environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility economics media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 7: May The Wind Always Be At Your Back
The Economist weighs in on the IPCC report – far more responsibly than American business outlets, needless to say:
IT HAS been a long time coming. But then the fifth assessment of the state of the global climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body, was a behemoth of an undertaking. It runs to thousands of pages, involved hundreds of scientists and was exhaustively checked and triple-checked by hundredds of other boffins and government officials to whom they report—and whose policies are often based on what they read. The first tranche of the multi-volume report—an executive summary of the physical science—was released in Stockholm on September 27th. And it is categorical in its conclusion: climate change has not stopped and man is the main cause.
It may be the last report of its kind: a growing chorus of experts thinks a more frequent, less bally-hooed and more up-to-date assessments would be more useful. It is certainly the first since negotiations for a global treaty reining in carbon emissions collapsed in Copenhagen in 2009; the first since questions were raised about the integrity of the IPCC itself following mistaken claims about the speed of glacier melt in the Himalayas and, most important, the first since evidence became incontrovertible that global surface air temperatures have risen much less quickly in the past 15 years than the IPCC had expected. A lot is riding on its findings, from the public credibility of climate science to the chances of a new global treaty.
Gack. September 29:
For too long, the business community’s discussion of climate change has been mistakenly conceived as a competition between different economic viewpoints, and environmentalists have often been vilified for pointing out the obvious truth that when we exceed Earth’s carrying capacity, we put ourselves in very grave danger. As the recently released IPCC report makes clear, industrialized civilization has stressed the planet’s resources to the breaking point; dealing honestly and comprehensively with the climate crisis is not an issue of ideology, but of survival.
Our carbon dioxide emissions linger in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years, causing rising sea levels, oceanic acidification, and incidences of extreme weather all over the globe. “Emit now, pay later” has been our approach for the decades since the problems of global warming were first identified in the 1950s. Now the bills for our accumulated greenhouse emissions coming due, and the longer we wait to take care of our environmental debt, the more it’s going to cost — in money, in infrastructure, and in the shattered lives we will bequeath to our posterity.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists heroes media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 6: Thank You, Sir — May I Have Another?
PennLive – The Patriot-News – runs a great interview with Michael Mann:
To all the climate-change deniers out there, Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann has this suggestion:
Stop arguing about whether the globe is warming and whether human pollution from greenhouse gases plays a major role in it. The science on those counts is settled.
Instead, he said, join the debate about what, if anything, the world can — or should — do about it. Is taking action against climate change simply too expensive? Why should we sacrifice given what China and India are doing?
Some critics are asking those questions, he said when interviewed Wednesday in Harrisburg for an event sponsored by PennFuture. And that approach would bring the discussion to “a legitimate level where it’s possible to have a policy debate,” he said. In some ways, I welcome that. We can talk about efficacy, fairness” and other issues.
“If that’s where we really were, we’d be in really good shape,” he said.
Alas, we are not, as a flood of commenters on this article will surely demonstrate. Denialists will bring up out-of-context data points and cite the handful of academically-credentialed dissenters who dispute the overwhelming scientific consensus on the subject.
“There are always devil’s advocates and contrarians in science,” said Mann.
Always a pleasure to stand up for a stand-up guy. September 28:
Even since Dr. Michael Mann first published his findings on the accelerating pace of climate change, he’s come under steady attack from anti-science conservatives. Despite the fact that they’ve come up empty in their search for incriminating evidence of academic malfeasance, these anti-science zealots aren’t abandoning their fruitless crusade.
The recent IPCC report once again demonstrates that the specialists who’ve dedicated their lives to understanding Earth’s climate agree that there is a very serious problem, and that we — all of us — need to talk about it. Unable to refute the rapidly accumulating evidence of the climate crisis, denialist pundits and politicians instead resort to misrepresentations, ad hominem attacks, and statistical cherrypicking.
In the face of a rapidly accelerating crisis, Michael Mann and other climatologists exemplify not just good scientific practice, but the broader virtues of responsible citizenship. They deserve our thanks and respectful attention, not calumnies and abuse.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: IPCC media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 5: A Fine Roll Of Honour
The Hattiesburg American (MS) reprints a USA Today article on the IPCC report:
The panel releases reports every few years that synthesize the latest in peer-reviewed research, and its fifth assessment – to be released in several parts over the coming year – is the first since 2007.
This assessment is likely to paint a dire portrait of climate change. Yet some scientists say it actually underestimates the problem. Kevin Schaefer of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., says it doesn’t, for example, include the increasing greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, which is perennially frozen ground in Alaska and other Arctic regions.
The State Department’s Climate Action Report, updated every four years as part of the U.N.’s monitoring of global efforts, agrees that the challenges ahead are formidable. “Climate change represents one of the greatest challenges of our time,” it says.
Nobody wants to talk about it, but it’s all there is to talk about. September 27:
There are more than enough inadequacies to go around when it comes to our collective response to climate change. When the best the most powerful nation on Earth can offer is a “dent” in its emissions goals, that’s pathetic. And when the IPCC report, hailed as a “blockbuster,” turns out to understate multiple aspects of the problem (Arctic methane release being the most terrifying of a very bad lot), that’s a sobering realization. But the capper comes in the State Department’s polite characterization of the climate crisis as representing “…one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
What a sadly tentative statement. All other challenges — ending slavery, expanding the franchise, empowering women, addressing income inequality, stopping child labor, wiping out epidemic diseases — are contingent on a stable environment. Our climate is the canvas upon which great humanitarians throughout history have painted their visions of a better future; destroy that through the irresponsible consumption of fossil fuels, and all our species’ aspirations will be replaced by the grim imperatives of survival on a planet turned hostile.
If we fail to address climate change, we fail at everything.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists droughts idiots media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 4: Love You To
Crater Lake in Oregon is drying up:
Almost 2,000 feet deep, Crater Lake is the deepest body of water in the United States, a beautiful gem of southern Oregon. Fed by overhead snow and rain, the lake is one of the cleanest and purest in the world. Gazing upon the breathtakingly bright blue waters of the lake is something you never forget.
But there is trouble in paradise. During the past 21 years, I have spent my summers living in Crater Lake National Park. Looking out my bedroom window, I noticed winters are becoming shorter, warmer and less snowy. It looks to me like it has been raining more and snowing less in the months of May, June, September, and October. This change in the weather has led me to become very worried about climate change.
The science confirms my observation. In 1931, rangers first began keeping track of the average annual snowfall at Crater Lake. Since then, the totals have been trending downward by decade from an average of 614 inches in the 1930s to about 455 inches last decade. Even more alarming, this last winter, 2012-13, Crater Lake received about 355 inches.
Climate researchers expect the trend to continue. They predict the Pacific Northwest will experience even less snow and warmer temperatures in the decades to come.
I gather it’s a lovely place. September 25:
When it comes to confronting global climate change, Oregon’s not alone. Everywhere on Earth, people are discovering that the bill for a century-long carbon binge is coming due. Whether it’s devastated agriculture, rising sea levels and oceanic acidification, extreme and unpredictable weather, or the kind of droughts that are disrupting ecosystems at Crater Lake, we can no longer ignore the warning signs.
There’s a lot of argument about how to prepare for the greenhouse effect’s consequences — but one thing is certain: we will never successfully address climate change if we cannot accept its existence, its causes, and its potential to harm our neighborhoods, our regions, our states, our nation, and our world. The time is past for denial; politicians and media figures who continue to hide their heads in the sand on this planetary crisis are sacrificing the happiness of future generations for a few minutes in the limelight.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies IPCC scientific consensus smoking
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 3: A World Of Plastic Hungers
A well-informed citizenry. That’s the phrase. The Washington Post, on the IPCC report’s numbers:
WASHINGTON — Top scientists from a variety of fields say they are about as certain that global warming is a real, man-made threat as they are that cigarettes kill.
They are as sure about climate change as they are about the age of the universe. They say they are more certain about climate change than they are that vitamins make you healthy or that dioxin in Superfund sites is dangerous.
They’ll even put a number on how certain they are about climate change. But that number isn’t 100 percent. It’s 95 percent.
And for some non-scientists, that’s just not good enough.
There’s a mismatch between what scientists say about how certain they are and what the general public thinks the experts mean, specialists say.
Ah well, it was fun while it lasted. September 25:
It’s not only that scientists are as certain of human-caused climate change as they are that smoking is bad for your health, or that some of the people most responsible for spreading misinformation about climate change did the same for big tobacco companies. The really significant analogy lies in the psychology of addiction.
Consumer culture is hooked on fossil fuels; like all addicts, we’ll do anything to ensure our supply. Anyone who’s ever tried to quit smoking surely remembers the phrases they used to rationalize their dependency. “Just one more,” “I need to relax,” and “It’s too hard to quit right now” — all these phrases uncomfortably evoke the fossil-fuel industry’s case against meaningful policy approaches to climate change.
Our civilization’s carbon energy habit has gravely damaged our planet’s health, and denialists’ responses to the IPCC report are remarkably similar to a heavy smoker’s hacking contempt for the oncologist’s advice.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: heroes Keystone XL pipelines Tar Sands
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 2: She’s My Curly-Headed Baby…
Great work against the PIPELINES recently. The Burlington Free Press (VT):
MIDDLEBURY — Activists attempted to draw the line against what they called dirty fuels Saturday.
As high noon hit the Middlebury Town Green, young families, teens, seniors and outspoken 30-somethings eagerly donned wide, orange strips of tape to connect each other in a human line intended to send an unyielding message against the Keystone XL, Vermont Gas, and Portland-Montreal pipelines.
Raymond LaLumiere of Leicester heckled guest speakers by shouting, “What about the facts? What about the facts?”
Rally coordinator Maeve McBride of South Burlington calmed the pipeline supporter so the more than 100 registered activists could listen to the speakers on the gazebo who rallied against pipeline projects in Vermont.
Activists at the rally were from the Center for Biological Diversity, joined by members of 350 Vermont, Rising Tide and other citizens to voice their opposition.
I sure do love reading about protests. September 24:
Patriotism is not expressed by flags and slogans, but by acting on a shared responsibility to the future of our nation and the world. It was two hundred and thirty-eight years ago that the Green Mountain Boys struck a decisive blow in the early history of America, catapulting Ethan Allen into our nation’s pantheon of legendary patriots, and laying the groundwork for the creation of the State of Vermont. The American Revolution was the world’s first fight to establish a country free from economic and political domination by a major world power, and its effects are still part of our lives, centuries later.
Now Americans are under the domination of a different sort of major power — the multinational corporations which profit by selling us fossil fuels. Just as King George III’s government disregarded the needs and wishes of the American colonists, these giant collective entities are indifferent to the common good…and just as the heroes of the revolution fought back against British rule, so too must ordinary citizens resist the incursions of our new corporate rulers. Ordinary citizens — like the patriots who came to Middlebury last Saturday to express their dedicated opposition to the destructive and polluting oil and gas pipelines proposed to cross Vermont.
When most eyes are focused on pop stars and the banalities of television news, these environmental activists seek a world where our energy consumption no longer endangers humanity’s future, while grossly enriching a corrupt few.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists IPCC media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 1: They All Lived Happily Ever After
The Border Mail (Australia) talks about the IPCC report in unambiguous language:
Early next week, hundreds of scientists will meet in Stockholm’s Brewery Conference Centre to put the finishing touches on the world’s most important climate change document. It is unlikely the beer will be flowing.
By Friday the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will have released the results of its labour – the first part of its fifth major assessment of climate science.
Its last report, released six years ago, delivered a stark message: the climate is warming mostly because of human activity and poses a major threat – especially if global temperatures increase by more than two degrees.
Go beyond two degrees and the planet faces dangerously rising seas, larger drought-affected areas and more frequent extreme weather events, amid other dire projections.
That report won the group the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which the panel’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, observed would ”be seen as a clarion call for the protection of the Earth as it faces the widespread impacts of climate change”.
Six years on, the fifth report’s core findings remain largely the same, only now there is even greater scientific certainty. But already, it is clear the fanfare that greeted the last report is unlikely to be repeated. And so far it is the areas of uncertainty in the report – inevitable when dealing with scientific predictions – that are creating headlines.
To prepare the report, scientists from throughout the world volunteer years of their lives to collate and assess data and modelling results to pull together the report’s 3000 or so pages. The report is split into three sections: the first dealing with the physical science, the second and third – due out next year – looking at impacts and ways to cut emissions.
The IPCC does no research of its own, but calls on the expertise of about 830 scientists to draw together evidence from thousands of sources – from ice-core samples drilled out of Antarctica, to ocean temperature records sampled kilometres below the surface – to form the most comprehensive picture of the Earth’s climate system.
Scientists who were lead authors on the report gave Fairfax Media a consistent message: the evidence of a warming planet caused by human activity – such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests – is stronger than six years ago.
Dire. September 23:
As the new IPCC report shows, the scientific evidence both for climate change’s human causes and the profound danger it represents is now overwhelming. As their political power ebbs and flows, climate-change deniers are finding it harder and harder to keep up the pretense of objectivity.
There are five stages of climate denial: 1 – it’s not happening; 2 – it’s happening but humans don’t cause it; 3 – humans cause it but it’s not so bad, really; 4 – it’s really bad, but it’s too expensive to fix; 5 – it’s too late to do anything, so let’s have a party instead. Wholly controlled by their petroleum paymasters and aided and abetted by a complaisant media, the titular leaders of the industrialized world have spent decades begrudgingly working their way to stage two.
Assuming the IPCC report pushes them along to stage three, expect to see cheerful talking heads on television telling us that a warmer planet will mean millions of new jobs manufacturing air conditioners. Plants will grow taller, food will be more nourishing, and economies worldwide will boom. Our children will be smarter and more beautiful, and everyone will be above average.
No, they won’t.
Such fairy tales are beneath contempt. All five stages of denial represent intellectual and moral abdications of our responsibilities to our posterity, our species, and to the planetary web of life of which we are a part.
Warren Senders
environment: fishing mass extinctions oceanic acidification oceanic warming species loss
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 30: Break Your Heart and Leave You To Sing
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on an ichthyologist who’s noticing stuff:
On a dark night in the middle of a wide marsh near Tuckerton, N.J., a team of Rutgers University researchers lowered a net over the railing of an old wooden bridge. Then they turned off their flashlights and waited.
Below, in Little Sheepshead Creek, the incoming tide was washing hundreds of tiny fish larvae into the net.
By now – 24 years after these weekly surveys began – Rutgers ichthyologist Ken Able is seeing the unmistakable effects of warming oceans and climate change. Especially in the last decade, the researchers have been seeing more southern species, including the larvae of grouper, a fish common in Florida. At the same time, they’ve been capturing fewer northern species, such as winter flounder.
The changes Able is recording at Little Sheepshead Creek, near Great Bay, are reflected along the East Coast and worldwide. They have the potential not only to alter ecosystems, but also to change the seafood on our dinner plates. Out on Jersey’s beaches, where Atlantic croaker catches used to be a rarity – this was considered the northern end of the fish’s range – anglers now commonly reel them in.
Have a beer. September 22:
The dramatic relocation of fishes to more hospitable locales isn’t the only example of climate change’s effects on the interdependent systems of Earthly life. As the greenhouse effect intensifies, more and more plants and animals will be forced from endangered regional ecosystems into new territories, with unpredictable consequences not just for our meals, but for the other species they encounter. When human beings are forced from their homes by drought, extreme storms, or rising sea levels, we call them “climate refugees,” and the term is as accurate for Atlantic Croakers and other displaced fish as it is for members of our own species.
For fish to relocate to cooler water doesn’t sound like such a big deal — but it could easily be catastrophic for many other species struggling for survival in a complex, symbiotic oceanic environment. An unraveling web of life ultimately leaves us all uprooted and unsupported.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Arctic ice melt assholes denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 29: Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do…
The same Cal Thomas column, this time in the Winona Daily News (MN):
Yet the climate change cultists continue to focus on melting polar ice caps and “displaced” polar bears as part of their emotional appeal for government to “fix” the problem. Now comes a report in the UK Daily Mail that “eminent scientists” have observed a record return of the Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60 percent in a year, covering with ice almost 1 million more square miles of ocean than in 2012.
Recycling yesterday’s letter, and making it better, too. September 21:
Ignorance may be bliss, but in today’s information-rich world, it’s no longer excusable, especially when the issue is as fraught with consequences as global climate change. As a representative of the professionally ignorant whose work demands that they remain uninformed, Cal Thomas is an exemplar of intellectual and ethical bankruptcy. His discussion of the increase in polar ice coverage since 2012 is a perfect example, for if Mr. Thomas really cared about it, he could have learned a great deal with a few minutes of research. Unfortunately for his readers, and for the broader national discussion of this important issue, he chose to remain ignorant.
When discussing how Arctic ice expands and contracts over time, there are two things to keep in mind. First, while the surface area with ice cover has indeed increased, it’s much, much thinner than ever before — not by any imaginings a good sign. And second, while year-to-year numbers may fluctuate, the trend over decades has been an accelerating decrease. If a terminal patient gains a couple of pounds, that’s a good day, not a remission.
Mr. Thomas’ simplistic misrepresentation of a planetary crisis does us all a disservice.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: Arctic ice melt assholes denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 28: If You Lived Here, You’d Be An Idiot
Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas is a moron, and he does it for a living. Here’s his column printed in the Clarksville, TN Leaf-Chronicle:
Most bad weather – from hurricanes, which have been few this season, to tornadoes – are unwelcome by those in their paths, but these weather phenomena have existed for centuries. Both sides seem to agree that CO2 levels are elevated, but they don’t agree on whether that will cause dangerous climate change, including rising temperatures and turbulent weather. The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) argues, “The human effect is likely to be small relative to natural variability, and whatever small warming is likely to occur will produce benefits as well as costs.”
Yet the climate change cultists continue to focus on melting polar ice caps and “displaced” polar bears as part of their emotional appeal for government to “fix” the problem. Now comes a report in the UK Daily Mail that “eminent scientists” have observed a record return of the Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60 percent in a year, covering with ice almost 1 million more square miles of ocean than in 2012.
In 2007, the BBC reported that by 2013, global warming would leave the Arctic “ice free.” Oops!
Useless. The present-day commentariat is useless. September 20:
Ignorance is excusable, for it can always be corrected. But professional ignorance — deliberately choosing to stay uninformed for purely financial reasons — is both intellectually and morally beyond the pale. Cal Thomas’ attempt to discredit climate scientists by citing an increase in polar ice coverage over last year is a perfect example of the latter; if Mr. Thomas was really interested in understanding the mechanisms by which Arctic ice expands and contracts over time, he could have informed himself with a few minutes’ research — but he’s well-paid to remain ignorant, and we are all the losers thereby.
Two simple points need to be made about polar ice. First, while the surface area covered by ice has indeed grown since last year, the overall trend has been steadily downward. A cancer patient who’s losing weight may gain a few pounds occasionally on a good day, but that doesn’t mean the disease is cured. Second, that expanded surface area is much, much thinner than it’s ever been; like ice cream on a hot sidewalk, it spreads out over a wide area.
Mr. Thomas does his readers a disservice with a simplistic misrepresentation of a genuinely dangerous planetary reality.
Warren Senders