environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility Natural Gas
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 21: If You Hadn’t Said Anything, Ma’am, I Would Have Sworn It Was The Horse
The Pennsylvania Patriot-News runs an article on the recent study by Cornell University scientists showing that natural gas extraction is really really really bad for the planet:
Natural gas from shale deposits such as the Marcellus has a bigger greenhouse gas footprint than coal, according to a study by researchers at Cornell University.
The peer-reviewed study concludes, “The large green house gas footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming.”.
Disappointing, to be sure. But hardly surprising when you come to think about it for more than a few seconds. Sent April 12:
The climatic consequences of natural gas extraction are clearly more severe than we have been told for years, but this information should be surprising only to those who believe that the extractive industries are both inherently clean and inherently ethical. They are, of course, neither, as the repeated misconduct of oil and coal corporations has demonstrated. America’s energy policy has long touted natural gas as an energy source which contributes less to the greenhouse effect than other fossil fuels; the Cornell study should be a corrective influence on our national thinking. But there is a great distance between “should” and “will.” Instead of a new energy economy based on the realities of climate change and Peak Oil, we’ll probably get more of the same — our politicians have a long and sordid history of ignoring ideologically inconvenient facts, as witness the rejection of climate science by the entire Republican party.
Warren Senders
environment: endangered species ice melt krill penguins
by Warren
2 comments
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 20: Sorry, Darling. We Didn’t Know How To Tell You Earlier.
Well. This sucks:
The population of Adélie penguins in Antarctica has declined by 50 percent in recent years, and everyone who has watched a nature movie or television show knows that the reason is the rapidly melting sea ice that has limited the size of their winter habitat. But what everyone knows may be wrong.
New research, published online Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the penguins’ real problem is the severe decline in the abundance of Antarctic krill, their main food, a problem affecting the ice-avoiding chinstrap penguins as well.
“For the last 30 years, the adults have been able to rear chicks as they always have,” said Wayne Z. Trivelpiece, the lead author. “But the young aren’t coming back. Ninety percent never make it through their first year. They are not finding the food they need.”
As an atheist, I have no available profanity that conveys my feelings. Sent April 11:
The Anthropocene Epoch looks to be one of devastation for many of the world’s other species — even those which we claim to cherish. The latest sobering example is the news that climate change is drastically reducing krill populations, and therefore condemning the penguins which feed on these tiny marine creatures to an evolutionary bottleneck. I contemplate the conversation with dread: how will I explain to my daughter that the world’s penguins are dying because human beings can’t be bothered to change their way of living? As the greenhouse effect continues its rapid heating of our atmosphere, we can expect many more such announcements; a microscopic species lost here, a few types of algae snuffed out there — gradually undermining humanity’s own food chain. The penguins’ fate may well be a preview of our own.
Warren Senders
Uncategorized: artificial stupidity meta spam Turing test
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Turing Time!
This is interesting. There are comments showing up (very occasionally, since this is a pretty low-traffic blog) which specifically address the content of posts — and which are from fairly obvious spam sources. For example, on the “Playing For The Planet” page, I just got this:
19 Apr 2011, 8:34am
by Can I Get a MortgagePlease post an update and pictures if possible after the next concert. Love the picture about the Sindhoor dance theater. Beautiful detail.
Have the spambots evolved to actually generate meaningful content relationships? Is there actually a human being named “Can I Get A Mortgage?”
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists United Nations
by Warren
1 comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 19: Endarkened Self-Interest…?
The Daily Nation (Kenya) runs an editorial calling on the developed world to actually do something about climate change, rather than continually playing political and rhetorical games without following through on anything.
Poor nations are demanding that developed countries agree to a legally binding greenhouse gas reduction commitment under an updated protocol.
They want the speeding up of an earlier deal reached in December, which included a Green Climate Fund to aid poor nations and to limit a rise in average world temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius.
Now some rich nations seem to have turned against such an agreement because China and the US are not part of it.
The US, the world’s biggest polluter, has never signed the Kyoto Protocol.
This standoff is most likely to continue during the climate conference in Durban, South Africa, at the end of the year, with little hope that a binding agreement will be signed.
The frequency and magnitude of climate driven disasters will intensify and can hit any part of the world.
It is time leading economies took decisive action for the long-term interest of the world.
Good luck, guys. You’ll need it. Sent April 10:
The economic and sociopolitical consequences of climate change over the next few decades are going to be severe, no matter what agreements are reached in the upcoming Durban conference. But it is emphatically the case not only that the world’s wealthiest nations are also its greatest contributors to the greenhouse effect — but that they’ve shown a grotesque unwillingness to consider any actions that might actually have a measurable impact on the planet’s future. In the United States, political progress on climate change has been effectively stalled by a group of anti-science, anti-reality demagogues whose electoral success is due to the deep pockets of their Big Oil puppetmasters. Fixated on short-term profit margins, fossil fuel industries don’t care about the future of humanity as long as they can continue to sell their products. This is, of course, the exact opposite of “enlightened self-interest.” It’s unfortunate that we can’t burn irony.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists scientific consensus United Nations
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 18: What A Wonderful World
The San Jose Mercury News runs an AP article on the halting, lurching progress of the world’s governments towards some sort of actual, you know, meaningful agreement on climate change:
World stumbles toward climate summit
By DENIS D. GRAY Associated PressBANGKOK—Nineteen years after the world started to take climate change seriously, delegates from around the globe spent five days talking about what they will talk about at a year-end conference in South Africa. They agreed to talk about their opposing viewpoints.
Delegates from 173 nations did agree that delays in averting global warming merely fast-forward the risk of plunging the world into “catastrophe.” The delegate from Bolivia noted that the international effort, which began with a 1992 U.N. convention, has so far amounted to “throwing water on a forest fire.”
This paper has an anomalous 125-word limit. Sent April 9:
It’s profoundly discouraging. Because the fossil fuel industries regard the threat to their profit margins as more urgent than the threats to human civilization posed by the greenhouse effect, they have successfully used their enormous resources to fund denialism, to sponsor politicians who will propagate a “don’t worry, be happy, keep burning oil” message, and to discredit actual scientific experts on the subject. “Stumbling” is an apt verb; our nation has been rendered almost unconscious by the toxic emissions of Big Oil and Big Coal. As they recover from our century-long carbon bonfire, our descendants will too busy struggling to survive on a newly hostile planet to do more than curse our memories. But curse us they will, unless we find the resolve to act.
Warren Senders
environment: economic inequities economic justice
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 17: Little Bee Sucks The Blossom, Big Bee Gets The Honey
The Khaleej Times (UAE) notes, unsurprisingly, that rich and poor countries seem to have a different set of priorities when it comes to dealing with the issues surrounding climate change.
Sent April 8:
The inequality between rich and poor is indeed a profound complicating factor in the global struggle against climate change. None of the world’s poorer nations wish to abandon the dreams of economic growth; the richest fear that their own comforts and conveniences will be undermined by measures to mitigate the threats of atmospheric warming. But these arguments are misleading. The “wealth” of developed nations is largely a function of the ready availability and relative cheapness of fossil fuels, and both of these qualities are illusory. As oil becomes harder and harder to extract, it will be both rarer and more costly; as we confront the costs of putting a century’s worth of burning carbon into the atmosphere, it’ll become self-evident that oil and coal are very expensive indeed — and that aspiring to the high-consumption lifestyles of the developed nations is like envying a drunkard’s delusions of grandeur and omnipotence.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Inhofe Senate Republicans
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 16: Easy Target….
The Tulsa World writes about James Inhofe’s attempt to end the EPA.
Sent April 7:
James Inhofe’s ignorance of science would be hilarious if he were not in a position of significant influence. This self-proclaimed “enemy of the environment” long ago sold his political power to the highest bidder: the big oil industries who have the most to lose from any sort of meaningful climate change legislation. He and his acolytes are hostile to any information that does not fit their preconceptions. Our political process was originally intended to deal with actual verifiable reality, including the consequences of our actions and of our inaction. Political grandstanding unconnected from facts is a prescription for disaster. In reflexively obeying their corporate paymasters, Mr. Inhofe and other members of the GOP undermine their own party’s credibility; their cavalier dismissal of the entire climate science community is grossly irresponsible. With all due respect to the Senator’s fervently held beliefs, waiting for the Rapture cannot substitute for actual fact-based policy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots James Inhofe Lindsey Graham Senate Republicans
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 15: Soon They’ll Write Legislation By Stirring Bird Entrails With A Stick.
The LA Times reports an extremely welcome piece of news:
WASHINGTON–The Obama administration and its Senate allies beat back a months-long effort by Congressional Republicans to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases, the heat-trapping emissions most scientists believe is the main contributor to global climate change.
The votes were the culmination of efforts in both chambers of Congress over the last few months to cut back on the EPA’s regulatory powers.
The efforts focus on limiting EPA’s program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles and more recently, stationary sources like power plants and oil refineries, the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
I’ll take what I can get, these days. Sent in a state of extreme exhaustion on April 6:
Most of this country’s citizens recognize that clean air, clean water and resilient regional ecosystems are important and essential components of our national well-being. Sadly, this appears lost on scientifically ignorant GOP legislators whose eagerness to undercut any and all environmental programs seems almost gleefully nihilistic. At a time when the incontrovertible facts of global climate change are accepted by the overwhelming majority of the world’s experts in climate science, Senator Inhofe’s opposition to meaningful action on the reduction of greenhouse emissions is petulant, not principled. Meanwhile, erstwhile climate action advocate Lindsey Graham renounced his principles when he faced the electoral consequences of the tea-party’s anti-reality stance. While the defeat of Republican efforts to gut the Environmental Protection Agency is good news for all Americans, the fact that our politics is massively populated by people who reject scientific evidence when it’s ideologically inconvenient bodes ill for our future.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 14: The Science Of Suspended Disbelief
T-Paw thinks there’s still some diversity of opinion on climate change, says the Iowa Independent, which is heavily festooned with tea-party advertisements. I doubt this will get printed. Sent April 5:
Tim Pawlenty’s got it right. The science on climate change is indeed divided. Let’s look more closely at this division of opinion among climate scientists — the people who’ve studied the subject in greatest depth. A whopping three percent of climatologists disagree with the rest of their profession about the human causes of climate change. Ninety-seven to three. In fairness to Governor Pawlenty, it’s likely that his only acquaintance with climate science is at the hands of Republican political consultants, who’ve determined through rigorous statistical analysis (there’s some science, right there!) that accepting the overwhelming expert consensus on anthropogenic global warming equates to an instant and overwhelming electoral loss at the hands of tea-partiers. The future of our country and our civilization be damned; what’s important to Mr. Pawlenty and the rest of the Republican Flat-Earth society is to continue enabling the profit margins of their corporate masters.
Warren Senders
environment: Bangkok Conference United Nations
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 13: Okay, You Can Have My Lunch Money.
The Irish Times’ Frank MacDonald writes about the continued push to get people to pay attention to climate change, dammit:
WITH WORLD attention grabbed by a succession of natural disasters in New Zealand and Japan as well as popular revolts in north Africa and the Middle East, the United Nations will be seeking this week to put climate change back on the international agenda.
Nearly four months after last year’s moderately successful climate summit in the Mexican resort of Cancún, delegates from 193 countries have gathered in Bangkok for a preliminary round of talks aimed at paving the way for progress at next December’s summit in Durban.
They’re conscious that global warming “hasn’t gone away, you know”, as Gerry Adams TD once said of the Provisional IRA.
Indeed, 2010 was officially one of the hottest years on record, with heatwaves, floods, landslides, forest fires and other “extreme weather events”.
I’ve just about lost my patience. I submitted the following (ahem) modest proposal to the Irish Times on April 4:
If we are really serious about getting climate change back on the international agenda, we need to recognize that the world’s governments are universally dominated by corporate influence. The biggest and most powerful of these giant economic actors are the ones which sell us oil and coal; since a paradigm shift in planetary energy use will impact their profit margins, they’ve opted to hold the future of human civilization for ransom. I’d like to propose a new approach: total capitulation to their demands. How much would it take to persuade oil CEOs (who’d otherwise have to sacrifice a tenth vacation home or fourth private jet) to support a planetary conversion to renewable energy? I should think about three trillion dollars would do it; that works out to about $450 for every person on the planet — a small price to pay for the continued survival of our species.
Warren Senders