COP 28 : ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO EAT

COP28 UAE will offer the first 1.5° C-aligned menu at a COP conference, as part of its objective of making the conference carbon-neutral, and celebrate the hottest year on record with 

"Acclaimed Emirati chef Faisel Nasser " who "will offer the ultimate winter comfort foods through his new concept Tost. Specializing in soups and loaded cheese toasties"...  

Philly Jawn by Ghostburger: Bringing an all-American twist to the event with its special COP28 menu of towering smash burgers and sandos.

EMERATI COOKS PREPARE THE ULTIMATE SMASH BURGER SANDO,  THE CAMEL WHOPPER 

Chef Athanasios Kargatzidis, the mastermind behind Baron, Lebanon’s top-ranked restaurant is proud to bring... a Farm2Table-led concept, which champions organic and sustainable produce and carbon-neutral techniques.

Visitors will have an abundance of choices.,,five of the world’s leading vegan restaurants: Farmacy, Roots & Rolls,  Chuck Chick,  Wild and the Moon and  Floozie Cookies. 

A DEAD WHALE OR A WOODSTOVE BOAT?

THE NEW REPUBLIC    APOCALYPSE SOON/

November 15, 2023    ASTROSURF

THEY BURIED IT IN OCEAN WIND'S BACK YARD

The Latest Culture War StartsWith Dead Whales

The ad opens with lush footage of humpback whales in the open ocean, set over somber cello music. 

“Hunted to near extinction, they rebounded against all the odds,” a narrator says. “But new peril lurks beneath the waves: offshore wind.” 

The images shift to whale carcasses being dragged off the beach. “Save the whales,” the narrator chants. “Dump New Jersey Democrats.”

This ad attacking New Jersey Democratic State Senator Vin Gopal, locked in a tight race for reelection in his 11th district,
wasn’t paid for by some fringe environmental group. It was part of a five-figure ad buy from the Republican State Leadership Committee. The RSLC, in turn, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first half of this year from oil interests including Marathon Petroleum, Devon Energy, the American Petroleum Institute, and Energy Transfer.

“We get a lot of misinformation that it’s killing dolphins and whales,” Gopal said shortly after a dead whale washed up on the beach in his hometown. “That’s not true, but you have conspiracy theorists saying it’s killing whales and dolphins without any proof.

ARE YOU EATING MORE INSECTS THAN YOU THINK?

Insectivores are protesting limited offerings for alternative eaters at COP 28 Dubai. While delegates can get time off from tofu by eating high on the camel at state banquets and discrete Meateasies, legions of Quango minions and amateur climagogues are subsisting on falafel.

A solution may already have arisen  in an unexpected quarter. While Bloomberg Green lobbies for a meat-free transition to Net Zero, and Newsweek  praises cricket, earwig & ant turducken on Thanksgiving tables:

About 80 percent of the world already eats insects, which are a fantastic source of protein. As Americans prepare for this year's Thanksgiving meal, perhaps it's time to consider the many merits of a bugcentric holiday feast.

health authorities are chasing fast food restaurants and food suppliers for letting insect parts creep into in their offerings.

Insectivores view this as  feature rather than a bug, for contamination means many meaty fast foods Vegans abhor are already insect-enriched , and thus fit for consumption as low-carbon climate conference fare, like that exotic all-American delicacy,

which deserves to be on the menu in Dubai because it combines two ingredients already prominent in the urban insect food chain by wrapping a cheese steak sub in a slice of pizza: 

WHEN DOES THIS CAMEL TRAIN STOP AT THE NEXT COP?

 ANY DAY NOW

 

Lord Monckton writes of his last excursion to the Persian Gulf:

The climate camel – going nowhere, uncomfortably

From Monckton of Arabia

Somewhere in the desert, Qatar

A camel, as Winston Churchill used to say, is an animal designed by committee. The climate scare, like a camel, is an animal designed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change...

Under the rustling palm-trees by the balmy shore of the Gulf, I approached my first camel, Aziz, with that intrepid curiosity that built a great Empire. I addressed Aziz with an elegant quatrain…. Aziz listened politely, nuzzled me in a friendly way, sniffed my hand thoughtfully, slobbered over it liberally, and then directed a long nostril at my face to get better acquainted. I stroked his neck, wiping the slobber off on it, and he burbled contentedly.

His handler, with a rapid “chk-chk-chk”, brought him down to his knees and told me to climb on quick. Not quick enough. Before I was halfway into the cloth-covered saddle, Aziz lurched to his feet... flinging me into 

 a convenient sand-dune… Sand sprayed in all directions and… I forgot to emulate William the Conqueror by grabbing a fistful of sand and saying, “See, I hold all Araby in my hand” ....

The object of the exercise was to obtain four camels affix to their flanks bold placards bearing the words

 “STOP” “CLIMATE” “HYPE” and the “CFACT” logo

of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow,... to get a suitably atmospheric photograph of our simple message against the backdrop of the verdant palms, the golden sands, the azure sea and the cerulean sky.

CO2 COALITION PONDERS PRESIDENTIAL RUN

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT, BUT I WAS NOT A STRICT CONSTRUCTIONIST

PNAS Vol. 120 | No. 48

Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda

Cory J. Clark , Lee Jussim, Komi Frey and William von Hippel  

November 20, 2023

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301642120

Abstract

Science is among humanity’s greatest achievements, yet scientific censorship is rarely studied empirically. 

We explore the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship (defined as actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality). 

Popular narratives suggest that scientific censorship is driven by authoritarian officials with dark motives, such as dogmatism and intolerance. Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups. This perspective helps explain both recent findings on scientific censorship and recent changes to scientific institutions, such as the use of harm-based criteria to evaluate research. 

We discuss unknowns surrounding the consequences of censorship and provide recommendations for improving transparency and accountability in scientific decision-making to enable the exploration of these unknowns. The benefits of censorship may sometimes outweigh costs. However, until costs and benefits are examined empirically, scholars on opposing sides of ongoing debates are left to quarrel based on competing values, assumptions, and intuitions.

The fundamental principle of science is that evidence—not authority, tradition, rhetorical eloquence, or social prestige—should triumph. This commitment makes science a radical force in society: Challenging and disrupting sacred myths, cherished beliefs, and socially desirable narratives.

Consequently, science exists in tension with other institutions, occasionally provoking hostility and censorship (1). In liberal democracies, government censorship of science is rare (although see ref. 2). The greatest threats to scientific openness are often more diffuse and disguised as legitimate scientific criticism (e.g., rejection of dangerous and false information) (3).

Because scientific censorship is difficult to detect and measure, it is rarely empirically studied. Here, we discuss historical and modern evidence regarding the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship. 

Our analysis suggests that censorship is often impelled by prosocial concerns (4–6) and by scientists (7). We also identify unknowns regarding scientific censorship and highlight how scientific institutions can improve transparency to facilitate the exploration of these unknowns. ..

THE AUTHORS  CONCLUDE:

"1 widespread public availability of scholarship coupled with expanding definitions of harm has coincided with growing academic censorship; 

2 women, who are more harm-averse and more protective of the vulnerable than men, are more censorious; 

3 although progressives are often less censorious than conservatives, egalitarian progressives are more censorious of information perceived to threaten historically marginalized groups; and 

4 academics in the social sciences and humanities (disciplines especially relevant to humans and social policy) are more censorious and more censored than those in STEM.

THE ANCIENT POND A FROG JUMPS OUT THE SOUND OF WARMING

Fall is the new summer : Warming threatens Japan’s cultural calendar

  JAPAN TIMES  TOMOKO OTAKE  Nov 19, 2023

Itako, Ibaraki Prefecture

In one hand is a cold beverage; in the other, a paper fan. Clad in a yukata (summer kimono) and perched on the embankment of a river, you look up at the sky. Bright sparks spread out like big flowers on the pitch-black canvas, accompanied by bangs and crackles. A slight smell of mosquito-repellent incense drifts through the air.

Watching firework displays has long been a quintessential summer experience in Japan, with relatively cooler evenings offering a moment’s respite from the unrelenting daytime heat.

At this year’s riverside fireworks festival in Itako, Ibaraki Prefecture, however, the vibe was markedly different... because the event was held in late October for the first time.

Fireworks festivals, traditionally a summertime feature, are becoming more common in October in order to avoid Japan’s increasingly uncomfortable summers.

And it's not just fireworks.

It’s now common to fight off surprisingly active mosquitoes in November. And in more and more fall foliage viewing spots across the country, people must wait until late-November or even December...The impact of autumn's fade is huge —  for haiku poets, the disappearance of a season is an existential threat.

AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH FROM BREITBART

Slaying The Sky Dragon: Death Of The Greenhouse Gas Theory’

 An Impertinent Pup From Snopes Tried

To Fact-Check Me On Global Warming.

Written by James Delingpole

As I predicted, my piece “400 Scientific Papers say ‘Global Warming’ is a Myth”, 

is causing greenie heads to explode like watermelons struck by hollow-point bullets. 

Here is an email I got shortly afterward from a guy at… Snopes.

Hello James,

I’m a science writer for the fact-checking website Snopes.com reporting on your ‘400 studies say climate change is a myth’ exposé. I had a couple of questions about your process:

• Did you read all (or a fraction) of the 400 studies listed in that post personally or talk to any of the scientists involved?
• How long did it take to research this piece?...

Best, Alex

This Alex is an impertinent pup, isn’t he?... 

Snopes’s question:

• Did you read all (or a fraction) of the 400 studies listed in that post personally or talk to any of the scientists involved?

My answer:

I see what you’re trying to do there. And I’m not playing. Let me explain why.

The other day I read a long book... Now I don’t actually speak Russian so I had to take... the English translation

I apply this to lots of other things too. For example: … I send my kids off to boarding school so I don’t have to discipline them…

Yes, I suppose I could have spent days (weeks?) reading all the papers myself, 

But I didn’t – ... because that would have been utterly and dumb and pointless...

Only an imbecile... could possibly be so blinkered and stupid as to imagine otherwise."

NEW HAMPSHIRE WARMS TO POKEMON PRIMARY

Lack of snow to ski to the polls has shrunk voter turnout in Franconia Notch N.H. and forced restructuring of America's earliest Presidential primary. 

Standing guard on the Canadian border, the Granite State bastion will instead conduct a New Year's Eve Pokemon Primary to impart voting skills to students soon to come of age to vote in Presidential elections. The losing candidates will be offered political asylum in Vermont. Here are the  entries to date:

 

TODAY WILL BE MILD WITH MOLTEN QUARTZ SHOWERS & FLUFFY WINDS OUT OF THE EAST AT 5,000 MILES AN HOUR

NASA telescope reveals planet where it rains sand

Hannah Devlin, The Guradian

Nasa’s James Webb space telescope has revealed a planet where specks of sand fall as rain, in groundbreaking observations.

The planet, Wasp-107b … is very large but very light, earning it the nickname the “candy floss” planet… a strange and exotic world beyond our solar system that features silicate sand clouds and rain, scorching temperatures, raging winds and the distinct burnt-matches scent of sulphur dioxide...

Wasp-107b is similar in mass to Neptune but almost the size of Jupiter, and its vast, diffuse nature allows the James Webb telescope to peer deep into its atmosphere.

'It’s a great target… one of the fluffiest planets out there' said Dr Joanna Barstow, a planetary scientist at Open University

The latest observations, published in Nature, reveal …. something akin to Earth’s water cycle, but instead with sand cycling between solid and gaseous states. 

From the hotter, lower levels of the atmosphere, with temperatures close to 1,000C, silicate vapour would rise up, cool and form microscopic grains of sand, too small to see. Eventually, these clouds of sand dust would become dense enough that they begin to rain back down to the lower layers of the atmosphere. Below a certain level, the sand would sublime back into vapour, completing the cycle.

“The clouds would be like a hazy dust,” said Decin. “And these sand particles are streaming around at extremely high velocity. A few kilometres per second.”

A central aim of the James Webb space telescope is to analyse the atmospheres of distant planets and search for… life. Wasp-107b is not… a likely candidate, given its 1,000˚C climate and lack of a solid surface. 

CLIMATE OF HERE

A Reason commenter , TJJ2000   16 November, has asked:

"The real question….

What climate change has really occurred?"

This  familiar Department of Agriculture map has the answer:

and adds a decade to this climate change animation:

WHO SPIKED THE CLUB OF ROME REPORT?

Hic cumque fustum Romano eques viridis percussit

As climatologists, diplomats and demonstrators converge on Dubai for COP28, a 1548 account of a debate between proponents of linear 'Aristotelian' and exponential 'Hockey Stick' theories of climate change in the Renaissance has surfaced in the Vatican archives. 

Lacking computer models, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V elected to end the dispute with a Trial By Combat by arming the  disputants with physical approximations of the two dueling climate theories.

The Calvinist Climate Consistory fielded the Puritan Sir Edward Coke, wielding a monotonic straight spiked cudgel, while the Pope's  champion, The Green Knight of Malta, was armed with a primeval form of hockey stick, the Club of Rome. 

Who won remains obscure, as both combattants were knocked senseless, and the Inquisition redacted The Club of Rome Report in 1602, amidst controversy over the carbon footprint of burning Giovanni Bruno  at the stake, on suspicion of materialism and hyping the Little Ice Age.

  

THE AMBASSADOR OF THE REPUBLIC OF ENTOMOPHAGY

 

    Join The Explorers Club on Monday, November 20th to learn about the interdisciplinary movement working to spread awareness and acceptance of eating insects !

Edible Insect Ambassador Joseph Yoon is a world renowned chef and thought leader in entomophagy, or eating insects

NEWSMAX WARMS TO GLOBAL COOLING GRIFT

        GIVE NEWSMAX MONEY AND GET A FREE COPY OF

Featuring the best efforts of pseudoscientist turned survival food grifter John Casey to scare viewers into doubling down on marked-up canned goods to survive the big chill of  "solar hibernation" .

As the  Wikipedia says:

the central theory presented in Casey's Cold Sun and Dark Winter... revolves around the belief that industrial carbon dioxide emissions are not large enough to cause a change in the Earth's climate and that climate change is entirely impacted by the Sun…Casey… emphasizes the importance of sunspot patterns in determining the sun's effect on earth's climate. He believes that… a drastic cycle change will lead to the severe cooling of the earth.

[T]he period of warmth and prosperity, according to his calculation, is on the brink of ending.

Though Casey has competition from an Australian Global cooling hedge fund, he's not the only covid&climate crank on the channel's roster.

A 2021  tweet from Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson condemned Moderna's COVID vaccine as the "Mark of the Beast", because was made using a clearly Satanic chemical,  luciferase, "so that you can be tracked." 

Never mind that "Lucifer " means light-bearer in Latin, and hence the name of the day-glow molecule used as a tag in pharmaceutical R&D.

 Instead of telling them to  Google 'luciferase', Robinson sent out an apocalyptic "Dear Christians" tweet beseeching her half million followers to check out 'Lucifer' in the Book of Revelation.

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MEAT ALLERGY TICK HAILED AS VEGAN CLIMATE HERO

A  TICK- ASSOCIATED  ALLERGY  TO RED  MEAT There is no treatment, and many patients must alter their diet for years. Reactions range from diarrhea to hives to anaphylactic shock.

CAN BARBIE & CAPTAIN PLANET SMASH THE CISCLIMATE PATRIARCHY AND END GLOBAL BOILING ?

Yale Climate 360 The climate is changing, and our journalists are here to help you make sense of it. 

Hollywood: Bring back Captain Planet

The climate needs a superhero now more than ever

by RWAIDA GHARIB

It happens every time a superhero goes into hiding: In their absence,

a world falls apart… Crime is rampant, the sky is ominous, and disaster

looms... since the “disappearance” of Captain Planet, the Earth’s climate

has gotten dangerously hotter. Wildfires across the globe are out of 

control, oceans are boiling, and weather disasters are devastating the planet. 

But in the years that broke temperature records for the hottest ever 

recorded, our hero is nowhere to be seen... 

In Captain Planet’s absence, both fictional and nonfictional narratives are

often dominated by doomsday undertones with plots that frequently take 

place in a dystopian sci-fi version of a scorched planet… This genre of 

programming fails to create the world we’d like to see. That contributes to

rising psychological distress over climate change — and a widespread 

attitude that it’s too late to solve the problem. We can and should write a better ending. 

Entertainment can be a powerful advocacy tool for climate and behavior

change and shifting public opinion... We saw this  with the  “ Will and Grace effect ,” which  helped  reduce homophobia and familiarize audiences with LGBT issues… And we saw it once more this year,  in a  collective smash of the patriarchy  through the 

new Barbie movie. 

Yale University "Public Voices on the Climate Crisis" Fellow 

Rwaida Gharib served the Obama Administration in multiple capacities

TRUMP MAY DROP PRESIDENTIAL RACE TO HOST GREEN APPRENTICE ON NBC

President Biden has created an apprentice program, the American Climate Corps, to "mobilize a new diverse generation of more than 20,000 Americans, putting them to work conserving and restoring our lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, deploying clean energy, implementing clean energy technologies and advancing environmental justice, 

all while creating pathways to high-quality, good-paying clean energy and climate resilience jobs in the public and private sectors after they complete their paid training program."

The Executive Order's  pork sausage menu includes

• Investing in Pre-Apprenticeships and Registered Apprenticeships through the Department of Labor YouthBuild program including supporting pre-apprenticeships that will educate and train young people in green initiatives. 
• Investing in Pre-Apprenticeship Programs through the Department of Energy Career Skills Training Program to pay for… the 21st Century Energy Workforce Advisory Board, which is charged with advising the Secretary of Energy in developing a strategy for the Department of Energy to support and develop a skilled energy workforce, including—among other goals—prioritizing effective education and job training for underrepresented groups and socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals.
• Expanding the Indian Youth Service Corps: This week the Department of the Interior announced a $15 million commitment through President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda to expand the Indian Youth Service Corps and other programs supporting the next generation of conservation and climate stewards… With funding from the Inflation Reduction Act

THE GAS OF LIFE: THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

 SPY CAMS REVEAL GRIM REALITY OF SLAUGHTERHOUSE GAS CHAMBERS:

AT 4 AM one morning in October of last year, animal rights activist Raven Deerbrook sat... in East Los Angeles, looking at a live video feed... from three pinhole infrared cameras she’d hidden in the Farmer John meatpacking plant 20 miles away, owned by Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the world… anticipating and dreading what her cameras were about to reveal. 

A day earlier, Deerbrook snuck into the slaughterhouse with a fake uniform and badge and climbed 26 feet underground into a “stunning chamber”—essentially a three-story-deep elevator shaft designed to be filled with carbon dioxide.

 Here, pigs in cages are lowered into the shaft’s invisible swimming pool of suffocating, heavier-than-air CO2, where the animals asphyxiate over a matter of minutes before being dumped out of the chamber onto a conveyor belt, hung up, drained of blood, and butchered.

Deerbrook had hidden one camera pointed at that chamber from the plant’s wall. She’d mounted two more with microphones on the car-sized cages within. When she’d tried to descend further down the shaft’s ladder, a burning “air hunger” from residual CO2 in the chamber had forced her to climb out again, gasping for breath, unable to plant her remaining cameras..

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