environment Politics: agriculture aquifers denialists Water
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 16: Low Bridge! Everybody Down!
The Ridgefield Press (CT) runs a column on climate change and the problem with rivers:
Dear EarthTalk: How is it that climate change is negatively affecting the health of rivers and, by extension, the quality and availability of fresh water? — Robert Elman
Global warming is no doubt going to cause many kinds of problems (and, indeed, already is), and rivers may well be some of the hardest hit geographical features, given the likelihood of increased droughts, floods and the associated spread of waterborne diseases.
For one, rivers are already starting to lose the amount of water they channel. A 2009 study at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that water volume in the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest declined by 14 percent since the 1950s. This trend is similar in major rivers all over the world.
“Many communities will see their water supplies shrink as temperatures rise and precipitation patterns shift,” reports the nonprofit American Rivers, adding that a rise in severe storms will degrade water quality and increase the risk of catastrophic floods. “Changes in the timing and location of precipitation combined with rising levels of water pollution will strain ecosystems and threaten the survival of many fish and wildlife species.” These shifts will have dramatic impacts, threatening public health, weakening economies and decreasing the quality of life in many places. In the U.S., the number of storms with extreme precipitation has increased 24 percent since the late 1940s-and the trend is expected to continue.
I got them deep river blues. Sent January 11:
The ongoing slow-motion catastrophe of climate change is getting harder to deny. Precipitously dropping river levels are one of the most powerful indicators that in countless ways, things ain’t what they used to be — a realization daily shared by formerly doubting Americans who’ve started to see global warming’s effects first-hand. But despite the burgeoning awareness of the problem, many of our country’s social and infrastructural mechanisms are stuck in the past. Developed in a period of conspicuous consumption and never upgraded, both agriculture and manufacturing sectors waste unimaginable quantities of water every day — water that will soon be recognized as a precious resource, not a disposable commodity.
New technology will be vital in husbanding dwindling water supplies, but the most important changes will be in our attitudes and behavior. We Americans must recognize that the era of waste is ended, and transform our ways of living accordingly.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 15: Frankly, Gentlemen, I Wouldn’t Want Her To Marry ANY Of You Goyim.
The fiscal cliff is a tragic example of an all-too-common malady: managing by living crisis to crisis. In this case, it was almost entirely a self-created crisis, but the underlying financial problems, such as increasing healthcare costs and entitlement spending, have been building for some time. Waiting until things are really, really bad before acting not only does not to prevent crises, but makes them worse when they do happen (a truth my chiropractor has kindly but insistently pointed out to me when I wait until I can only hobble before getting care for my troublesome back).
But finances (and even to some degree, my bad back) can be repaired. We are in far more long-term danger for failing to address climate change.
Last year, temperatures in the continental United States were hotter than they had ever been in more than a century of record-keeping, government scientists found. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration described the results (temps last year were, on average, 3.2 degrees higher than the 20th century average) as part of a bigger and longer trend of hotter, drier and more extreme weather. Some of it is the result of weather patterns, but human activity—such as the burning of greenhouse gases—is also to blame, researchers found.
Everybody sucks, but some suck more than others. Sent January 10:
It’s easy to point out the myopia of our political class by contrasting their hair-on-fire handling of the “fiscal cliff” with their apathetic treatment of the far more genuine threat posed by runaway climate change. But this comparison, while accurate and convenient, overlooks a similarity between the two crises.
If Congressional Republicans really cared about fiscal rectitude, they wouldn’t have created a deficit crisis in the first place by running up two wars’ worth of debt at the behest of the Bush administration (despite liberal warnings that the bill would be enormous). While we all share responsibility for climate chaos, both lawmakers and media ignored, minimized, and misrepresented the problem during the decades when it could have been forestalled, thereby ensuring that we would ultimately face a crisis of civilizational significance. Both the fiscal cliff and the ongoing climate catastrophe are human-created disasters, exacerbated by human ideology, ignorance and irresponsibility.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility fracking methane Natural Gas
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 14: Something Is Happening, But You Don’t Know What It Is.
The Albany Times-Union, on New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s approach to climate change:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has placed himself in the vanguard of public officials pledging action on climate change. He repeatedly has recognized that climate change is real and that New York is vulnerable to the extreme weather events that accompany our rapidly warming climate.
The governor has reignited a public debate on climate change, flatly stating that our nation had become distracted by an argument over the causes while failing to address the “inarguable effects” of our warming climate.
In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, after viewing the devastation and the damage that had been wrought, Cuomo laid down his marker when he said, “We need to act, not simply react.”
Color me skeptical. Sent January 9:
Governor Cuomo’s going to face some hard choices if his actions are to match his rhetoric on climate change. In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, he noted that “Mother Nature is telling us something,” but she’s not the only one trying to attract his attention. Natural gas companies are heavily invested in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” and the question of whether to allow this risky technology in New York is going to cross Mr. Cuomo’s desk very soon. But when it comes to the greenhouse emissions that are driving climate change, research has shown that natural gas extraction and processing emit significant quantities of methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. Given that fossil-fuel corporations have also invested very heavily in our country’s politicians, should we be surprised if the Governor responds to their messages rather than those of our endangered environment, or those of the ordinary citizens of New York?
Warren Senders
environment: scientific consensus scientific method winter sports
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 13: Ain’t No Place A Man Can Hide, Will Keep Him From The Sun
The Woodland, CA Daily Democrat runs an AP article on the future of Beautiful Lake Tahoe and environs:
Lake Tahoe is “the fairest picture the whole earth affords,” Mark Twain once wrote. Its crystal blue waters, surrounded by stunning snowy mountains, define one of California’s crown jewels as an American landmark. It attracts 3 million skiers, boaters, campers, hikers and other visitors each year.
But it could look very different in 100 years.
Climate change could profoundly affect the Tahoe area, scientists say, taking the snow out of the mountains and the blue out of the water. Last winter’s ski season showed a glimpse of what a future, warmer Tahoe may look like. Snow didn’t start falling in the mountains until January. The California Ski Industry Association reported that 25 percent fewer skiers visited the Sierra last season. For a region that boasts a $5 billion year-round economy, that hurts.
New climate models show that in a worst-case scenario average temperatures in the Tahoe area could rise as much as 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That’s equivalent to moving Lake Tahoe from its current elevation of 6,200 feet above sea level to 3,700 feet, climate scientists report in a special January issue of the journal Climatic Change. That’s as high as the peak of Contra Costa County’s Mount Diablo, which gets only an inch of snow a year.
(snip)
Homewood Ski Resort, a lower-elevation resort without an extensive snowmaking system, is well aware of the threat of climate change. Last season, Homewood didn’t open until Dec. 14, said resort spokesman Paul Raymore, and it wasn’t able to open any chair lifts until January. More winters such as last year’s would be disastrous. “We do rely on Mother Nature and what she provides in terms of natural snowfall,” Raymore said.
While doing little to curb global climate change, the resort does encourage skiers to use public transit, now offering $5 off lift tickets for those who do. “We have a vested interest in ensuring that the mountains stay cold,” Raymore said.
To be sure, people should keep in mind that the climate models aren’t necessarily forecasts, said Michael Dettinger, a climate modeler at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego and one of the authors of the special Climatic Change issue. “They’re what-if predictions,” he said, adding that scientists can’t say yet which scenario is most likely to unfold.
But….
Sent January 8:
When considering climate scientists’ warnings about the dangers of a climate-changed future, we must remember that climate models are notoriously fallible — and that their predictions of how a transformed planetary atmosphere will impact our lives are frequently inaccurate.
So does this mean everything’s fine? Nope. Those scientists almost universally erred in underestimating the speed and severity of the damage. By now “worse than expected” is a near-universal refrain in scientific circles and the public media. Arctic ice? Melting faster than expected. Sea levels? Rising faster than expected. Heat waves? Hotter, longer, and larger than expected.
That these effects are now outracing experts’ predictions is no reason to dismiss scientific study of our climate. If your oncologist tells you the prognosis is worse than expected, that doesn’t mean you should abandon therapy. Those who love and enjoy the beauties of Lake Tahoe had better get ready for the unexpected.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 12: ‘Twas In Another Lifetime, One Of Toil And Blood
A doctor dude named Howard Frumkin waxes shrill on the pages of the Seattle Times, discussing the large-scale health impacts of climate change:
HERE’S a riddle: What do the Oklahoma dust bowl, smoke in Wenatchee, mold on Long Island and Washington’s oyster industry have in common?
And why would a doctor, like me, care?
The common link is climate change. We must act now to stop it.
Ken Burns’s PBS documentary, “The Dust Bowl,” recounts how reckless land management, combined with severe heat waves and drought during the 1930s, triggered a catastrophe — loss of soil, destruction of farms, displacement of people.
Record-breaking wildfires dominated the news last summer. Vast tracts of forest and grassland in central Washington and across the west were destroyed. People breathed higher levels of smoke than on the most polluted days in Beijing or Mexico City.
“Rockaway cough,” not to mention rashes, asthma, injuries and carbon-monoxide poisoning, are filling the emergency departments and relief centers of Long Island and New Jersey, as the victims of Superstorm Sandy endure numerous hazardous exposures in their efforts to clean up and rebuild.
The guy is obviously a supporter of the Kenyan usurper, so we should discount everything he says. Sent January 7:
Dr. Howard Frumkin’s column is a crucial reminder of what the climate crisis portends for our future. That this includes a diverse array of public-health impacts is undeniable to any who can examine the evidence without first donning the distorting lenses of anti-science conservatism. Unfortunately, the Republican climate-denial mechanism is well-funded (thanks to the generosity of the oil and coal industries) and well-promoted (thanks to a complaisant media which values irrelevant controversy over facts and expertise).
A physician like Dr. Frumkin will recognize this behavior. Just as a patient may vehemently reject a frightening diagnosis, the GOP’s blustery avoidance of an inconvenient reality is merely a childlike form of magical thinking. But climate-change denial is no match for the obdurate, implacable laws of physics; the sooner conservatives realize this, the more chance we have of rising to meet the challenges of the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: clouds economics geo-engineering scientific consensus
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 11: Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine?
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on one of our technological back-up plans:
One afternoon last fall, Armand Neukermans, a tall engineer with a sweep of silver bangs, flipped on a noisy pump in the back corner of a Sunnyvale lab. Within moments, a fine mist emerged from a tiny nozzle, a haze of salt water under high pressure and heat.
It didn’t look like much. But this seemingly simple vapor carries a lot of hope – and inspires a lot of fear. If Neukermans’ team of researchers can fine-tune the mechanism to spray just the right size and quantity of salt particles into the sky, scientists might be able to make coastal clouds more reflective.
The hope is that by doing so, humankind could send more heat and light back into space, wielding clouds as shields against climate change.
The fear, at least the one cited most often, is that altering the atmosphere this way could also unleash dangerous side effects.
“Ten years ago, people would have said this is totally wacky,” Neukermans said. “But it could give us some time if global warming really becomes catastrophic.”
When, not if. Sent January 6:
While the prospect of geoengineering technologies for mitigating climate change’s effects is terrifying, the crisis allows for no non-terrifying outcomes. We’re midway through a mass extinction of a magnitude unprecedented in human history; our greenhouse emissions have achieved a critical mass sufficient to forestall an ice age 50,000 years from now (even if we completely stopped burning fossil fuels today); melting methane in the Arctic has transformed the “Venus effect” from a never-in-a-million-years nightmare to a statistically significant probability.
There’s no single cause of the climate disaster, and no single solution. But the business-as-usual approach which has brought us to this point must be rejected; we humans must transform ourselves, our communities, and our nations — putting the survival of our species above our short-term gratification. Armand Neukermans’ work on increasing cloud reflectivity could never as dangerously uncontrolled an experiment on Earth’s atmosphere as the multi-century endeavor known as industrial civilization.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment: atheism Jesus religion sustainability timescales
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 10: The Moans Of The Damned
The Whittier Daily News (CA) speaks about the question of faith and the environment:
Throughout all of California and the rest of the country, the faith community has been working for many years to preach the gospel of good stewardship of our shared environment.
Amid theological differences, we have fostered a shared sense of purpose and urgency that unites us in solidarity with our local and global communities, especially those most vulnerable to climate change.
The action that results from this shared sense of purpose goes far beyond a congregation’s four walls. People of faith bring shared principles – such as working for the common good, caring for our neighbors, and working for economic justice – into the public policy arena.
For example, the California faith community strongly supported the passage and implementation of Assembly Bill 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. This bill, which was fully implemented on Jan. 1, 2013, aims to cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, addressing both global -climate change as well as regional air pollution.
But even policy change in itself is not enough to address the crisis we are currently facing as people of faith struggle with the power to indelibly alter God’s Creation and affect the lives of many generations that come after us.
The environmental crisis is at root a spiritual crisis. To remedy this we must begin to build a new relationship with the earth. That means answering the call to be good stewards of Creation and understanding that the “environment” is not a nebulous “out-there” reality; rather it is intimately connected with our lives and our spiritual development.
This value system is not incompatible with economic growth. On the contrary, the clean technology sector is a major factor in building California’s economy. According to a recent Next 10 report, the clean tech sector grew by 53 percent from 1995-2010, while jobs in the wider economy grew by 12 percent. When we care for the environment, we are caring for the health, livelihood and economic situation of our neighbors and ourselves.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Sent January 5:
Attempts to reconcile the demands of long-term sustainability with Christian theology are more complex and problematic than they seem at first blush. While many modern Christians have rejected the notion of Armageddon, a substantial number still advocate for a final apocalypse; a concluding spasm of terrifying violence yielding to a paradisical afterlife for true believers.
The sustainability so desired by environmentalists is predicated on the notion that humanity’s future is open-ended, that our species has a place in the web of Earthly life and a part to play in the long-term history of our universe. These wholly laudable concepts are on a collision course with the notion that the world is destined to end conclusively and explosively, providing an eventual reward for the faithful. For the “faith community” to credibly preach environmental stewardship, it must direct its attention to the many self-described Christians who still hew to End Times theology.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture assholes denialists idiots islands Republican obstructionism rising sea levels
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 9: Maui Wowee?
The Honolulu Weekly notes that climate change has arrived in Hawaii:
For years we’ve been hearing ominous rumblings about climate change and its many implications for the planet, especially Hawaii and other islands in the Western Pacific. The scenarios fueled by a rapidly expanding body of science are sobering: rising temperatures and prolonged droughts, dying coral reefs and dwindling fish stocks. Rising sea levels will eventually, for some atolls and low-lying areas of Hawaii, bring total inundation.
“We have lots and lots of science,” says Jesse Souki, director of the Office of State Planning (OSP). “We have a pretty good idea of what the problem is, and what’s going to happen. The hard part is figuring out what to do about it.”
The islands make a good hook for a standard screed on GOP idiocy. Sent January 4:
Hawaii isn’t alone. Every day, nations, states, regions and communities around the world are find that climate change is no longer an abstraction but a difficult and sometimes dangerous reality. When the weather goes haywire, farmers can’t plan. When out-of-season storms start happening more and more often, the whole notion of “season” goes out the window — along with vulnerable infrastructure. When mountaintop ice vanishes, people in the valleys who’ve depended on glacial melt for their water are forced from the land they’ve occupied for millennia. And when islands are under threat from rising sea levels, tourism may take a back seat to simple survival.
But while people everywhere on Earth are waking up to the threat of climate chaos, there is still one place where the rapidly metastasizing greenhouse effect has failed to make an impact. In the offices and caucus rooms of Congressional Republicans, global warming is still a liberal hoax, not a potentially devastating reality. While these conservative lawmakers may answer to different constituencies, they all represent, ultimately, the same state of denial.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Big Oil corporate irresponsibility denialists
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 8: My Heart Goes Where The Wild Goose Goes
What could possibly go wrong? Time Magazine:
As terrible as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was, one element worked in the favor of rescuers and cleanup personnel: location. The Gulf of Mexico is the nerve center of the U.S. offshore oil industry, which made it that much easier for BP and the federal government to respond quickly to the spill. The warm Gulf environment also simplified operations and accelerated the natural dispersal of the oil. As one environmentalist noted at the time, having an oil spill in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico was like having a heart attack in the middle of a hospital. It’s still a heart attack, but at least you won’t have to wait long for treatment.
Now imagine the opposite — a heart attack far, far away from the closest medical care. That’s what’s unfolding this week in Alaska, where a Shell drilling rig called the Kulluk broke free from a tow ship in stormy seas on New Year’s Eve before running aground on the southeast coast of Sitkalidak Island, near the larger island of Kodiak. It’s not clear yet how much if any of the rig’s more than 150,000 gal. of diesel fuel and lubricants might have spilled into the freezing cold waters. And because the ship was in transit rather than actively drilling, there’s no danger of a major oil blowout similar to the Deepwater Horizon spill. But the accident and the struggles that Shell and the U.S. Coast Guard have already experienced trying to save the rig underscores just how difficult and dangerous drilling in Arctic waters will be — which should be worrying since the oil industry and the Obama Administration are counting on the bounty promised in the far north.
Fucking delusional idiots. Sent January 3:
Einstein’s definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result,” is perfectly applied to Shell Oil’s current Arctic debacle. For decades Shell and its Big Oil peers have botched every aspect of their business: exploration and extraction leave gaping wounds on the Earth’s surface; transportation spills toxic crude in oceans and aquifers, devastating local and regional ecosystems; refineries waste huge quantities of raw material as pollution. Meanwhile oil’s business practices enrich a small coterie of executive while feeding at the public trough and fostering a culture of dependency among consumers; oil’s geopolitics leads us into war after war at an immeasurable cost; oil’s PR funds the denial of science and muddies the national conversation on climate change, the gravest crisis in humankind’s history.
Perhaps entrusting the future of our energy economy to demonstrably incompetent and untrustworthy corporations wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility fossil fuels Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 1, Day 7: Ring-A-Ding-Ding!
The Orlando Sentinel joins the shrill chorus:
Earth is growing warmer; the records prove that. Some still doubt human activity has anything to do with it, but it’s past time for the rest of us to face reality.
We need, first, good leadership. The United States should provide it, as it has repeatedly promised but failed to do. To begin with, it needs to join those other nations that have committed to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions.
Florida should be a leader among the states, because it is among those most threatened with ecological problems and rising sea levels.
Who’s to bell the cat? Sent January 2:
As 2012 shrinks in the rearview mirror, we can recognize it as the year that climate change came home for many of us. Whether it was the devastating drought that hammered the Corn Belt, the unprecedented destruction wrought by Superstorm Sandy, or the hundreds of other examples of extreme weather, last year Americans learned that geographical serendipity is no longer going to protect us from the accelerating greenhouse effect.
But one important group of our fellow citizens remains to be convinced. Congress and elected leaders have been shamefully timid, offering platitudes and half-measures where bold and forceful action is urgently needed. Did I say “one”? Make that two: our Politicians and their Ownership. We’ll only see genuinely meaningful policy responses to the climate crisis if we get fossil fuel money out of politics, or convince Big Oil and Big Coal to value humanity’s survival more than their already grotesque profit margins.
Warren Senders