Science, was talking about getting her first tattoo. She was thinking of the lower tricep area just above the elbow. As a 50 year old woman, I showed her my tricep and said,”you sure you want your artwork there? At 50 this is what that area looks like.” Her reply, “50? With climate change I won’t be alive.” This was right after 159 people died in Germany from flooding. “Touché,” I said - “go live your life!” She had already accepted the fact that death by climate crisis is very real, and it was a defining moment for me as well. We live on Cape Cod and she is graduating this year. Her plans for the summer? Come home and swim at her favorite beach as it “won’t be here forever.” She wants to go to law school and eventually work with Environmental Policy - but her law school applications are determined by location - Pacific Northwest? Nope - tsunami land when California gets the big one. These are the types of decisions she makes on a daily basis around climate change. Ignorance is bliss for those who believe our climate crisis is not real.

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Good morning Dr Reich. Glad to hear you’re okay. News coverage limited in including the culprit, climate change is not surprising. I’ve seen more in-depth coverage from news outlets outside of the United States, including the mention of climate change. I guess news outlets here don’t want climate change as a corporate sponsor. But they’ll happily take money from the polluters.

I’m glad you mentioned the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was always ready to speak of those without a voice. Those struggling through the effects of climate change.

Your post has given me inspiration to go back and listen to his speeches. His fervor and want for justice and accountability.

Thank you both for being beacons of light in these sad times.

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When we talk about climate change, there is seldom enough said about what we individually can do. Deforestation emitted more CO2 than fossil fuels. And why do we deforest? To graze animals. 80% of global warming is not by fossil fuels, it's a result of diet. We are eating our way to extinction. If we all switched to low meat or vegan diet, we could make a huge difference. Yes, let's keep the oil in the ground, but we can all control our diets. Difficult for we creatures of habit but necessary for our survival. We need to reforest those grazing lands.

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Jan 16, 2023·edited Jan 16, 2023

Some of it is because we dwell on stuff that is much less important, like the gas stove uproar of the moment. AT LEAST, they are referring to the weather the way you did—atmospheric "rivers" of precipitation, followed by their arrival as described. And now we are seeing it while we sit at our tvs stunned. The weather man I listen to the most is a "climate specialist" and he talks about it all the time.

I live in Florida where we have had another morning of heavy frost and probably more to come. You can wright off Florida's participation in citrus products this year. Ditto strawberries. Maybe that will get people's attention. When, like California, you are living in the midst of what used to be considered "damaging, freak" weather, it begins to dawn on you that this is the new normal. That is, we have no idea what's coming next until we see it on radar.

In my little conservative local paper, there was a FRONT PAGE article by a climate-savvy person warning us what it would be like if we were hit by a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane. Several MILES inland would be awash in water. This was considered NEWS, not speculation.

So, the climate-change language is creeping into our daily speech. When we have been in the midst of it, it's no longer speculation. You are just stubborn if you refuse to see it or say it.

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I agree with you,. Mr. Reich. In my heart I've felt that the Earth will heal itself and take us down if we don't help her do so.

The Kochs and their Olybuddies saw to it that their mishandling of our planet was far more important than protecting poor people. To them we poor folks are as useless as teats on a bull. I personally had no choice but to be in their way by living in my car for 10 months thanks to the extreme greed of San Diego County and its landlords' decisions to up their rents during the pandemic by $500 a month or more thus driving the gods know how many of us into our cars or onto the streets,

What? Me get angry? Why draw attention to myself when the very people whose job it is to work for We the People have their heads up the arses of the Oligarchy while at the same time living quite nicely, eating well, nice expensive homes where their families have all the joys of the wealthy. Our tax dollars give them all that and more.

Meanwhile the Republicans of the lunatic fringe keep us in full ahead anxiety by threatening to do away with Social Security and Medicare. Why don't they just have their Trump-gathered militia of domestic terrorists come around and shoot us with those weapons they believe are quite okay to own?

Has anyone bothered to look up the Southern Poverty Law Center's main page online that I mentioned in a previous comment? As many as a thousand hate groups are scattered among every state in the Union. Another page tells who runs them and most of them turn out to be those fake Christians who are determined to rewrite our laws with the ultimate approval of the fake Republicans just waiting to finish what they started on that memorable date: January 6. Oh, yes. They all stand behind the Old Rugged Cross and without the slightest hint of true Christianity in their bodies.

Just to argue my own case, I'm a 76-year-old Vietnam veteran and I'm gay. Because our government is so good at seeing to the health and safety of their own families and to hell with We their Providers, I now regret having chosen to go to Vietnam for my country, managing to reach the rank of Specialist E5, and had a Secret Clearance, all within the 3 years I was in the Army. I'm damned proud of my accomplishments considering I'm only a high school graduate.

More than 20 years ago I took a legal secretary course in Beverly Hills and graduated with a grade of 96 percent. I retired in November 2011, a legal assistant, and after all my accomplishments wound up living in my Hyundai Elantra for ten damned months because my country is not of the same 'thee' as the song intended.

And guess what? It's all our fault for letting our government get out of our control. Is it too late to take it back? Only if all those fascists get locked up before they carry through with their promise of authoritarian rule. And, boy, are they close!

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Because, among others, our media refuses to admit the obvious, we as a species are doomed. Extinction is inevitable. Already my granddaughters have decided not to bring children into this world. I'm too old (like you) to witness this, but our great-grandchildren will. So very sad, when it all could have been avoided.

Even now the huge oil companies are denying their part in this catastrophe, when they could have stopped it. As Keith below says, "Just follow the money." I hope humanity's death was worth it.

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I recently read a short piece about wind turbines in west Texas in the Economist, sorry no link at hand. The ranchers are very happy with the significant income from the power generation, much higher that from cattle but don't want to call it "green" because they would be admitting that climate change is real. Instead they are happy to call it "clean energy". In some ways I don't care as long as it gets built but it remains crazy to think of climate change as some left wing talking point. Or as my grandmother would say "good grief" what about your grandkids.

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I feel that the earth that I have loved has been gone a long time. Each decade of my life has brought losses of place: the beautiful once undeveloped Georgia island that supported such a variety of wildlife now paved over by a huge highway, the marine life so abundant in the salt water stream that fish and shrimp jumped freely into my boat, the calls of frogs at night that were so loud the sound saturated the air, and the beauty of the dark night skies with stars so bright they seemed to be possible to pull down to earth. All of this is gone, not because of global warming but because of over population and senseless greed. Yes, the earth is warming because of humans but it’s not, by far, our only loss. We have mostly cared only about our own species to our own peril, now arguing over a degree of destruction rather than taking the action required to protect this earth from more and more and many more of only one species, us. Yes, I am angry about global warming but it is to me a more obvious continuation of what has been happening for decades. It’s just now hard for more to ignore.

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