environment humor Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 22: shut up he explained.
In the Not-News-To-Anyone-Who’s-Been-Paying-Attention category, the August 4 Minnesota Star-Tribune reports that (unlike none of the other Republican presidential aspirants) Tim Pawlenty is a gutless, opportunistic, sociopath:
Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s position on climate change has now shifted from “one of the most important issues of our time” to questioning whether humans have had any effect on climate change at all.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Miami Herald, Pawlenty said that “the weight of the evidence is that most of it, maybe all of it, is because of natural causes. But to the extent there is some element of human behavior causing some of it — that’s what the scientific debate is about.”
It wasn’t too long ago that Pawlenty took a much more muscular approach to climate change. Shortly into his second term as governor, the Minnesota Republican made a big push for clean energy.
When he was named chair of the National Governors Association, Pawlenty had the theme of “Securing a Clean Energy Future.” He touted Minnesota legislation that set an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent by 2015 and 80 percent by 2050. In 2007 he said he wanted the Upper Midwest to become “the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy.”
On the other hand, he gave me the opportunity to cite, in its entirety, one of the funniest sentences ever written in English. Sent August 5:
It’s not just greenhouse emissions that are bringing on an unstable climate. Republican politicians and the Tea Party adherents to whom they are pandering are emitting steadily increasing quantities of ignorance. While we must give these anti-science, anti-environment zealots credit for absolutely right in their own minds, the facts suggest that they’re absolutely wrong everywhere else. Tim Pawlenty’s suggestion that climate change is triggered by “natural causes” reminds me of Jimmy Breslin’s Mafia-themed comic novel, “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” in which “Raymond the Wolf passed away in his sleep one night from natural causes; his heart stopped beating when the three men who slipped into his bedroom stuck knives in it.” Yes, Mr. Pawlenty, global warming is a totally natural response to an anthropogenic overdose of CO2. But I doubt that’s what The Governor Who Couldn’t Talk Straight meant; I think he’s been breathing too many tea fumes.
Warren Senders
India Personal: travel notes
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Last Few Days In Pune…
…Had a great concert in Nasik; returned to Pune in time to sing again on Saturday night. Sunday morning gave a lecture-demonstration on the pedagogy of improvisation, at the Maharashtra Cultural Centre. Tomorrow morning another lec-dem on Hindustani music teaching methodology at University of Pune. Then all my professional obligations are over, mercifully.
We leave on the 24th and are both anticipating and dreading the impending 11 hour layover in Paris. We may try and go into the city and enjoy ourselves during the day. We’ll see.
For now, that’s all. I’m using my brother-in-law’s computer and don’t have time to expand.
I will post photos and audio clips once I’m back stateside.
Cheers!
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility fee and dividend media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 21: In The Country Of The Crazy And Stupid…
In August 4th’s Quincy Patriot-Ledger (MA), D.R. Tucker discusses the eminently sensible fee-and-dividend approach to taxing carbon emissions:
In mid-June, more than 80 members of the Citizens Climate Lobby met with House and Senate members to seek support for a market-based, revenue-neutral solution. Under their proposal, known as “fee and dividend,” a gradually increasing fee would be charged on coal, oil and natural gas at the point of origin or import.
The fee would be set initially at $15 per ton of carbon dioxide in the fuel.
Proceeds would be distributed as dividend checks to the public directly.
This fee will increase the cost of fossil fuels, but the dividend checks will reduce the impact on working families.
The state economy will reap benefits from increased investment in energy conservation and establishment of new companies developing renewable alternatives to fossil fuels. This proposal will create local jobs in energy conservation and renewable energy.
This revenue-neutral approach to addressing climate change is politically neutral, easing progressives’ concerns about the manipulation of emissions trading in cap-and-trade and assuaging conservatives’ fears about increasing the federal government’s role.
It’s the right action to take, a move that will pay dividends simultaneously to the consumer, the state economy and the environment.
“Eminently sensible” = doomed. Sent August 4:
Mr. Tucker’s prescription for an economically and environmentally sane climate policy is exactly correct. Unfortunately, as events over the past decade have demonstrated time and time again, sanity appears undervalued by our representatives in politics. If a fee-and-dividend approach to carbon emissions is to have a chance of succeeding, our print and broadcast media must do their job. The “balanced” model, with every scientifically informed expert countered by a paid shill from the petroleum industry, is both an intellectual and an environmental disaster. By convincing a plurality of Americans that the science “isn’t settled,” this approach has drastically degraded the quality of the discussion, bringing progress on environmental issues to an absolute standstill. The Jeffersonian ideal of a “well-informed citizenry” is crucial for a functioning democracy; when reporting on a threat as significant as climate change, our media must abandon irresponsible “false equivalency,” and rededicate itself to reporting scientific truth.
Warren Senders
Uncategorized: 78 rpm discs bansuri genius
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78 rpm Records of Indian Music: Kumar Birendra Narayan
Here is a beautiful pair of bansuri performances by Kumar Birendra Narayan, whom I gather was an important instrumentalist in Bengali light and film music, thanks to an en passant mention by Durbadal Chattopadhyay:
Since my father was a musician, many eminent personalities visited our place. He also had an orchestra of which I was the monitor. I started taking music lessons from several people in instruments like the banjo, piano and violin. Musicians like Kumar Birendra Narayan (flute), who accompanied SD Burman on numerous Bangla songs, AS Dubey and others were there. I learnt the violin from my father. Then I took lessons in classical music under the baton of Professor Robin Ghosh…
Link
He has beautiful classical chops; these are very attractive and lilting performances. Enjoy!
Raga “Pradeep” (Patdeep)
Thumri
environment Politics: Durban Conference Kyoto United Nations
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 20: Nothing To See Here. Move Along, Folks.
The August 3 Chicago Tribune reports on low expectations for the upcoming Durban conference:
WELLINGTON, Aug 2 (Reuters) – Major climate talks in South Africa at year-end will be unlikely to strike agreement on a new pact, but will be important in determining the shape of
long-term efforts to tackle climate change, a senior U.N. climate official said on Tuesday.The future of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing U.N. plan which obliges about 40 industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2012, is widely seen as under threat. Japan, Canada and Russia have said they will not extend it, while the United States never signed up to it.
La de da de da de da de da….
Sent August 3:
How low our hopes have fallen! The international community is still meeting in Durban to address the complexities of climate change — and while nobody expects anything to actually, you know, happen, the good news is that representatives of the world’s nations will all be there mouthing platitudes at one another. Given that the overwhelming consensus of the scientists who actually know what’s going on with the planet’s climate is that runaway climate change poses a civilizational threat to our species, this diplomatic dithering is a pathetic substitute for the concerted worldwide action that is necessary. Eventually, of course, we’ll learn that they’ve agreed to a template for developing a process to organize a protocol for establishing a framework for beginning negotiations on the elements that need to be included in a new emissions treaty to replace the Kyoto Agreement. And that will be our good news for the day.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists false equivalency idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 19: We’re Still Learning More About Gravity!
The August 2 edition of the Deseret News (UT) contains more false equivalency bullshit:
In the face of repeated assertions that the science on global warming is “settled,” ongoing studies and developments in the area leave some insisting that claim remains true, while others say the science is anything but.
According to Gallup’s annual environmental poll, the percentage of Americans saying they worry a great deal or a fair amount about global warming has fallen from a high of 66 percent in 2008 to a stable 51 percent in 2011. Furthermore, 43 percent of Americans say the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated in the news.
A breakdown of global warming poll data shows that the issue remains mainly ideological, with 72 percent of Democrats saying they worry about global warming compared to 51 percent of Independents and 31 percent of Republicans.
As the global warming debate becomes more politicized in individual attitudes, state governments, Congress and even within the United Nations, the possibility of the science becoming truly “settled” appears unlikely.
In a study published July 25 in the science journal Remote Sensing, William Braswell and Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, suggest the Earth’s atmosphere is more efficient at releasing energy into space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”
As an atheist I strive to avoid theonormative expletives. So I have a limited rhetorical palette available for properly cursing these fuckers. Sent August 2:
It’s amazing how much faith Republican politicians and members of the media place in science. Just watch as they cite the Braswell/Spencer study as an invalidation of the work of hundreds of other researchers. Their readiness to trust a paper which has already been criticized as methodologically flawed is touching in its innocence. Of course this has nothing to do with the study’s usefulness to the anti-environmental agenda; such a suggestion is terribly cynical!
Sigh.
Scientific integrity demands that experimental results must be regarded skeptically; ideologically convenient findings should be even more subject to careful scrutiny. The scientific consensus on human causes of climate change is built on an enormous body of work that has withstood attempts at falsification. To say the “science isn’t settled” does not mean the basic principles are invalid, only that there are still gaps in our knowledge. The science of global warming is as settled as it needs to be, despite the wishful thinking of denialists in Congress and the media.
Warren Senders
India Indian music music: 78 rpm discs shehnai
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78 rpm Records of Indian Music: Professor Nazir Hossain of Benares
Here is another excellent pair of shehnai performances, this time by “Professor” Nazir Hossain of Benares. From what I can figure out, he is the uncle and ustad of Ali Ahmed Hussain, whose music you can listen to here.
Raga Adana Bahar
Thumri
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 18: They Would, However, Vote To Burn Environmentalists.
The August 1 edition of Grist notes that Henry Waxman and Ed Markey have been keeping track of the Republican anti-environment pathology:
Reps. Henry Waxman (Calif.) and Edward Markey (Mass.), of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, have been keeping tabs on Republican votes to undermine environmental legislation. They say that since taking over the majority in January, Republicans have voted 110 times to block or weaken legislation intended to protect the environment.
Waxman says of the findings that “the new Republican majority seems intent on restoring the robber-baron era,” and Markey compared the GOP agenda to a rifle “pointed right at the heart of America’s clean energy future.” This is fairly colorful, but the thing is, you don’t have to take their word for it — they have a chart with all the votes! Nothing like solid data to confirm your notion that you should be under the couch crying about the future of the country.
What would Theodore Roosevelt think of the Republican Party today? The man who created our world-renowned national park system and helped bring today’s environmental movement into being would be justifiably outraged at the behavior of modern Republicans. It’s not just anti-environment legislation, though. The current crop of tea-party zealots are anti-science, anti-math, and anti-reality, as well as anti-Democrat. What this means is that even eminently sensible and desirable bills are doomed if they’re introduced by the GOP’s political enemies, as witness their steady opposition to anything addressing our country’s energy future with anything more nuanced than “drill, baby, drill.” While Teddy is no doubt spinning in his grave as members of the GOP eviscerate environmental protections, we can’t use the power he’s generating: since it would reduce profits for the multinational corporations who own American politics lock, stock and barrel, the bill would die in committee.
Warren Senders
India Indian music music vocalists: 78 rpm discs ghazal
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78 rpm Records of Indian Music: Kakoo Ram
Google offers me nothing about Kakoo Ram — but I enjoy both of these songs. So will you.
Bade bahaar do din ki hai
Rashke aadaa vakushon dil
environment Politics: glaciers media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 17: Slippery When Wet.
Tuscon Citizen for August 1 ran a USA Today squib on the world’s melting glaciers:
Two of three Himalayan glaciers — both in humid areas of eastern Nepal — could disappear if present climate change patterns continue, a study released today predicts.
The Rikha Samba glacier, in a relatively arid area of western Nepal, showed little shrinkage in the past decade compared with the two prior decades, but the other two glaciers, known as Yala and AX010, show accelerated wastage over the last decade, according to the study.
The researchers say glaciers in humid environments can exist at lower altitudes, leaving them vulnerable to warming. They say that if climate trends observed since the 1990s continue, these two glaciers may disappear because ice masses will probably not receive enough snow to replenish the shrinkage.
After writing the letter I found they had no LTE mechanism at all…so I just left the beautifully crafted 150-word piece as a comment. The hell with it. Web comments don’t usually count as letters in my book, but I’m too tired to care at the moment. Posted August 1:
One of the most alarming aspects of the news that the world’s glaciers are dwindling rapidly under the onslaught of global climate change is that so few Americans are paying attention. Perhaps glaciers are too far away and unfamiliar, or the year of their projected final disappearance from the planet is still too remote. Perhaps people have more pressing concerns: jobs, the economy, healthcare. But ultimately there’s no greater issue than the survival of the environment; politicians’ attempts to frame it as an either/or debate are extremely misleading. Our aspirations to economic growth disregard the fact that we live on a finite world; continued expansion beyond the capacity of Earth’s natural systems is a fatally flawed aspiration. The melting glaciers are one of many indicators that the planet’s resources are failing. If Americans don’t pay attention now, we’re in for a series of very unpleasant surprises in the coming decades.
Warren Senders