Year 2, Month 6, Day 22: I’d Like To Sup With My Baby Tonight…
June 8: Boston’s in the middle of a heat wave. Tomorrow (the 9th) it’s supposed to go up to 100 — a little weird for early June, don’cha think?
WASHINGTON—The mercury climbed into the 90s across more than half the country Wednesday in an early-June blast of August-like heat, forcing schools with no air conditioning to let kids go home early and cities to open cooling centers. And scientists say we had better get used to it.
A new study from Stanford University says global climate change will lead permanently to unusually hot summers in the coming years.
Temperatures around 90 and higher were recorded across much of the South, the East and the Midwest. By 2 p.m., Washington had tied the record high for the date of 98 degrees, set in 1999, according to preliminary National Weather Service data. The normal high is about 82. Philadelphia was at 94, one degree shy of the record. Chicago reached 94 by midafternoon.
The hook for a standard “denialists suck” letter, sent June 8:
And so it goes. Much of New England is experiencing record high temperatures for early June. Before that? Tornadoes — hardly a regular feature of this region’s climate. Meanwhile, other parts of the world are setting records of their own. Once-in-a-century floods, droughts, snowfalls, heatwaves — all coming more and more frequently. Is it really “once-in-a-century” when it happens twice in a five-year period?
For decades, climate scientists have forecast exactly this sort of weather behavior as a consequence of the greenhouse effect. They’ve been proven right over and over again — except when they’ve been too conservative in their estimates of climate change’s speed and severity. The one thing they couldn’t predict was the vehemence and stubbornness of climate-change denialists in our media and politics — qualities which are now preventing us from taking the necessary actions to deal with the storms that loom over our grandchildren’s futures.
Warren Senders
environment: American West Colorado River denialists idiots Water
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 21: I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles
The US Bureau of Reclamation has a report predicting…guess what? The Grand Junction Sentinel (CO) has more:
Climate change may result in about a 9 percent drop in average Colorado River flows over the next half-century, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation says in a new report.
Drought frequency and duration are expected to increase under a climate-change model, one of four different water supply scenarios used by the agency in an ongoing study of supply and demand in the Colorado River Basin.
The report says projected changes in the basin include continued warming in the basin, along with snowpack decreases as more precipitation falls as rain.
This let me find out about the nature of a “Class Six” rapid. Scary stuff:
Grade 6: Class 6 rapids are considered to be so dangerous as to be effectively unnavigable on a reliably safe basis. Rafters can expect to encounter substantial whitewater, huge waves, huge rocks and hazards, and/or substantial drops that will impart severe impacts beyond the structural capacities and impact ratings of almost all rafting equipment. Traversing a Class 6 rapid has a dramatically increased likelihood of ending in serious injury or death compared to lesser classes. (Skill level: successful completion of a Class 6 rapid without serious injury or death is widely considered to be a matter of great luck or extreme skill)WIKI
Sent June 7:
The history of the American West could be written from the perspective of rivers, aquifers and wells, for water shortages have triggered innumerable social upheavals and economic disruptions over the past few centuries. To willfully ignore scientific warnings of scientists about climate change’s impact on the Colorado River is to face grave dangers unprepared. And yet many members of our political and media systems are doing just that. By embracing spurious conspiracy theories (Light-Bulb Police! Compulsory Bike Paths!) while rejecting the carefully prepared evidence of experts, climate denialists set the stage for global disasters of terrifying proportions.
Climatologists’ predictions have been coming true with alarming regularity over the past several decades; their principal errors are invariably those of underestimating the magnitude of the problem. Climate denialists’ disregard of the overwhelming scientific consensus is as socially irresponsible as a drunk fratboy’s attempt to run Class Six rapids in an inner tube.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporatism denialists floods refugees Republicans
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 20: Lie Back And Think Of An Island Nation
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer runs an AP piece on the reality of climate refugees. Yow:
OSLO, Norway (AP) — About 42 million people were forced to flee their homes because of natural disasters around the world in 2010, more than double the number during the previous year, experts said Monday.
One reason for the increase in the figure could be climate change, and the international community should be doing more to contain it, the experts said.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre said the increase from 17 million displaced people in 2009 was mainly due to the impact of “mega-disasters” such as the massive floods in China and Pakistan and the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.
This letter is part of my ongoing “total capitulation to the forces of evil” theme. Sent June 6:
At some point in the not-too-distant future, the climate-change denialists are going to change their tune. As the atmosphere warms it’ll hold more moisture, which means more precipitation: snow, rain, sleet, hail. More extreme weather events will mean more climate refugees; as people’s homes and regional economies are destroyed, they’ll have to move elsewhere. And the GOP, the engine of climate denial, will be faced with the consequences of its anti-science policies: more refugees crossing borders, more emergencies requiring intervention, more jobs lost and economies undermined. But what changes denialists’ minds will be the realization on the part of their corporate sponsors that the multiple crises emerging from a runaway greenhouse effect offer enormous opportunities for graft, corruption and profiteering. If offering a license to steal is the only way to get the world’s largest corporations to bring all their resources to bear on climate change, I’m all for it.
Warren Senders
environment: anthropocene denialists United Nations
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 19: Bad Earth Rising
The Boise Weekly runs a little squib on the UN Climate Change Conference and all the bad news its delegates are confronting:
When delegates from about 180 countries begin meeting tomorrow at a major global energy conference, they’ll be met with a sobering bit of news: The world’s greenhouse gas emissions are hitting record highs and global warming continues to rise.
The new report issued today by the International Energy Agency indicating high fossil fuel emissions is just one of several studies expected to be released this week at the session in Bonn, Germany. This week’s meeting, dubbed a “framework convention,” is in advance of the annual United Nations conference on global warming, which will be held at the end of the year in South Africa.
Yup. Sent June 5:
The world’s industrialized nations have inadvertently set in motion a cascade of climatic events which will affect not only all of humanity, but all forms of life on Earth. The accumulated carbon resources of millions of years are now being burned and reintroduced into the atmosphere with incredible speed; previous “climate change” events tended to take place over spans of millennia — still rapid in geological time, but long enough to allow adaptive evolution a chance. The climatic transformation of the Anthropocene, by contrast, looks like it’s happening in a frame of centuries — the geological equivalent of hitting a wall at 100 mph. The delegates to the U.N. Climate Change Conference have their work cut out for them; they must develop strategies for coping with unprecedented planetary phenomena, while combating a level of ignorance and denialism in the world’s media and political systems that makes effective action essentially impossible. Uh-oh.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Australia denialism idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 18: Up With Which I Will Not Put
The Gold Coast Mail (Australia) notes a study which suggests that climate denialism is dying out Down Under:
CLIMATE change sceptics are an endangered species in Australia, a national survey shows.
The survey of almost 3100 Australians found 74 per cent believe the world’s climate is changing.
When asked a different question about the causes of climate change, which removed the reference to personal beliefs, 90 per cent of respondents said human activity was a factor.
Just five per cent said climate change was entirely caused by natural processes.
Overall, less than six per cent of respondents could reasonably be classified as true climate change sceptics, the study by Griffith University researchers found.
The comments on the article would, unfortunately, indicate otherwise. Sent June 4:
Recently, a new and invasive species was spotted in many locations all over the world. Combining intellectual genomes from anti-science religious zealots and anti-environment business forces, these “climate change denialists” fed on toxic media emissions, rapidly growing larger and posing ever-greater threats to journalism and the civility of public discourse. Clogging the channels of communication essential to a free society, denialists rapidly replaced subtler ideas about planetary climate patterns and regional weather events with ill-founded conspiracy theories and innumerate contempt for scientific authority. The result? Many of the world’s developed cultures were virtually incapacitated; the USA hosts a particularly virulent strain which has essentially destroyed the integrity of its political system.
Denialists’ status as an endangered species in Australia is very welcome news. We can only hope that in centuries to come, they’ll have a place in the history books alongside the Dodo, the Pig-footed Bandicoot, and the Passenger Pigeon.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Mitt Romney Republicans
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 17: King of Hearts
Mitt Romney acknowledges the existence of climate change. Gosh. The NY Daily News is all a-flutter:
Mitt Romney, the newest Republican to declare himself a candidate for President, sounded suspiciously like a Democrat when he said Friday that global warming is real.
“I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course,” Romney said at a Town Hall-type meeting in New Hampshire. “But I believe the world’s getting warmer.”
Romney then added, “And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.”
That’s heresy in many GOP circles – and a position the other Republican candidates have not taken in public.
Damned if I know what to think about this. I just used it as the hook for a standard Republicans-are-idiots screed. Sent June 3:
It’s testimony to the weirdness of American presidential politics that a perfectly reasonable statement from a Republican contender is viewed as an unforgivable deviation from the party line. The cries of outrage over Mitt Romney’s words on global climate change are coming from the GOP’s mainstream, which has now completely rejected actual science in favor of increasingly improbable conspiracy theories involving Al Gore and compulsory re-education camps for SUV drivers. The few remaining conservatives who are prepared to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus on the human causes of global warming have been relegated to their party’s “lunatic fringe,” which must be an unusual experience for them. While Mr. Romney’s words confirm that he’s not completely off-the-wall, in an electoral environment which values wackiness over factuality, that won’t work in his favor. Someday Republicans will acknowledge the laws of physics — but it’s not going to happen before the 2012 election. Unfortunately.
Warren Senders
Education India Indian music music Personal: aesthetics Education genius India Indian music music obituary
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A Great Tree Has Fallen: Asad Ali Khan, R.I.P.
This Tuesday, June 14, the world of music lost a great spirit.
Ustad Asad Ali Khan, one of the few remaining performers on the ancient Indian stringed instrument called the Rudra Veena, passed away after suffering a heart attack in the early hours of the morning.
He performed an austere and sober style of music, an instrumental version of the vocal style known as Dhrupad, which dates back to the 11th century or so. The Rudra Veena, or Been, is considered to be one of the oldest instruments of Indian tradition; it has its own origin myth, which states that the instrument sprang full-blown from the forehead of a meditating Lord Shiva. It is interesting that Asad Ali Khan, whose name makes his Muslim ancestry evident, saw no religious conflict in embracing this story; ecumenicism in Indian musical traditions is alive and well.
environment Politics: denialism greed Republican obstructionism World Bank
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 16: True Crime Comics
The Gray Lady heralds the news that Paul Wolfowitz’ erstwhile stamping ground has decided to get involved. That’s good news, I suppose. The Big Dog certainly thinks so:
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The World Bank signed an agreement on Wednesday with mayors from 40 of the world’s biggest cities to work on technical and financial assistance for projects to minimize the effects of climate change.
The deal, announced at the C40 large cities climate meeting here, will ease access to financing for climate-change-reduction projects. It was hailed by many of the mayors, including Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City, and by former President Bill Clinton, who attended the event as part of a new partnership with Mr. Bloomberg.
“The World Bank announcement is terrifically important,” Mr. Clinton said. “It will give credibility to these projects to get private capital.”
But there’s only one thing that can change a denialist’s mind.
Sent June 2:
The World Bank’s support of climate change mitigation projects cannot reverse the accelerating consequences of the greenhouse effect — despite the prodigious technical and intellectual resources of our civilization, we haven’t yet figured out ways to evade the laws of physics. Still, the Bank’s announcement is a positive development, both because it will spur much-needed investments in ecologically wise urban planning, and because it will make it that much harder for the climate denialists and oil profiteers in America’s dysfunctional political system to continue rationalizing their unwillingness to address the issue with spurious economic arguments. While environmental reasons will never spur Republican legislators to address climate change, once renewable energy and sustainable development are really where the money is, Willie Sutton’s oft-quoted motivation may just do the trick.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 15: My Home-Town Paper
The Boston Globe employs a hack buffoon named Jeff Jacoby as its token conservative asshole. And true to form, he’s an ignorant jackass:
THE MAY 21 apocalypse foretold by the fundamentalist minister Harold Camping never materialized, but end-of-the-world doomsaying goes on as usual among the global warmists.
If you really want the full effect, go and read it. My nervous system can no longer stand the strain. Sent June 1:
After reading his latest attempt to dismiss the worldwide scientific consensus on global climate change (a genuine threat of enormous significance), I have a simple question about Jeff Jacoby’s predictive skills. How often has he been right? About Iraq? Gay marriage? The environment? Examining his writings confirms that for decades, he’s been consistently wrong on just about everything. Why, then, should his opinions on matters of science be given any credibility whatsoever?
Although I lack a comfortable sinecure as the Globe’s token conservative columnist, I too would like to make a prediction: the climate is going to go miserably haywire just as climatologists are forecasting, and when Mr. Jacoby eventually does acknowledge the inescapable reality of climate change, he’ll advocate free-market solutions to the greenhouse effect’s destructive consequences — preferably involving tax cuts for billionaires and oil companies. And he’ll be wrong. Why mess up a perfect record?
Warren Senders
environment: agriculture economic justice Food Security long-term future starvation
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 14: Headache.
Feeling dire today, a not-uncommon state of affairs, but one exacerbated by this report on Oxfam’s analysis of the world food system, here written up in the Independent (UK):
Millions more people across the world will be locked into a cycle of hunger and food crisis unless governments tackle a “broken” production system which is being exploited by speculators and will cause a doubling in basic foodstuff prices in the next 20 years, a leading aid agency has warned.
Research by Oxfam has highlighted a combination of factors, ranging from climate change and population growth to subsidies for biofuels and the actions of commodities traders, which will throw development in poor countries into reverse unless radical reform of the global food system is undertaken.
Radical reform? How likely is that to happen, absent 5 billion people with torches and pitchforks?
I need an Advil.
Sent May 31:
The alarms are going off everywhere. Oxfam’s prediction of doubled food prices in a few decades is based on analyses that are almost certainly too conservative. The available data on climate change are changing alarmingly fast; in every case predictions are outstripped by the horrifying realities of positive feedback loops on a planetary scale. If our world food system is falling to pieces now, just imagine what it’ll be like in twenty or thirty years, when wildly irregular weather fluctuations are wreaking continual havoc with agricultural economies all over the planet. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s one that most of the developed world’s politicians seem determined to ignore. Short-term thinking has brought us to the brink of disaster; now is the time when our species must learn to think in the long term — not just decades, but centuries and millennia. Humanity’s survival hangs in the balance.
Warren Senders