• YouTube, despite pledge to do better, keeps promoting disinformation videos denying climate science:
A new report by the global activist NGO Avaaz reveals that, despite YouTube’s pledge to combat misinformation, the popular video site owned by Google has failed to crack down on this problem when it comes to climate change. Videos containing false or misleading information on climate change continue to reach millions of users through YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. Furthermore, ads — including those from major brands and environmental groups — displayed on these videos provide a monetary incentive, not only to YouTube, but to the videos’ creators to keep promoting fringe theories contrary to scientific reality.
“We found that YouTube is driving millions of people to watch climate misinformation videos every day,” Avaaz writes in its report, titled “Why is YouTube Broadcasting Climate Misinformation to Millions?” “YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is giving these videos free promotion and showing misinformation to millions who wouldn’t have been exposed to it otherwise.”
• Never-Trumpers fail to file for GOP presidential primaries in several states: Proving what a faint effect they will have on the the 2020 elections, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh wanted to weaken and embarrass Donald Trump with primary challenges, but both of them have missed filing deadlines in several states. Walsh won’t be on the ballot in at least half the 30 states and territories where those deadlines have passed. Weld won’t be contesting the primary in 12 of those states. The latest bad news for their effort to ding Trump in the primaries came Wednesday when both Walsh and Weld missed the Virginia ballot filing deadline. Even the most optimistic foes of Trump in either party knew from the outset that the two men’s quixotic efforts would go nowhere. The amount of money each has raised is pitiful. As of the latest filing in December, Walsh had raised about $236,000 in campaign cash, and Weld had raised $1.3 million, 14% of which he contributed himself, according to OpenSecrets.
• Renewable-energy advocates sue Wisconsin regulators for anti-solar bias: In their 13-page petition, the environmental advocates of Renew Wisconsin, the Environmental Law & Policy Center of the Sierra Club, and the Oakland-based Vote Solar claim that state regulators are hurting utility customers by allowing the Wisconsin’s major utility company to pay less for power generated from rooftop solar than other sources. The groups say that “federal and state law prohibits discriminatory treatment of renewable energy generation owned by customers of a monopoly utility, compared to how the monopoly utility’s generation is treated.” The petition continues: “The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin on a vote of two-to-one, established prices for electricity generated by non-utility energy facilities (such as rooftop solar) that are significantly lower than the effective price allowed for equivalent electricity from utility-owned generation. That decision violates the law.”
MIDDAY TWEET
• AP fact-checks Trump’s “biggest” and “best” ever claims—finds fabrications galore: It seems that at least one of these claims is made just about every day, from the economy being the best ever, the tax cuts being the biggest ever, his election victory margin being the biggest ever. It just goes on and on. All concoctions. The latest have to do with the trade deals with China and North America. On Thursday, Trump said of the China agreement, “I did the biggest deal ever done in the history of our country yesterday in terms of trade—and probably other things too, if you think about it.” The AP’s Calvin Woodward and Hope Yen call BS on the claim: “The Montreal Protocol, aimed at protecting Earth’s ozone layer, was ratified by every member state of the United Nations. A variety of other agreements—on the rights of children, world health standards, droughts—achieved nearly universal ratification. More than 190 countries signed the Paris accord on climate change, of which more than 180 have ratified it. The U.S. is pulling out of it.” Trump might be able to make a couple of legit “biggest ever” claims if we’re talking about his lies and his ego.
• Four coastal Louisiana tribes file complaint with U.N. over U.S. failure to act on climate crisis: The tribes filed their complaint Wednesday. They say that sea-level rise and coastal subsidence is drowning tribal burial sites. Additional land loss threatens the tribes' source of food, said Shirell Parfait-Dardar, chief of the Grand Caillou and Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians. "It looks like our community could be gone in 20 years," she said. "We’re not only losing our homeland. We lose so much more than that. We lose our culture. We lose our identity."
• California legislators say a temporary cut in pot taxes is necessary because the industry is “on the brink of collapse”: Talk about cutting the tax has been making the rounds for some time, but Gov. Gavin Newsom has previously expressed opposition to reducing it so soon after recreational marijuana was legalized. Now, he seems on the verge of changing his mind. One estimate puts continuing black market pot sales in the state at 75% of the total. California’s legal market has grown far slower than predicted, something critics chalk up to high taxes, red tape, and a ban on pot shops by three-fourths three-quarters of California cities.