A legacy industry selling outmoded outmoded, hazardous products and facing cascading energy modernization sticks to what it knows works-- deceit-- and creates a communications challenge for politicians. Puzzle: how to talk effectively in an atmosphere of intentionally created deep confusion?

''Fossil fuel industry interests have long sought to polarize the public over the phrase “climate change.” As one of us, Geoffrey Henderson, discusses in his new book, “Getting to Work on Climate Policy: The Strategy of Labor-Environmental Coalitions,” campaigns pitting economic concerns against environmental ones have made it harder to build support for policies meant to slow climate change.

When it comes to talking about climate change today, three distinct camps of Democratic candidates and officeholders reveal three different strategies.''

https://theconversation.com/how-candidates-are-quietly-talking-about-climate-change-3-election-strategies-youll-see-across-the-us-293687

#ClimateChange

Why are we seeing increasingly vigorous attacks on the science of climate change impact attribution? Conclusions from this research increasingly appear in law courts, where plaintiffs can more confidently establish the causes for harms demanding redress as a matter of law. These cases are globe-spanning threat to various actors with a lot of revenue to defend and highly evolved playbooks for confusing the public.

''In Casquejo and others v. Shell plc and another (the Odette case), Filipino survivors of Super Typhoon Odette are suing Shell in the courts of England and Wales under Philippine law. Indonesian residents of Pari Island are suing Holcim in Switzerland for compensation, emissions reductions, and support for adaptation. Thirty-nine Pakistani farmers affected by flooding in 2022 have brought a damages claim in Germany against RWE and Heidelberg Materials. Together, these cases connect climate impacts in highly vulnerable Asian communities with corporate conduct, emissions, and legal forums elsewhere, and they illustrate why a forum-only case count cannot capture the region’s full legal reach.''

https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2026/10/19/charting-climate-litigation-in-asia-emerging-cases-strategies-and-frontiers/

#ClimateChange

Fortunately state governments are continuing where the federal government has been set up to fail:

''In just a few decades, summers in California will not only be much hotter, but will also stretch for months longer. Floods will become more widespread and extreme. Exposure to wildfire smoke will kill thousands more people every year.

Those are the dire projections of California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment, a report produced by California every few years that analyzes the impacts of changing weather patterns on the nation’s most-populous state.

The future laid out in the report, which was published on Monday, touches on familiar warnings: more wildfires, bigger storms, longer droughts. But it illustrates in unsettling detail just how quickly the climate is being reshaped, and reveals what is likely to be major upheaval to long-established ways of life in California.''

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/19/us/california-climate-change-warning.html?unlocked_article_code=1.J1E.7IxC.o8YfOWbaAXqK

Climate change impacts can be found in unexpected places:

''Xiaofeng Zhao et al. ask the important question of whether there exists a signal of climate change in the statistics of ducting and then address that question using 85 years of ERA5 reanalysis, carefully distinguishing that signal from any derived from transient global circulation regimes (for example, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Arctic Oscillation). The study finds that there is a robust, long-term increase in the probability, strength and top height of these ducts over low- to mid-latitude oceans. The authors map these statistical changes in ducting back to ocean warming yielding greater evaporation, thus increasing low-level upwards moisture flux and warming the upper atmospheric boundary layer through diabatic processes and increasing its stability, thus suppressing vertical mixing and steepening vertical M gradients.''

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-026-02782-y

#ClimateChange

'Against the worrisome backdrop of a steep drop in newsroom jobs, 38 climate and environment reporters gathered at Flathead Lake Biological Station, in Montana, in early October for two days of in-depth talks. Representing big metro dailies, national print and radio outlets, and nonprofit pioneers, we had an impossibly large task: discuss the future of climate journalism.''

https://www.circleofblue.org/2026/opinion/who-will-pay-for-climate-reporting/

#ClimateChange

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, October 11, 2026 thru Sat, October 17, 2026.

- Climate Science and Research (6 items)
- Climate Policy and Politics (5 items)
- Climate Change Impacts (4 items)
- Climate Education and Communication (3 items)
- Miscellaneous (3 items)
- Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions (2 items)
- Climate Law and Justice (1 item)
- Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (1 item)
- Geoengineering (1 item)
- Health Aspects of Climate Change (1 item)
- Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science (1 item)

https://skepticalscience.com/2026-SkS-Weekly-News-Roundup_42.html

#ClimateChange

Esteemed meteorologist and climate change communicator Jeff Masters:

''The best climate change documentary I’ve ever seen needs your help to get to the finish line. Aiming for a release in early 2027, “Weather Under Fire” follows meteorologist Chris Gloninger as he reports on the link between extreme weather and climate change on Iowa’s local news station, KCCI — until he upsets powerful special interests. He and his family receive death threats, forcing him to abandon his dream job. Now in its final editing process, the film has exhausted its funding and needs donations to pay for the creation of the finished product.''

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/10/weather-under-fire-the-climate-change-film-weve-been-waiting-for/

#ClimateChange

'One way researchers attempt to estimate the costs of climate change is by comparing an actual extreme weather event to a hypothetical scenario in which climate change wasn’t a factor. Extreme event impact attribution (EEIA) uses these comparisons to estimate the damages and costs associated with climate change. But multiple versions of EEIA exist: A frequency-change approach asks how much more likely an event was made by climate change, whereas an intensity-change approach asks how much more damaging an event was made by climate change.

These approaches can produce vastly different estimates of the costs of climate change. For example, 2017’s Hurricane Harvey caused an estimated $90 billion in damages. A frequency-change approach estimated that 75 percent of these costs could be associated with climate change, but an intensity-change approach put the estimate at only 15 percent. If the two estimates were expected to agree, then this large discrepancy would seem to imply that at least one of the methods has technical limitations or is not theoretically valid.

To determine whether a method is theoretically valid, Match et al. introduce the framework of consistency. A method is consistent if, when applied to a group of events over time, the total costs attributed to climate change by EEIA match the actual excess costs incurred.''

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/the-ambiguous-costs-of-climate-change

#ClimateChange

'Scientists have discovered that some forest soils are becoming surprisingly better at removing methane from the atmosphere as temperatures rise and rainfall declines. A study spanning up to 24 years found methane absorption increasing by an average of 3 percent annually, challenging previous predictions about climate change's effects on forests.''

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261014015525.htm

#ClimateChange

Polls show that Democrats and Republicans in battleground states want to hear more from candidates about the climate crisis

Most Americans feel unease or alarm about the climate crisis and, in both red and blue states, want to know how political leaders are going to fix it. But in midterm election campaigns across the US, candidates have responded to this desire with near silence.

People in the US have this year endured a record hot summer as well as soaring costs, equating to roughly $2,000 per household, in extra energy and mortgage payments, due to the country’s dependence on a fossil fuel supply scrambled by Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

Yet the unfolding climate crisis, and the imperative to transition to cleaner, less volatile forms of energy, has been starkly absent on campaign trails before the midterms in three weeks’ time. Even among previously pro-green Democrats, 2026 has seen a widespread climate omerta.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/16/midterms-voters-climate-crisis-candidates

#ClimateChange

#ClimateChange

Polls show that Democrats and Republicans in battleground states want to hear more from candidates about the climate crisis

Most Americans feel unease or alarm about the climate crisis and, in both red and blue states, want to know how political leaders are going to fix it. But in midterm election campaigns across the US, candidates have responded to this desire with near silence.

People in the US have this year endured a record hot summer as well as soaring costs, equating to roughly $2,000 per household, in extra energy and mortgage payments, due to the country’s dependence on a fossil fuel supply scrambled by Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

Yet the unfolding climate crisis, and the imperative to transition to cleaner, less volatile forms of energy, has been starkly absent on campaign trails before the midterms in three weeks’ time. Even among previously pro-green Democrats, 2026 has seen a widespread climate omerta.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/16/midterms-voters-climate-crisis-candidates

#ClimateChange

Yale University professor of finance Stefano Giglio taps us on the shoulder about the other kind of ''green:''

'We’re going to have potentially significant damages coming from climate change. There are real risks from biodiversity loss, too, though they are less well studied, especially in economics and finance. And we’re just starting to see how these twin crises can amplify each other. Whether it’s buying a house, running a business, or designing policy, to be ready to live and work in the real world today, we need to understand these risks.''

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-finance-can-tell-us-about-the-twin-crises-of-climate-change-and-biodiversity-loss

#ClimateChange

Public policy on energy may seem inexplicable unless it's viewed from a systems perspective including money spent on influence by the fossil fuel industry. We can't draw hard conclusions from seeing the bigger picture, but we do find plausible possible explanations for what otherwise appears to be insanity.

''These projects often provide multiple benefits to participants. First, they can help lower utility bills for agricultural producers and rural businesses by providing their operations with additional power. But farmers and business owners are also able to sell excess energy back to the grid. By cutting costs or padding revenue, these systems can be a lifeline at a time when farmers are facing escalating costs for things like fertilizer, fuel, labor, and seeds, making it difficult to make ends meet.

Research shows investing in renewable energy can also be an economic driver in rural parts of the country. “All of these things lined up,” said Matt Russell, the executive director of the Iowa Farmers Union, an independent organization representing family farmers. So for the Trump administration to “shift away from those kinds of win-win-win investments is very disappointing,” he added.''

https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/solar-panels-farms-trump-reap-rural-energy-for-america-program-changes/

#ClimateChange

We’re living in an age of constant information: tweets, headlines, reels, reports. It’s everywhere, all the time. But here’s the challenge: not all of it is true. Some of it is intentionally misleading. A lot is AI-generated. From outright climate denial to more subtle greenwashing, disinformation is not just a digital nuisance – it’s a real threat.

Disinformation is false, fabricated or manipulated information that intends to deceive, while misinformation is false or misleading information shared without the intent to deceive.

https://theconversation.com/five-types-of-disinformation-and-how-to-spot-red-flags-that-trigger-climate-inaction-278588

#ClimateChange

From crop failures to coral bleaching, a new tool developed by climate scientists aims to predict in detail the impacts of each megatonne of carbon emissions

The emissions from a single coalmine expansion might not seem like a lot when compared with the scale of global emissions, which are measured in gigatonnes (that’s one thousand million tonnes).

However, scientists have been saying for years that every tonne of carbon dioxide adds to global warming, and every fraction of a degree increase matters.

Now, a group of climate scientists have released a new tool that shows the possible consequences of those emissions in detail. The Carbon Impacts Tracer uses peer-reviewed studies to estimate the impact of every megatonne of emissions on people and the environment.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/16/just-what-damage-can-the-emissions-from-a-new-fossil-fuel-facility-cause-a-new-tool-has-estimates

#ClimateChange

This week's collection includes 143 academic research papers plus 16 government/NGO reports.

Extra interesting:

* Fingerprint Evidence for Human Effects on Climate: Advances After the 2009 Endangerment Finding

* Extreme Heat and Rainfall Risk Attributed to Cumulative CO2 Emissions From Fossil Fuel Producers

* Record-setting heavy precipitation occurrence in 2024

* A recent doubling of global warming rate signals a 1.5 °C breach by 2028

* Learning from young conservatives: Increasing pro-environmental behavior change and climate policy support in the United States

* Spinning Renewable Success Into a Climate Conspiracy: Co-opting the climate science story of RCP8.5

* Manufacturing Petropopulism: Exposing the secretive network of front groups shilling for Big Oil in Canada

* The AI Gas Rush: Risks and Implications of “Bring Your Own Power”

https://skepticalscience.com/new_research_2026_42.html

#ClimateChange

War isn't over when a battle is won:

''My concern is that the promise of an eventual return could encourage an incomplete understanding of recovery. A temperature target can help guide policy, but it cannot tell us everything about the condition of a coastline, the security of a food supply, or a community’s ability to return to current conditions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds that overshoot brings additional risks, some involving many irreversible impacts and associated consequences, which will have increased in magnitude and duration. In practical terms, how hot the planet becomes and how long it stays that way both matter. An eventual decline would not make the intervening years inconsequential.''

https://www.newsweek.com/climate-overshoot-research-needs-investment-in-young-scientists-12571489

#ClimateChange

Find your climate shadow. It stretches further than you think.

Writer Emma Pattee first coined the term 'climate shadow' to describe influence beyond what you emit. It includes who you vote for, where you work, how you invest, what behaviour you normalise and how often you make climate action visible in everyday life.

As consumers, we make choices about what we buy, use and eat. Through our careers, we influence how organisations operate, where money is invested and what gets prioritised. And as citizens, we can vote, speak up, join organisations and help move the Overton Window – the boundaries of what is politically possible. Where we focus our attention, what we talk about and what we make normal all influence others.

https://www.climatetrunk.com/infographics/your-climate-shadow-superpower

#ClimateChange

In newly reported deposition testimony, a company scientist calls Exxon’s claims “patently false”—and says he warned them before they went public.

If you read, watched, or listened to any news in 2018 and 2019, you almost certainly came across Exxon’s ads for algae biofuel.

They were everywhere: in TV commercials, in print ads and digital banners, and in a New York Times paid post about “The Future of Energy.” They all promoted the idea that Exxon was helping to solve climate change by turning green algae into a renewable, sustainable fuel source that could one day replace petroleum.

Between 2017 and 2019, the company spent $60 million airing just three algae commercials, including during the World Series and NBA championships. So we can only imagine how much they spent on all the algae ads cumulatively across platforms.

https://heated.world/p/exxon-scientist-says-the-company

#ClimateChange