environment: climate change hurricane Earl Medford Transcript
by Warren
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Month 9, Day 5: Keeping It Local
We appear to have dodged a bullet here on the East Coast. I sent this to my local paper, the Medford Transcript. This one got written early; I’m on my way to a family reunion and don’t expect to be back till late in the day tomorrow.
While it looks as though the Massachusetts coastline has been spared the worst effects of Hurricane Earl, the fact is that over the coming decades, we are going to see more hurricanes, more often. The climatic effects of even a one-degree rise in global atmospheric temperature include dramatic increases in extreme weather, like the catastrophic floods that have rendered Pakistan helpless, and disrupted the lives of more people than live in New England. Of course, it is impossible to say that a specific weather event is directly caused by the greenhouse effect; the laws of physics and probability don’t work that way. But climatologists have predicted for decades that increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases would lead to exactly the kinds of weather we’re seeing all over the globe: heat waves, torrential flooding, anomalous precipitation, droughts, and overall volatility and unpredictability. “Global warming” is an inadequate term; we should call it by its true name: “climate chaos.” And we — all of us — need to wake up to the need for rapid and robust action to mitigate its effects.
Warren Senders
India Indian music music: genius Mallikarjun Mansur
by Warren
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So Much Beauty
Mallikarjun Mansur, singing Ek Nishad Bihagada and Nat Bihag.
environment: economics United Nations
by Warren
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Month 9, Day 4: Fair is Fair.
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a short AP story on the UN Climate Commission’s position regarding financial aid to poorer countries.
The United Nations has the correct position on additional funding to poorer nations to aid them in coping with climate change. The facts are inescapable: the poorer the country, the lower their per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Compared with the CO2 released into the atmosphere by the United States (five times more than our share of world population), Pakistan’s is little more than a rounding error. While climate change’s effects will be felt everywhere in the world, it is the industrialized West which is overwhelmingly responsible for the increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.
We tell our children to accept responsibility for damage they cause. We grownups must do the same, and face the fact that our fossil-fueled conveniences are destroying the world in which we live — and that it is unfair to make the poorest of the world’s people pay for the destruction the wealthiest have brought them.
environment: 350 Barack Obama Bill McKibben
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Month 9, Day 3: Striking While The Irony Is Hot
Since Bill McKibben is going to ask the President to put those damn solar panels up again, I figured I’d give him a little reinforcement.
Dear President Obama,
It’s been thirty years since Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as President and set about undoing all the things that Jimmy Carter set in motion.
Looking back over the past three decades it is astonishing how much President Carter got right, and how much President Reagan got wrong. If we had taken energy independence seriously and devoted the necessary budgetary support to wind and solar energy, America would have stopped giving money to OPEC. Our share of worldwide carbon emissions would have dropped significantly — perhaps keeping the planetary atmosphere below the crucial 350 parts-per-million level (in which case there is increasing evidence to suggest that many of today’s climate catastrophes might never have happened).
America would be a world leader in green technology, rather than lagging behind Europe and China.
We would not have needed all those expensive wars to protect our oil supplies.
The Gulf of Mexico might not be a massive dead zone.
It appears that you’re reluctant to do anything that would excite controversy (although it should be obvious to you by now that the Republicans will gin up controversy over anything), a pusillanimity I am depressed to see in the President I donated, volunteered and voted for. But I digress. The time is now for a full bank of solar panels to be installed on the roof of the White House. Perhaps you should be out there with a hammer yourself on October 10, as part of 350.org’s International Work Party.
It would be a gracious gesture to invite President Carter to the White House roof to pound in a few nails. With the clarity of hindsight, it appears that the only thing he did wrong was to be right.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: IPCC Philadelphia Inquirer Rajendra Pachauri
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Month 9, Day 2: It’s Too Darn Hot.
The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an AP story about the IPCC, with a headline that was not supported by anything in the story.
Corporate-funded denialism went into full-bore attack mode when the IPCC reports were first released. Minor discrepancies were blown up into international scientific scandals, which dissipated under further investigation. Rajendra Pachauri was charged with conflicts of interest — and has been completely exonerated. Evidence for scientific misconduct is extraordinarily flimsy — while evidence confirming human causes of global warming is extraordinarily robust. Ninety-seven percent of climatologists agree on the factuality of anthropogenic climate change— an impressive number (what would you do if ninety-seven out of a hundred oncologists told you a lump was malignant?). Meanwhile, the physical effects of climate chaos are harder and harder to ignore. When we see Pakistan’s floods, Russia’s droughts, a heat wave hammering the country, anomalous rain, snow and storms, we’re getting a picture of what’s in store for us in the years to come. We should be heeding the IPCC’s findings, not quibbling about minutiae.
Warren Senders