Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1.bsky.social · 6h

Ok but they aren’t “critics” within the scientific community. They are the actual oil industry and the think tanks that work on their behalf. And “linking” refers to source and impact attribution science which quantifies human influence on extreme weather events. 1/4

www.eenews.net/articles/cli...

Climate critics try to discredit IPCC author for linking disasters to global warming

Roger Pielke Jr. and oil industry supporters are attacking climate scientist Friederike Otto, whose work has been used in lawsuits against polluters.

www.eenews.net

2 11 44

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 13h

We never incited violence, we just called this guy a member of antifa who funded terrorism and told our followers to pay him a visit ha ha and then a totally unrelated group of people threatened to murder him in front of his students ha ha

"The petition to disband our Turning Point chapter is blatantly defamatory," Ava Kwan, outreach coordinator for the Turning Point USA chapter at Rutgers, told Fox News Digital in a statement.
"The accusations of 'inciting violence' and 'making threats' are complete lies," Kwan said. "The same people claiming we're suppressing their free speech are actively trying to silence us for speaking the truth. It's not just ironic, it's hypocritical and absurd."

tpusa_rutgers Do you want to become a socialist? If so, make sure to pay this professor a visit!!!! All jokes aside help us report this professor who has ties to Antifa which now is designated as a domestic terrorist organization. DO YOUR PART AND HELP MAKE RUTGERS A PLACE FOR ALL STUDENTS TO LEARN WITHOUT BECOMING A RADICAL SOCIALIST

19 380 1.7K

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 13h

The Rutgers TPUSA chapter — whose characterization of a historian there as a “outspoken, well-known antifa member” led to death threats and moving his family to Europe — think *other* people are being “blatantly defamatory.”

Not them, though. They’re doing politics the right way.

Rutgers TPUSA officers slam petition to shut down chapter, ‘Blatantly defamatory’

Alexander Di Filippo accuses Turning Point USA of inciting violence against Antifa handbook author Mark Bray.

www.foxnews.com

110 1K 4.4K

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Heidi Kitrosser @heidikitrosser.bsky.social · 16h

Outstanding piece on the "compact" to turn universities into vehicles of thought control for the Trump administration. (Uh oh, I'm a university professor who just said something belittling about a "conservative" administration's compact, in violation of the compact's terms ...)

Siva @sivav.bsky.social · 1d

The “compact” for higher ed is an unserious document written by unserious people from a position of spectacular ignorance. No one should take it seriously. Sadly, my bosses are taking it seriously.

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down

How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com

1 10 21

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Akshat Rathi @akshatrathi.bsky.social · 21h

Fast and cheap way to cut the warming impact of flying, but few are working on it. Main reason @hannahritchie.bsky.social thinks is lack of awareness of contrail's effects. You can change that by reading and sharing this: www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/eliminatin...

Eliminating contrails from flying could be incredibly cheap

Could we halve aviation's climate impact at a fraction of the cost of sustainable aviation fuels?

www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com

10 16

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Sue Ferrara @sferrara.bsky.social · 1d

@atnj.org www.insidernj.com/womens-organ...

Women’s Organizations Condemn Jack Ciatterelli Video - Insider NJ

Today, women’s organizations across New Jersey expressed outrage over a video of Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Jack Ciattarelli summarizing a conversation with President Donald Trump. In the vide...

www.insidernj.com

2 4

Reposted by Bob Kopp

RutgersAAUP-AFT @ruaaup-aft.bsky.social · 1d

This week, our colleague Dr. Mark Bray came under attack by Turning Point USA’s Rutgers chapter for his public scholarship. Rutgers AAUP-AFT and the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union condemn this campaign and stand in solidarity with our colleagues. Read our full statement here: https://loom.ly/BDXasRY

7 230 570

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 1d

a degrowth agenda featuring mass deportations, tariffs, and Elon Musk; abuse of states of emergency (though not climate/weather related); corruption of disaster response infrastructure; dismantling of scientific infrastructure; conspiracy mongering in the place of science.

1 3

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 1d

Looking back at this article I wrote the day after the presidential election, it looks like I had pretty good foresight, which just came from paying attention:

Repeal of the IRA, withdraw from Paris Agreement, encouragement of pro-fossil fuel action abroad…

A Climate Scientist on What Trump’s Victory Means for Global Warming

Republicans might not actually repeal the Inflation Reduction Act’s green energy incentives. But Trump can do plenty of damage to international climate progress without that.

newrepublic.com

1 5 14

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 1d

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.

1K 7.6K 26K

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 1d

As the Supreme Court term begins, keep this framework in mind: Autocratic Legalism.

Instead of “rule of law” (law constrains the power), we get “rule by law” (law as a weapon for power).

Authoritarians usually have to install allies. Trump started his second term with that step already complete.

The only effective opposition is through the language of morality and documented harm—not legal technicalities that can be swept away with a 6–3 vote.” The text is centered on a neutral background, with “morality” and “documented harm” slightly emphasized to underscore the moral and empirical contrast with “legal technicalities.”

10 220 670

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 1d

It’s still on the DOE website and DOE hasn’t agreed to withdraw it. I eagerly await seeing whether EPA is still going to cite it.

1

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 1d

I’m aware, I merit an entry in his book’s index (thus the postscript on my email)

1 4

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 1d

Sent Steve a letter:

Dear Steve,

I hope you are well.

In your Monday WSJ column, you criticize the National Academies for not reviewing your DOE Climate Working Group report. To my knowledge, the Academies have never offered an unrequested review of a government scientific report. I am sure they would have been happy to review your report if DOE had asked them to. Though DOE chose not to do so, under Information Quality Act guidelines, an independent peer review (like that the Academies often conducts for the federal government) is required for it to be legal to use the report in rule making. (See Section III in 70 FR 2664)

In your Monday column, you do not mention that — seeing no evidence that your report had been the subject of any meaningful independent peer review — more than 85 experts volunteered our time in the month of August to review your report. The approximately 450-page compendium of comments, co-edited by Andrew Dessler and me, evaluates each portion of your report. In case you have not seen it, you can find the expert review here: https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.175745244.41950365/v2

Your column recapitulates a number of the errors and misrepresentations in the DOE report, which are evaluated in detail in the expert review.

For example, you state that US heat waves “aren’t more common in recent decades than they were in the decades around 1900”.

As we write in the expert review, the DOE report “highlights the Dust Bowl period of the 1930s as a time of unusually hot temperatures in the United States.” However, “over such a small area [as the contiguous US], natural variability can play a large but temporary role. The Dust Bowl was indeed an exceptional event, although unrelated to greenhouse-gas forcing, and the decadal climate conditions that drove the Dust Bowl are not occurring today…. If you take out the 1930s, there are clear trends [in the contiguous US] towards more extreme temperatures due almost certainly to radiative forcing.”

Further, “if one examines a larger region, where the Dust Bowl’s influence is diluted, then there is an obvious, strong trend towards more extreme temperatures.”

You also introduce in your column some errors that are not in the DOE report. For example, the DOE report addresses global-mean sea-level rise only in passing, focusing instead on specific US tide-gauge records. In your column, you claim that a global sea-level acceleration comparable to the current one occurred in the 1930s, a claim we discussed before about eight years ago.

In 2017, I told you, based on our analysis in Hay et al. (2015), that the rate of global-mean sea-level rise in the 21st century was likely faster than during its previous high in the 1930s-1940s (notably, also a period of significant global-mean warming, preceding the slower sea level rise and lull of warming in the 1950s-1970s). At the time, global-mean sea-level acceleration had already been sustained for close to five decades, compared to about two decades in the 1920s and 1930s.

The evidence in the last eight years has only gotten stronger. We are now in an approximately 60-year period of nearly unbroken global-mean sea-level acceleration, and the current rate of rise revealed by both satellite data and tide-gauge analyses — exceeding 4 mm/yr — is unequivocally higher than at any previous time revealed by tide-gauge reconstructions or satellite data (see, for example, Dangendorf et al., 2024; Figure 8 therein reproduced below). (Note that this finding is supported by Frederikse et al., 2020, a key figure from which is reproduced in a simplified format in your book Unsettled.)

Further, combining tide-gauge and geological data shows that there has been a sustained acceleration in the long-term rates of rise since the mid-nineteenth century. Modern rates of 60-year-average global-mean sea level rise exceeded earlier Common Era rates by the 1860s, and the current rate of global-mean sea level rise virtually certain to be higher than any century-scale period in the last three millennia (Kemp et al 2018, Walker et al 2022; Figure 1 of the latter reproduced below).

Furthermore, I don’t think either of us contest the fact that global-mean surface temperature is substantially higher today than in the 1930s and 1940s. It would, indeed, then be quite physically surprising if the rate of global-mean sea level rise were also not substantially higher.

It would be tedious for both of us to respond further to the errors in your column, but I point you again to the expert review of your report: https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.175745244.41950365/v2

I encourage you not to continue to recapitulate the errors in the DOE report while ignoring the readily available evaluations in the expert review.

Best,
Bob

P.S. I know from our past interactions that you view private correspondence sent to you as being publishable without notifying or attempting to get the consent of your correspondents. You have my permission to fairly quote from this letter, which I will also be posting publicly.

1 5 21

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 2d

What’s more, geological data clearly reveal that the rate of global average sea level rise over the last sixty years was faster than during any comparable period in more than 2 millennia; and, indeed, this fact has been continuously true since the late 19th century. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Walker et al 2022. Fig. 1: Time of emergence of global sea-level rise.

a Sixty-year average rates over the Common Era, where pre-industrial is 0–1700 CE. b Sixty-year average rates from 1700 to 2000 CE which increase concurrently with the probability that each 60-year interval and all subsequent 60-year intervals were greater than a random 60-year interval during the pre-industrial Common Era. The time of emergence year is given for 0.66, 0.90, and 0.95 probabilities. Model predictions are the mean with 1σ uncertainty.

1 5 20

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 2d

But global average sea level today has been on a sustained acceleration for over 50 years, a duration without precedent in the observational record, and the rate of rise in the last decade is substantially higher than in the 1930s. essd.copernicus.org/articles/16/...

Dangendorf et al 2024. Figure 8. GMSLs and nonlinear rates in comparison to former reconstructions. (a) Shown are the GMSL time series from this study (1900 to 2022) in comparison to selected former reconstructions. All time series have been adjusted to a common mean of zero over the overlapping period from 1993 to 2010. (b) The corresponding nonlinear trends as determined by a singular spectrum analysis with an embedding dimension of 15, which extracts signals that are representative of timescales longer than 30 years. Uncertainties are shown as shaded regions and represent 95 % confidence intervals.

1 1 19

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 2d

The rate of global average sea level rise in the 1930s might have been as high as in the 1990s, and there was an acceleration in the decade or two preceding this.

1 5

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 2d

Koonin does actually add in a new myth regarding global average sea level rise, a topic barely discussed in the DOE report, which talks almost entirely about sea level at US tidel gauges.

1 6

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 2d

for the EPA legally to use the report under Information Quality Act guidelines) and (2) hey, there’s an 85+ author, 450-page review of the cherry-picking, misrepresenting, selectively citing DOE report there to discuss (and which Koonin conveniently ignores, talk about pot calling the kettle black)

Climate Experts’ Review of the DOE Climate Working Group Report

In response to the Department of Energy's recent climate report, more than 85 scientists came together to submit a detailed rebuttal. Our motivation was simple: the DOE report misrepresents the state ...

essopenarchive.org

1 4 17

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 2d

Koonin spending an entire WSJ column criticizing @nationalacademies.org’s report for not being a review of his DOE climate contrarian report when (1) to my knowledge, the Academies have never reviewed a gov’t report without being asked (though such an independent review, or comparable, is necessary…

Opinion | Another Tale of Climate Change Bias

The government should stop funding the National Academies’ climate studies until they shed the political conformity.

www.wsj.com

5 16 52

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Robinson Meyer @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social · 2d

NEW: Trump is moving to kill all funding for proposed Texas and Louisiana mega-hubs to capture CO₂ from the atmosphere

The bipartisan-backed hubs represented a rare clean tech industry where the US was on the cutting edge

by @emilypont.bsky.social for @heatmap.news

heatmap.news/politics/doe...

Trump to Cancel Direct Air Capture Hubs in Texas, Louisiana

A new list of grant cancellations obtained by Heatmap includes Climeworks and Heirloom projects funded by 2021 infrastructure law.

heatmap.news

14 63 130

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social · 2d

If appropriations bills are not seen as enforceable contracts, why should any Member of Congress vote to fund any part of the federal government under Donald Trump? You're voting to provide money for lawlessness. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/there-is-n...

There is no budget "deal" to be made

President Trump has so broken the constitutional framework as to make joint normal, responsible government impossible.

www.doomsdayscenario.co

51 660 1.9K

Bob Kopp @bobkopp.net · 3d

Excited to learn that we have a second great climate champion running for Congress in NJ: in addition to ecologist @meganorourke.com running to unseat Tom Kean Jr in NJ-7, former @rewiringamerica.bsky.social VP @cammiecroft.bsky.social is running to succeed @mikiesherrill.bsky.social in NJ-11.

1 9 33

Reposted by Bob Kopp

Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 3d

Unacceptable to put the costs of the AI boom on the backs of families struggling to pay their bills. It’s a crisis.

Nick Cunningham @nickcunningham.bsky.social · 3d

“By 2028, an average family in the region will be paying around $70 a month extra on their electricity bills because of forecasted data center growth”

I'm once again asking why ratepayers are subsidizing AI titans?

www.eenews.net/articles/dat...

Data center boom sparks sticker shock for PJM ratepayers

New analyses show that costs passed on to utility customers to guarantee future electricity demand are rising rapidly.

www.eenews.net

4 53 150

Reposted by Bob Kopp

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 4d

Many climate projections rely on a lot of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) for CO₂ removal (CDR). Usually the criticism is of the biomass part, but given the uncertainty in CCS, how can we be so confident about scaling BECCS?

Dr. Jonathan Foley @globalecoguy.bsky.social · 4d

The jig is up for CCS and DAC.

oilprice.com/Energy/Energ...

The Collapse of Confidence in Carbon Capture | OilPrice.com

Carbon Capture and Storage, once seen as a lifeline for the oil and gas industry, is facing mounting doubts as delays, high costs, and poor performance cast serious doubts on its future viability.

oilprice.com

6 26 110