Question

there is lots of 还是there are

Answer 1

a lot of即可以用is也可以用are，比如下面两个例子

1 a lot of后面是可数名词的单数或者不可数名词，用is
There is a lot of information.
2 后面是可数名词的复数，用are
There are a lot of countries in the same situation.

像a lot of, plenty of等等这样的词组，不影响动词的形式，在这里表现在不影响is和are，而用哪个只取决于a lot of 后面是什么。