Education environment Politics: idiots NCSE scientific method
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 1, Day 22: You Can’t Spell “Idiot” Without An “Id.”
USA Today reports on the NCSE’s new project:
A noted science education organization Monday announced a turn to battling climate science naysayers.
The National Center for Science Education, based in Oakland, Calif., is best known for leading charges against creationist efforts to remove evolution from public schools nationwide. But now, the three-decade-old group will also fight efforts to slip incorrect climate science information into school lessons.
“We are seeing more efforts in legislatures and schools to push climate misinformation on teachers and students,” says NCSE head Eugenie Scott. The NCSE plans to serve as a resource for science teachers facing school board or classroom fights over climate science.
Good luck, guys. Sent January 17:
The National Center for Science Education has an uphill battle ahead. Their laudable initiative to spur education on climate change is certain to be turned into a political football by the petro-funded id of American governance, the Republican party.
Over the coming months, prepare for cries of “ideologically biased education!” and “brainwashing our kids!” It’s already happened with the teaching of evolution; several states are now readying legislation forcing science teachers to treat Darwin’s discoveries on a par with young-Earth creationism.
Conservatives will protest that they simply want to “teach the controversy” of climate change. Nonsense; if that were so, they’d advocate a place in the classroom for Marxist economics, geocentric cosmology, and the medieval theory of humours. Global climate change is a fact; an uneducated citizenry won’t be able to cope with the threats it poses, which is why the NCSE’s work is so vitally important for our future.
Warren Senders
Education environment: denialists NCSE science education scientific consensus scientific method
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 1, Day 21: You Can’t Make An Omelette Without Breaking A Few Eggheads…
The L.A. Times’ Neela Banerjee writes about the NCSE’s decision to address the way climate change issues are handled in our schools:
Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.
In May, a school board in Los Alamitos, Calif., passed a measure, later rescinded, identifying climate science as a controversial topic that required special instructional oversight.
“Any time we have a meeting of 100 teachers, if you ask whether they’re running into pushback on teaching climate change, 50 will raise their hands,” said Frank Niepold, climate education coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who meets with hundreds of teachers annually. “We ask questions about how sizable it is, and they tell us it is [sizable] and pretty persistent, from many places: your administration, parents, students, even your own family.”
Against this backdrop, the National Center for Science Education, an Oakland-based watchdog group that supports the teaching of evolution through advocacy and educational materials, plans to announce on Monday that it will begin an initiative to monitor the teaching of climate science and evaluate the sources of resistance to it.
Good for them. The NCSE does terrific work. Sent January 16:
The conservative assertion that climate change is a “scientifically controversial” topic offers an example of how their ideologically-driven strategy functions in the public sphere. Since there is no significant scientific disagreement on the basic facts of global warming (it’s happening, it’s largely human-caused, it’s getting worse, the sooner we do something about it the less it will cost), the denialists in politics, media and the corporate sector have manufactured a convenient controversy by misinterpreting analyses, obfuscating results, and all too often simply lying through their teeth.
If all the scientists but a petrol-funded few are on one side of an issue, and a political philosophy with a long history of rejecting inconvenient facts is on the other, does that actually count as a dispute? If we’re supposed to “teach the controversy” of global climate change in our schools, what’s next for our science teachers — the medieval theory of humours?
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment: assholes denialists idiots
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 1, Day 20: Cry Me A River, Assholes
The Berthold Recorder (CO) runs a story from Grist detailing the WATB behavior of conservatives who find their shibboleths crumbling into irrelevance under the assault of facts:
Prominent MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel has been receiving an unprecedented “frenzy of hate” after a video featuring an interview with him was published recently by Climate Desk.
Emails contained “veiled threats against my wife,” and other “tangible threats,” Emanuel, a highly-regarded atmospheric scientist and director of MIT’s Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate program, said in an interview. “They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive.”
“What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn’t feel very good about that at all,” Emanuel said. “I thought it was low to drag somebody’s spouse into arguments like this.”
Swine. It reminds me of the bullshit Jessica Ahlquist is currently going through. Sent January 15:
That climatologists are now the target of ideologically driven abuse from climate denialists whose carefully packaged preconceptions are endangered by inconvenient facts is hardly surprising.
These attacks are of a piece with similar responses from conservatives in other spheres who feel their world-views are under attack, as in the case of a teenaged girl in Rhode Island who successfully sued to remove a prayer banner from her public school’s wall, and who’s been receiving threats of violence.
Her offense? An accurate understanding of the ideals of her nation’s founding document, and the temerity to hold an institution accountable to them. Dr. Kerry Emmanuel’s offense? Noting some of the plain facts about global climate change: it’s real, it’s our fault, it’s dangerous, and it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. Apparently, conservatives go into grotesque spasms of victimhood the moment they have to deal with logic, reason, and factuality.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility economic justice economics
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 1, Day 19: The Problem Is Not The Problem
The Oregon Bend Bulletin runs a McClatchy story noting that our virtuous and responsive private sector is getting into the act:
UNITED NATIONS — In the language of the 450 large institutional investors meeting at a conference here Thursday, climate change is a risk to avoid and also an opportunity to make a good return on investments.
The investors, who control more than $20 trillion worldwide, are looking at climate change from a business perspective even as Washington steers clear of the issue. Clean energy investments worldwide grew 5 percent in 2011 over 2010, despite financial turmoil in Europe and a wobbly economy in the U.S., according to a report released at the conference.
“I think the key message is that the narrative is changing. The private sector is taking the lead in addressing climate change,” said Mindy Lubber, the president of the investor and environmental coalition Ceres, one of the conference sponsors.
“This is a premier issue that’s being followed like a laser by the financial community.”
Global clean-energy investments reached $260 billion in 2011, some five times more than the $50 billion in 2005, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. The analysis looks at renewable energy, energy-efficiency technology and biofuels, but doesn’t include natural gas or nuclear power in its assessment.
While this isn’t bad news, it isn’t necessarily good news either. Sent January 13 (a good day for letter-writing — this one brings me 6 days ahead!):
Given the pathetic failure of the industrialized world’s governments to address the climate crisis with anything approaching the requisite urgency, the news that leaders in the private sector perceive opportunities in climate mitigation and adaptation is welcome. But it would be disingenuous to simply frame the complex consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect as an economic “opportunity.” That’s uncomfortably like, say, framing lung cancer as a “sales opening for electronic cigarettes.”
One of the drivers of global climate change is an economic model predicated on the need for continuous growth — a model shared by most if not all of the world’s governments, and patently a leftover from the days when the resources of Earth seemed infinitely exploitable. Those days are gone; it is all too obvious that we live on a finite planet. While the engagement of the corporate sector in fighting this slow-motion catastrophe is certainly welcome, it won’t mean much absent an economic philosophy which values sustainability more than profit.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots methane Republican obstructionism soot
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 1, Day 18: Life Is Hard, But….
The State Journal (“West Virginia’s Only Business Newspaper”) notes some relatively simple things we can do to help out:
While working through the expensive problem of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to slow climate change, why not go ahead and tackle emissions of methane and soot — two easier problems that will pay for themselves and then some?
The suggestion, from an international team of 13 researchers lead by a NASA scientist, comes this week in “Simultaneously Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change and Improving Human Health and Food Security” in the journal Science.
The researchers identified 14 measures they say could reduce warming by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050. It’s a significant part of the 3.6 degrees’ warming that climate negotiators meeting in Copenhagen in 2009 targeted as a goal to stay below.
Measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions seem mainly to be expensive and controversial up front and to yield climate benefits only in the very long run.
But the measures proposed by these researchers for reducing methane and soot cost little and yield a range of substantial benefits in a shorter time frame.
The problem? Aw, hell. You and I both know what the problem is. People with no brains can’t recognize “no-brainers,” can they? Sent January 13:
The menu of things that can be done easily to address the burgeoning climate crisis is actually pretty substantial. Reducing atmospheric methane and soot should be a no-brainer, since such an approach not only makes sense as a strategy for reducing global warming, but offers both economic and public health benefits to the country as a whole.
Unfortunately, as long as one half of our government is controlled by people who reject science when it conflicts with either their electoral prospects or their profit margins, even such a straightforward proposal will be hindered and hamstrung by unnecessary political posturing. What was once a rational voice for business interests in American government has now become an ideologically fixated bloc incapable of adopting even the most obviously sensible policy initiatives. When GOP climate-change denialists pander to extremist elements within their own constituencies, they wind up damaging the communities they purport to serve.
Warren Senders
atheism Education humor Personal: video
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
So true…
While I haven’t heard all of these, I’ve definitely heard a lot of them.
environment music: Christopher Plummer cultural extinction Rogers and Hammerstein
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 1, Day 17: You Used To Look Happy To Greet Me
More on the Edelweiss, this time from the UK Mail:
Alpine plants such as the edelwiss could become extinct if summers continue to get warmer, scientist have warned.
The cold-loving flowers are being forced higher up mountainsides by plants that thrive in higher temperatures, according to the first pan-European study of changing mountain vegetation published in the Journal Nature Climate Change.
Sent January 12:
The drama of climate change-triggered extinctions is unfolding before our eyes. Rapidly rising temperatures and changing weather patterns are now affecting the ecosystems of the European alps, threatening the survival of countless species of plants and animals, and turning the “small and bright, clean and white” Edelweiss into a historical footnote.
Should that tiny Alpine flower vanish from the wild, one of the most-loved songs in the English-speaking world will become a museum piece, devoid of its connection to an actual place, an actual family, an actual story, or the achingly evocative voice of Christopher Plummer. Another victim.
All over the planet, human cultures are likewise endangered; while people in the developed world may not find much sympathy for remote tribes whose habitats will be destroyed in the next fifty years, those societies have songs that mean as much to them as Rogers and Hammerstein’s beautiful “Edelweiss” does to us.
Warren Senders
humor India Indian music music Personal: Doordarshan unanticipated celebrity
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
I Have Fourteen Minutes, Fifty-Eight and a Half Seconds Left In My Allotment.
A friend posted this clip on Facebook, and something about the scene rang a bell.
Ah-hah! It was the first half of the “Concert For National Integration” at Shanmukhananda Hall in Bombay on Republic Day, 1986. I was in the audience; I had traveled from Pune along with Bhimsenji, who was singing a duet with Balamurali Krishna in the second half of the event.
Why is it interesting? I mean, honestly, most of these Hindustani/Carnatic jugalbandis aren’t that satisfying. This one’s no exception; I’m including it in this post for the sake of completeness. The whole ending frenzy is IMO totally inexcusable.
The next day Bhimsenji and his accompanists flew back to Pune; I was a member of the party. I received more than the usual amount of respect from airport personnel, who seemed to go out of their way to greet me courteously. On arriving in Pune I found out why.
Doordarshan’s cameraman had found me in the crowd, and given me a full-face closeup, which is reproduced at 33:47 in the televised video:
I was famous!
On seeing this, my wife commented that I looked like someone who was forcing himself to enjoy something against his own will. That sounds about right.
environment Politics: EPA greenhouse gases petroleum petroleum subsidies
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 1, Day 16: The Winnah!
The San Antonio Chronicle notes the recent release of EPA data on GHG emissions. Texas, of course, is number one:
As the nation’s light switch and gas pump, Texas releases far more greenhouse gases into the air than any other state, according to federal data released Wednesday.
Texas’ coal-fired power plants and oil refineries generated 294 million tons of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in 2010, more than the next two states — Pennsylvania and Florida — combined, the data shows.
The Environmental Protection Agency released the data by industrial facility for the first time as part of a broader effort to reduce emissions linked to global warming.
{snip}
The American Petroleum Institute, a leading industry trade group, said the federal data proves that there is no reason to include oil refineries in any new rules because they generate a small fraction of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, compared to coal-fired power plants.
“Air quality continues to improve, and we’re doing our part,” said Howard Feldman, API’s director of regulatory and scientific affairs. “The last thing we need now are more burdensome or unnecessary regulations that will create a drag on business efforts to invest, expand and put people back to work.”
The American Petroleum Institute should go f**k itself. Sent January 12:
In a macro-scale version of the “My carbon footprint is bigger than your carbon footprint” bumper sticker, Texan exceptionalists will surely savor the news that their state ranks highest in the country in greenhouse emissions. American exceptionalists, meanwhile, must comfort themselves over our country’s loss of first place in global CO2 output with the knowledge that we are still number one in per capita releases of greenhouse gases.
Obviously, this is a foolish straw-man argument. But the American Petroleum Institute’s response to the EPA is pretty silly, too; they’re basically saying, “Since we’re not as bad as coal, let’s end all those burdensome regulations!” Once freed from regulation, of course, they’ll be free to pollute more comprehensively.
Ultimately, however, the ultimate absurdity is that in order to maintain our growth-driven economy, we’re prepared to trigger a greenhouse effect of a magnitude unprecedented in human history. That’s not silly. That’s suicidal.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists media irresponsibility resource wars scientific consensus
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 1, Day 15: That’s When My Love Comes Tumblin’ Down
The Deseret News (UT) runs a story from the L.A. Times about the assessment of the situation from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
LOS ANGELES — Doomsday is one minute closer, folks.
The hands on the face of the symbolic Doomsday Clock have been repositioned to five minutes before midnight — signaling how close we may be to a global catastrophe unless we get our act together.
On Monday, the Doomsday Clock read six minutes before midnight. But on Tuesday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, self-tasked with informing the public about the pending threat from nuclear weapons, climate change and emerging technologies, decided to push the clock up a minute. It now reads five minutes before midnight — in recognition of a growing nuclear threat and damage from climate change.
“Inaction on key issues including climate change, and rising international tensions motivate the movement of the clock,” Lawrence Krauss, co-chairman of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists board, said in a statement released Tuesday.
The statement added: “As we see it, the major challenge at the heart of humanity’s survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.”
Only one minute? Sent January 11:
Given the steady accumulation of ominous news on climate change over the past year, it’s actually surprising that the analysts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists only moved their “doomsday clock” a single minute closer to the symbolic midnight point.
Even leaving aside the specific climatic impacts of a runaway greenhouse effect, there’s no doubt that the coming century’s droughts, wildfires, extreme weather, and rising ocean levels will bring profound geopolitical consequences — resource wars and refugee crises, often in some of the world’s most volatile areas.
And yet, the three major US networks broadcast only 14 news stories about climate change — a total of 32 minutes — during 2011. More time was given to celebrity weddings and the latest scandal du jour than to the most significant threat our species has faced in recorded history. Our collective failure to address this slow-motion catastrophe will have devastating consequences. Midnight is nigh.
Warren Senders