Tonight’s news awaits your comments. Everyone is encouraged to share their 2¢ or articles, stories, and tweets. This is an open thread.
The richest Americans account for 40 percent of U.S. climate emissions
The Washington Post
The richest 10 percent of U.S. households are responsible for 40 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study released Thursday in PLOS Climate. The study, which looked at how a household’s income generated emissions, underlines the stark divide between those who benefit most from fossil fuels and those who are most burdened by its effects. […]
“It just seems morally and politically problematic to have one group of people reaping so much benefit from emissions while the poorer groups in society are asked to disproportionately deal with the harms of those emissions,” [Jared Starr, lead author of the study, and] a sustainability scientist at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said. Previous research has shown that extreme weather events made worse because of climate change, from flooding to hurricanes, often have a greater effect on lower-income communities. [...]
They found those who make enough income to be in the top 10 percent of American households are responsible for 40 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. The top 1 percent of households accounted for 15 to 17 percent of the nation’s emissions, with investment holdings making up 38 to 42 percent of their emissions.
Then there were “super-emitters” with extremely high overall greenhouse gas emissions, corresponding to about the top 0.1 percent of households. About 15 days of emissions from a super-emitter was equal to a lifetime of emissions for someone in the poorest 10 percent in America.
Yellowknife evacuation: Finally in the path of fire, one of Canada’s northernmost cities is on the move
The Toronto Star
The southern exodus of the 20,000 residents of Yellowknife, one of Canada’s largest northern cities, was underway Thursday, as adults, children and many pets continued the long, chaotic journey around Geat Slave Lake and then south — out of the path of fire.
In an extraordinary move, those living in the capital of the Northwest Territories and two nearby First Nations have been ordered out by noon Friday as flames continued their approach. More than 200 blazes have forced the retreat of roughly half the population of a subarctic region many southerners associate with tundra and snow. Many fleeing fire have driven around the clock to reach evacuation centres as far south as Calgary, a route that can see dicey conditions and spotty phone reception that is equivalent to driving from Toronto to Quebec City and back.
As the Northwest Territories premier told media when the evacuation order was announced on Wednesday night: “We’re all tired of the word ‘unprecedented,’ yet there is no other way to describe the situation.” The fire is about 16 kilometres away from the capital’s northern outskirts.
What's driving the powerful wildfires in the Northwest Territories
CBC News
Wildfires raging in the Northwest Territories have prompted an evacuation order for the entire capital city of Yellowknife, along with several other smaller communities. There are more than 230 active fires in the territory, including three near the capital. […]
The Northwest Territories, a vast expanse of boreal forest and tundra, are in the middle of an unusually dry summer that began with an unusually hot spring.
"It's been dry and some of these fires have been burning since May," said Mike Flannigan, a professor and wildfire expert at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C. […]
Across Canada, climate change is making wildfires more powerful, particularly in the North. Northern Canada and other Arctic regions are warming at three to four times the rate of the rest of the globe, and that means those areas are likely to see even more fires.
"A warmer world means more fire, and longer fire seasons," Flannigan said.
Hurricane Hilary could bring ‘very heavy’ rains, winds, surf to California. ‘Really an unusual event’
Los Angeles Times
A storm brewing off Mexico’s Pacific coast and threatening Southern California and the southwestern U.S. was upgraded Thursday morning to hurricane strength.
Forecasters warn that it’s still too soon to confirm when — or if — Hurricane Hilary might make landfall, and how strong the system could become. But current projections show it could reach the Baja California peninsula by late Sunday, potentially bringing significant rain, rough surf and dangerous winds.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty with the storm track and the intensity of the storm, but we will likely see some impacts,” said Eric Boldt, the warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. […]
It’s “really an unusual event overall,” Boldt said.
Amid Maui Fire Devastation, Big Oil Tries to Kill Hawaii Climate Lawsuit
Common Dreams
As the Hawaiian island of Maui is reeling from the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century, the Hawaii Supreme Court on Thursday is set to hear fossil fuel giants' request to dismiss a climate liability lawsuit filed by the City and County of Honolulu on Oahu.
Honolulu leaders sued companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Sunono in March 2020. Just seven months later, Maui County followed suit, launching a case against those and other Big Oil firms. Both complaints mention worsening wildfires.
Fire exposes flaws in Hawaii’s defenses against climate shocks
The New York Times via Honolulu Star Advertiser
The devastation from the wildfire on Maui, the deadliest in the United States in more than a century, reveals the flaws in Hawaii’s efforts to adapt to climate change — and points to ways the state can better protect residents from future fires.
That list of shortcomings includes leaving huge areas of land covered in highly flammable invasive grasses; failing to adopt wildfire-resistant building standards; and shutting down dams, reducing the island’s ability to store water.
“There are very serious questions about how we maintain resiliency and sustainability with the increasing prevalence of climate-related disasters,” state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole said. “People are going to, probably rightly, say we should have been better prepared.”
Hawaii pledges to protect Maui homeowners from predatory land grabs after wildfires: "Not going to allow it"
CBS News
As the ongoing response to last week's devastating wildfires ramps up on Maui, the Hawaiian governor has vowed again to work with government officials to prevent residents from falling prey to opportunistic and potentially predatory offers to buy their land.
"My intention from start to finish is to make sure that no one is victimized from a land grab that we do not suffer predation against those who are suffering," Gov. Josh Green said Wednesday. Green told reporters that he has directed the state attorney general to work toward imposing a moratorium on the sale of Maui properties that were either damaged or destroyed in the blazes.
Officials previously estimated that about 2,200 structures— most of them residential — were impacted by the fires, which tore through parts of West Maui and the island's inland Upcountry region and hit Lahaina, a commercial and cultural center, particularly hard, with the governor suggesting last week that at least 80% of the historic coastal town had been decimated.
Record heat boosting wildfire risk in Pacific Northwest
NPR News
A record heat wave in the Pacific Northwest has prompted fire managers to bump the national preparedness level up a notch, from three to four on a five point scale. More than two dozen large fires are now burning in the region, many sparked by dry thunderstorms. […]
The Northwest and far northern California have been baking in triple digit heat all week, with extremely low humidity. Dreaded dry thunderstorms have brought a lot of wind and new ignitions from lightning strikes, but very little rain.
For context, though, only about 1.6 million acres have burned so far this year, only about a third of the ten year average according to [the National Interagency Fire Center].
Fire managers say with climate change, things feel pretty flipped upside down right now. It's the middle of August and yet the worst wildfires so far this year have happened in the tropics and near the Arctic.
Cities Aren’t Supposed to Burn Like This Anymore—Especially Lahaina
Wired
[…] “We thought urban fires had gone away, that San Francisco in 1906 was the last. And now they’ve come back,” says fire historian Stephen Pyne. “It’s like watching polio come back. We fixed this. But you have to maintain the hygiene—you have to keep up the vaccinations.” […]
We don’t have to discover the vaccine against wildfires in such an interface—it’s already known. Massive urban fires waned in the 20th century because of better building codes, and infrastructure is still important today. When high winds kick up, they jostle power lines and can spark fires. Electrical equipment malfunctions were the confirmed causes of the Camp and Tubbs fires, among other recent blazes. While officials are still investigating what ignited the wildfire that consumed Lahaina, there’s speculation that it was also electrical wires. While it’s expensive to bury power lines, such an investment could go a long way toward saving structures and human lives.
And in the modern day, another big factor is managing potential fuels: In places like California, that means clearing dead brush. In Hawaii, it’s those invasive grasses. Because humans are such an unpredictable X factor in sparking fires—with a wayward firework or cigarette—it’s paramount that when people make mistakes, there’s less fuel to burn.
Death tolls mount in the ‘summer of heat’
E&E News — Climate Wire
The air conditioner technician arrived at the Baytown, Texas, mobile home as the medical examiner was removing the bodies.
Ramona and Monway Ison’s air conditioner had broken earlier in the week, but the retired couple living on a fixed income couldn’t afford the $1,600 repair. It took three days for Ramona Ison, 71, to secure a loan from the credit union by putting her car up as collateral.
The money came too late. The pair were found dead, along with their terrier, Belle, in mid-June, just days into what has since become a two-month-long heat wave in the Southwest with few signs of relief.
The high-pressure system that parked over the central and southern United States starting in June, blanketing Arizona and Texas in sweltering heat and humidity, sent people to emergency rooms across the region. Extreme daytime temperatures have led to hot nights — a lack of relief that health experts say puts the elderly, outdoor workers and people without air conditioning at greatest risk of severe heat-related illnesses.
By summer’s end, experts expect the heat will lead to thousands of deaths in the United States, higher numbers than in previous years.
Meteorologist Is Naming Heatwaves After Big Polluting Oil Companies
Kottke
Right now, the Portland, OR area is suffering through a heat wave, with high temperatures some 20-25°F above normal. Earlier this year, meteorologist Guy Walton began naming North American heatwaves after oil companies:
Obviously, I'm naming heatwaves to highlight this worsening climate problem and perhaps save lives by getting the public to focus on this weather threat. This year I'm naming major heatwaves after oil companies to shame them in the process and to identify culprits that are exacerbating these deadly systems.
Portland's hot spell, the fourth heatwave of the summer, is named Heatwave Citgo...having been preceded by Heatwave Amoco, Heatwave BP, and Heatwave Chevron.
More rain, less snow are turning Himalayas dangerous
BBC News
A new study has found that mountains across the globe, including the Himalayas, are now seeing more rainfall at elevations where it has mostly snowed in the past.
The change has made the mountains more dangerous, scientists say, as increased temperatures not only bring rain but also accelerate melting of snow and ice. The rainwater also loosens the soil resulting in landslides, rockfalls, floods and debris-flows.
"Our findings provide several lines of evidence demonstrating a warming-induced amplification of rainfall extremes at high altitudes, specifically in snow-dominated regions of the Northern Hemisphere," says the study, published in June in the Nature journal.
Sea temperatures lead to unprecedented, dangerous bleaching of Florida’s coral reef
AP News
The coral reef off southeast Florida is experiencing an unprecedented and potentially deadly level of bleaching this summer because of rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change, federal scientists said Thursday.
Some sites around the Florida Keys are being exposed to twice the amount of heat stress that causes corals to die, and earlier in the year than ever before, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a telephone news conference. They said the phenomenon is likely to affect the Caribbean very soon and a global bleaching event could be just around the corner.
“We are quite concerned and worried and stressed about this event,” said Ian Enochs, a research ecologist at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory. “It’s not a normal thing.”
Trump supporters post names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors online
NBC News
The purported names and addresses of members of the grand jury that indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his co-defendants on state racketeering charges this week have been posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric…
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment. District Attorney Fani Willis faced racist threats ahead of the return of the indictment, and additional security measures were put in place, with some employees being allowed to work from home.
The grand jurors' purported addresses were spotted by Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan research group founded by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator and staffer for the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
“It’s becoming all too commonplace to see everyday citizens performing necessary functions for our democracy being targeted with violent threats by Trump-supporting extremists," Jones said. "The lack of political leadership on the right to denounce these threats — which serve to inspire real-world political violence — is shameful.”
Top Georgia Republicans dismiss pro-Trump calls to change pardon rules
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s most powerful Republican politicians rejected pro-Donald Trump calls to change the state constitution to give the governor direct authority to pardon those convicted of crimes.
Far-right Trump supporters have pressed Gov. Brian Kemp and other GOP leaders to pursue an overhaul of pardon rules after the former president was charged this week with orchestrating a far-ranging “criminal enterprise” to overturn his defeat in Georgia’s 2020 election.
Such a move would involve a constitutional amendment, which requires a two-thirds vote in the General Assembly and support from a majority of voters in a referendum. It can’t pass without significant Democratic support, rendering it a political impossibility.
Ken Paxton used burner phones, fake Uber name in cover-up, impeachment lawyers allege
Dallas Morning News
Ken Paxton gave Nate Paul“unfettered access” to the Texas Attorney General’s office that the developer “harnessed to harass his enemies,” according to new details in a series of documents filed by House impeachment managers on Tuesday.
Paxton repeatedly abused his power to help Paul fight a federal investigation into his businesses and then the attorney general masked his behavior by using burner phones and a secret personal email address, according to the managers, who will argue in a trial next month that Paxton should be removed from office.
In the documents, the managers revealed never-before-seen evidence of a payment for Paxton’s home remodel that they said shows Paul bribed Paxton and facilitated Paxton’s alleged extramarital affair by creating a fake Uber account he could use to visit the woman at her Austin condo.
Ukraine struggles to curb corruption in its military
Deutsche Welle
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired all regional military recruitment chiefs due to allegations of widespread graft. Ahead of the drastic move, all recruitment offices in Ukraine had been audited. According to the State Investigation Bureau, a total of 112 criminal cases were opened against representatives of recruitment offices, with 33 cases of suspected misconduct and 15 lawsuits launched.
"This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason," Zelenskyy said after meeting with the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
Going forward, Zelenskyy said, all recruitment chiefs will be replaced by "soldiers who have been at the front or who cannot be in the trenches because they have lost their health, lost their limbs."
Cargo ship from Ukraine reaches Turkey despite Russian blockade
France24
A civilian cargo ship sailing from Ukraine reached Istanbul on Thursday in defiance of a Moscow blockade that saw another ship come under attack from Russian military personnel. Earlier in the day, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country would need weapons from the West "until we have won" the war against Russia. […]
The Hong Kong-flagged Joseph Schulte left the port of Odesa on Wednesday – the first vessel to directly challenge Russia’s bid to block Ukraine's ability to export via the Black Sea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the ship was using a “new humanitarian corridor” that Kyiv established after Russia last month scuppered an agreement that had allowed Ukraine to export grain and foodstuffs.
The Joseph Schulte’s [voyage] came days after the Russian navy fired warning shots and boarded a small Turkish-crewed cargo ship that was travelling to the Ukrainian port of Izmail. […]
Turkey warned Moscow to avoid further escalations… , President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office said Thursday.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive inches forward, with the help of cluster bombs
CNN
Ukrainian marines have advanced for the second time in two weeks on the southeastern frontlines, towards the key port city of Mariupol, with the recapture of the village of Urozhaine appearing to have been partially aided by the Ukrainian use of controversial cluster munitions. […]
Dykyi, the callsign of an assault company commander, said of the Russian rout: “Very many died, especially when they started to run.”
The videos show dozens of Russian troops running along an open road, seemingly forced to use the asphalt as the adjacent fields and treelines had been mined. Dykyi said. The Russians also gathered in large numbers in houses which were then hit by artillery.
Military reports progress south of newly liberated Urozhaine, Azov Brigade returns to eastern front line
The Kyiv Independent
Ukrainian forces continue their counteroffensive in three areas in the southeast and east of the country as Russian troops try to reclaim lost positions in some areas along the 1,200-kilometer-long front line.
Russian counterattacks failed near the newly liberated village of Urozhaine in Donetsk Oblast, Colonel Mykola Urshalovych reported… The 35th Separate Marine Brigade and other units reclaimed Urozhaine a day earlier. The General Staff reported an advance down the Mokri Yaly River on Aug. 17.
Urozhaine, which sits alongside the Morki Yaly River south of Velyka Novosilka, is the latest in a string of liberated settlements in the area since Ukraine launched its counteroffensive in early June.
Most of West Africa ready to join standby force in Niger: ECOWAS
Al Jazeera
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has said most of its member states are ready to participate in a standby force that could intervene in Niger following a coup there late last month.
Defence chiefs from the 15-member regional bloc met in Accra on Thursday as part of the latest efforts to overturn the removal of Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s president who was deposed in a July 26 coup.
All member states except those under military rule and Cape Verde are ready to participate in the standby force, ECOWAS commissioner Abdel-Fatau Musah said on Thursday.
90% of Great Lakes water samples have unsafe microplastic levels – report
The Guardian
About 90% of water samples taken over the last 10 years from the Great Lakes contain microplastic levels that are unsafe for wildlife, a new peer-reviewed paper from the University of Toronto finds.
About 20% of those samples are at the highest level of risk, but the study’s authors say the damage can be reversed if the US and Canada quickly act.
“Ninety per cent is a lot,” said Eden Hataley, a University of Toronto researcher and study co-author. “We need to answer some basic questions by monitoring … so we can quantify risks to wildlife and humans.”
The Great Lakes provide drinking water to over 40 million people in the US and Canada, hold about 90% of the US’s freshwater, and are home to 3,500 species of plants and animals.
Raging wildfires may have doomed California’s ancient megamammals, tar pit fossils reveal
Science
[…] Paleontologists have long tried to understand why once-numerous populations of these and other megafauna vanished across North America toward the end of the last ice age. A study published in this issue of Science points to a new catalyst that ties together the two leading hypotheses: human activity and climate change. Each played a role, but fire was the key mediator, the authors argue. In their scenario, when the climate suddenly became warmer and drier toward the end of the last ice age, human-caused blazes grew out of control, permanently altering the landscape—and spelling the end for the animals.
New research shows tsunamis pose ‘rare but real’ threat to Anchorage
Anchorage Daily News
Upending previous understanding of Anchorage’s tsunami vulnerability, researchers said Wednesday that a “rare but real risk” exists that a confluence of conditions could lead an earthquake-produced tsunami to inundate parts of coastal Anchorage, including the Port of Alaska and much of Ship Creek.
The findings, presented by researchers from the Alaska Earthquake Center and the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, are the result of a first-time effort to model earthquake scenarios’ potential tsunami impact on Anchorage.
“A rare combination of earthquake magnitude, location, and timing must be satisfied for tsunami wave energy to reach upper Cook Inlet coincident with a natural high tide,” the study found.
Americans can’t afford their pets. It’s pushing animal shelters to the brink.
Vox
Lonely and stuck at home, millions of Americans turned to animals for comfort in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, adopting and fostering cats and dogs from shelters at record rates. Videos of empty animal shelters went viral; Wired called it “the feel-good pandemic story you need right now.”
“It was a really fun time to be in animal welfare,” said Bobby Mann, chief programs officer of the Humane Rescue Alliance, the largest animal shelter in the Washington, DC, metro area. “We did absolutely see an uptick in adoptions.”
But starting in 2021, shelters began filling back up as there were more animals entering than leaving, and now many are packed to the brim. From Rhode Island to Seattle and everywhere in between, shelters are reporting they’re at capacity, forcing an increase in the number of dogs killed due to space constraints. Earlier this year, almost half of shelters surveyed reported an increase in euthanized dogs, while only 10 percent reported a decrease.
China’s slowing economy, seen from ground level
The Economist
[…] As China’s economy slows, all sorts of moves to hide bad news are growing obvious. The statistics bureau stopped publishing a consumer-confidence index after April numbers fell to levels last seen during the depths of the pandemic. With youth unemployment climbing remorselessly, the same bureau stopped reporting that statistic this week, saying it is reviewing how to count jobless young. Analysts face pressure to be positive. Alas, as with those clumsy, umbrella-wielding guards, such concealment only draws attention to China’s woes.
A number of grim statistics have been made public in recent weeks. These show a sharp fall in new bank loans (despite lower interest rates), disappointing retail sales and fewer property transactions. Compounding domestic gloom, exports are down, too. The common link is a collapse in demand, at home and abroad.
Foshan, a commercial hub of 9.5m people beside the southern megapolis of Guangzhou, is a good place to see a property-driven slowdown on the ground…
Foshan reveals a China sunk in gloom. That is a puzzle for a party obsessed with control. Bad news can be censored and the unhappy hidden from view. Policies can be imposed. But no ruler can order people to feel confident and spend.
Why is China not rushing to fix its ailing economy?
Reuters
With China at risk of tipping into prolonged stagnation and a spiralling property crisis threatening financial stability, there is growing unease over why its leaders are not rushing to revive the world's second-largest economy. […]
The view of several China watchers is that President Xi Jinping's focus on national security is restricting and working counter to the economic effort, scaring off the money Beijing says it is seeking to attract. […]
Others say the Communist Party's ingrained hesitancy towards measures that could shift power from the state to the private sector, and a government stacked with Xi's loyalists, may be stifling the policy debate and stymieing the response. […]
There may be more deep-seated reasons leaders are not rushing with measures to bolster confidence in the private sector, said Xu Chenggang, a scholar at Stanford University's Center on China's Economy and Institutions.
"A perennial fear of the Chinese Communist Party is that it could be overthrown if capitalism and the private economy grow strong enough," said Xu.
The potential effects of a nuclear winter
CBC News
[…] If you're wondering if nuclear winter would stop global warming, you're not alone. It's a question [Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey,] gets all the time. A full-scale nuclear war and a global famine resulting from nuclear winter would lead to the collapse of industrial society and human civilization. Robock said that if the U.S. and Russia had a nuclear war, it would largely halt carbon emissions, since most human activities would have ceased.
"The amount [of carbon] that's in the atmosphere would gradually go down, be absorbed in the ocean — we have about a half a degree or a degree of built-in warming right now, so there would be a little bit of extra, additional warming. But it would basically stop," he said. […]
Clearly, nuclear winter is just about the worst way imaginable to stop global warming. It would replace steady planetary warming with abrupt planetary cooling.
"If you want to solve the global warming problem, the first answer is to just leave the fossil fuels in the ground and stop and use the sun and the wind [for power]," said Robock. "We have enough to power the world."
We Cannot Out-Organize Voter Suppression
Marc Elias @ Democracy Docket
Everywhere you turn these days, free and fair elections are under attack. […]
The terrible truth is that these new voter suppression laws are working. Despite the positive political outcome, turnout among minority and young voters in 2022 was down from previous years. […]
Political pundits have offered lots of reasons for the turnout numbers. Some fault Democrats for failing to invest time and money in connecting with minority and young voters. Others point to the candidates and their messaging.
The most obvious reason for these changes, is the one that few want to discuss — years of Republican voter suppression efforts are succeeding. As Podhorzer recently put it: “Before elections, we can discuss endlessly how different election law changes would advantage one or another party, but it’s taboo to talk about those rule changes after the election unless it’s to disprove that those changes affected the outcome at all.” […]
The myth that citizens can out-organize voter suppression is not just wrong, it is dangerous. It minimizes the real world effects of repeated, targeted suppression laws. It shifts the burden from the suppressors to the voters. It suggests that victims of voter suppression simply need to be better “organized.”
Amy Sherald On Bearing Witness, Social Anxiety, and Finding Respite in Her Work
Colossal
Here’s what painter Amy Sherald (previously) has always known about herself: She was born to be an artist. She was born to bear witness to Black life, painting, in her own words, as a “corrective” to the struggle story that’s often the only one told about Black communities. She was born to fulfill the dreams of her ancestors, particularly her mother who, according to Sherald, “was supposed to be an artist but wasn’t given the opportunity to do so.” And though she didn’t actually say this during our video interview, I’ll add that she was born to bear witness to Michelle Obama and the fullness of the former First Lady’s accomplishment in a single, stunning canvas that captured not just Obama’s vibrance but her deep-seated strength. […]
Paulette Beete: What’s your origin story as an artist?
Amy Sherald: I started drawing when I was too young to remember so I feel like it was my anointing in this life to be an artist. It’s something that I, even at a young age, really wanted to learn. I remember being frustrated when I was like six, five years old, wanting to make a masterpiece, but I didn’t have the skills. My crayons weren’t giving me Leonardo da Vinci. I think that we’re born who we are. So in a lot of ways, I’m still the same person now, still very self-critical, trying very hard to get it right. And I still don’t feel like I’m good enough all the time…
Report: Potential NYT lawsuit could force OpenAI to wipe ChatGPT and start over
Ars Technica
Weeks after The New York Times updated its terms of service (TOS) to prohibit AI companies from scraping its articles and images to train AI models, it appears that the Times may be preparing to sue OpenAI. The result, experts speculate, could be devastating to OpenAI, including the destruction of ChatGPT's dataset and fines up to $150,000 per infringing piece of content.
NPR spoke to two people "with direct knowledge" who confirmed that the Times' lawyers were mulling whether a lawsuit might be necessary "to protect the intellectual property rights" of the Times' reporting.
Neither OpenAI nor the Times immediately responded to Ars' request to comment.
If the Times were to follow through and sue ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, NPR suggested that the lawsuit could become "the most high-profile" legal battle yet over copyright protection since ChatGPT's explosively popular launch. This speculation comes a month after Sarah Silverman joined other popular authors suing OpenAI over similar concerns, seeking to protect the copyright of their books.