environment: corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 9: Why, They Couldn’t Hit An Elephant At This Dist…..!
Dr. James Knotwell of Lincoln, Nebraska, writes a piece for the Wauneta Breeze (NE). It’s a long and thoughtful analysis of why the Keystone XL is full of shit:
In trying to dissect and comprehend the theater that is the current Keystone XL controversy, I’m wondering whether to characterize its genre as comedy, tragedy, or farce; it contains elements of all three, but one must prevail.
It’s comical, for instance, to view the special legislative session as anything but a political move designed exclusively for CYA, but that’s the only way this “development” project could be considered funny.
Similarly, TransCanada’s faux concern for presumed accrual of economic benefits, as Charlie Litton and the Nebraska News Service ably demonstrated in last week’s Breeze posting, reveals the farcical nature of the Keystone XL escapade.
But that the Keystone XL project will end up as surefire tragedy for Nebraskans is a stone-cold, lead-pipe lock.
Of course the pipeline will ultimately fail with the fragile Nebraska landscape bearing the brunt of that failure, it might happen in months, it might happen in decades, but it will happen, and the actual cost then will be much greater than however much of the $4 billion in annual profits accumulates in the pockets of producers, transporters, and investors, who by then will have made themselves invisible or invulnerable anyway.
The real tragedy in this scenario, though, is the further undermining of community sovereignty by industrial investors — those financial overseers located everywhere else but here.
Only a few years back, with the wind-energy frenzy providing the fuel for industrial deception of magnitude comparable to TranCanada and its Albertan tar sands pipe, I found myself an insider in the construction of a private transmission line designed to move the wind-generated electricity of central Texas southeastward.
The procedure for building such a massive piece of linear infrastructure is dubious because it is highly secretive and frenetically paced.
There’s more. You should read it; the guy is very good. Sent November 5:
As Dr. James Knotwell points out, the Keystone XL project is a perfect example of corporate sovereignty trumping the needs of individual localities and regions. Oil company spokespeople say our economy cannot grow without the dirty crude of the Alberta tar sands, when what they really mean is that their balance sheets won’t grow nearly as fast. TransCanada’s advocates cynically trade off the pipeline’s inevitable environmental and health impacts with the sop of a few locally-based jobs.
Dr. Knotwell’s morally-charged analysis gains force when applied on larger scales of place and time. Extracting the tar sands’ oil endangers the environment upon which all earthly life depends; the CO2 released into the atmosphere is going to take centuries to dissipate — and our civilization will be threatened in ways we can barely imagine. An economy in which corporate profits outrank the long-term survival and prosperity of our species is profoundly immoral.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Bad News
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 8: Good Luck, Everyone. Meet You At The Double Bar.
WASHINGTON—The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.
The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
“The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing,” said John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.
Well, this should be good for a week’s worth of letters, at least, don’cha think? Sent Nov. 4:
Those who live for the thrills and chills provided by genuinely bad news need look no further than the new figures on greenhouse gas emissions provided by the U.S. Department of Energy. Well, thrills, anyway — since the unprecedented spike in atmospheric CO2 essentially guarantees catastrophic global warming over the coming century.
Afficionadi of extreme weather events like the anomalous October snowstorm that battered much of the North-East will also have much to look forward to. Vicious storms? Destructive rain and snow? Infrastructure-crippling precipitation? Check, check and check. The many fans of wildfires and droughts will no doubt enjoy the spectacle.
One wonders whether the current crop of Republican presidential aspirants will have anything to say about the DOE’s report. Most likely they’ll propose a cost-effective, simple and comprehensive solution: eliminate funding for any such studies in the years to come. After all, what we don’t know can’t hurt us.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 7: We Break It, We Buy It
The Washington Post notes that President Obama is going to “take ownership” of the decision on the Keystone XL project:
President Obama said Tuesday that he will decide whether to approve or deny a permit for a controversial 1,700-mile Canadian oil pipeline, rather than delegating the decision to the State Department.
The proposal by the firm TransCanada to ship crude extracted from a region in Alberta called the “oil sands” to Gulf Coast refineries has become a charged political issue for the White House. Labor unions and business groups argue that it would create thousands of jobs in the midst of an economic downturn. Environmentalists — who plan to ring the White House in a protest on Sunday — say the extraction of the oil will accelerate global warming and the pipeline itself could spill, polluting waterways and causing severe environmental harm.
Anything is better than our hopelessly corrupt State Department. And anything is better than writing another damn letter about Richard Muller. Sent November 3:
In his November 2008 election-night speech in Chicago, Barack Obama offered a vision of the country that extended a century into the future, contrasting the life of a centenarian voter with the lives his two young daughters could expect to lead.
It is depressingly rare to find national leaders in our country who are capable of thinking beyond the next election cycle; America’s great historical figures, by contrast, are the ones who have risen above political exigency to address the needs of our longer-term future. That night in Grant Park, our president-elect showed himself capable of thinking in centuries.
We must remind Barack Obama to start thinking long-term once again when it comes to the oil of the Canadian tar sands. If he addresses the needs of the coming centuries rather than those of the fossil-fuel industry, he’ll recognize that the Keystone XL pipeline is a multi-generational disaster in the making.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Climategate Koch Brothers Michael Mann
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 6: DFH Activist Judge Edition
The L.A. Times runs the story: a rare bit of good news for the overly-harassed Michael Mann:
A county Circuit judge in Virginia has sided with the University of Virginia’s effort to restrict the release of personal emails from one of its former faculty members.
The decision late Wednesday would allow the university to alter an agreement it had reached with the American Tradition Institute, which was seeking communications between Michael Mann, a physicist and climate scientist, and other scientists from 1999 to 2005, when Mann was employed by the university.
The American Tradition Institute, headquartered in Washington, D.C., and Colorado, is a nonprofit policy research and education group that has close ties to energy interests that have opposed climate legislation, including the Koch Brothers.
Mann, now a professor at Penn State University, is best known for his contributions to the so-called hockey stick graph that has been at the center of warnings that Earth’s temperature rise has been precipitous and historically unprecedented. It has been used as one of thousands of data analyses that have led the vast majority of climate scientists to conclude that man’s emission of greenhouse gases is trapping heat in the atmosphere.
Perhaps the Tea-Party nuts will start finding Gaylord Finch’s got granite countertops, or something. Sent Nov. 2:
It’s always amusing to see “non-profit” organizations that are closely affiliated with some of the most profit-hungry players in our economy. Groups like the disingenuously-named American Tradition Institute exist entirely to carry out the bidding of their funders — people like the Koch brothers. One wonders if the Kochs would enjoy the experience of legal harassment quite so much if they were on the receiving end.
For make no mistake, the ATI’s demand for emails from Dr. Michael Mann has nothing to do with scientific integrity, and everything to do with hindering the work of a climate scientist whose work might affect the profit margins of the fossil fuel industry.
Perhaps it’s true that hostility to science is a long-standing American tradition — but is the self-serving behavior of the extremely rich and powerful really worthy of adulation?
Judge Gaylord Finch’s decision is the correct one.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility Koch Brothers Richard Muller
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 5: All Muller, All The Time
The Houston Chronicle, running an AP article on the newest DFH tree-hugging enviro-nazi:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.
The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.
Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
He said he went even further back, studying readings from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. His ultimate finding of a warming world, to be presented at a conference Monday, is no different from what mainstream climate scientists have been saying for decades.
What’s different, and why everyone from opinion columnists to cable TV ‘s satirical”The Daily Show” is paying attention is who is behind the study.
I’m getting more material out of Muller than I got from the Deepwater Horizon. I wonder what that means. Sent Nov. 1:
It’s a little confusing to hear Richard Muller confirming the data and conclusions of previous researchers in climate science, while simultaneously asserting that there “…was not enough skepticism” shown in their work. What he seems to be saying is that the scientists whose work he previously doubted didn’t doubt their work enough at the time, but now that he’s figured out they were right all along, everything’s okay. Or something like that.
But that’s not what really matters. What really matters is that Muller, whose work was significantly funded by arch-conservative climate-change deniers, applied scientific method and intellectual rigor to the problem — and came to the conclusion that the world’s atmosphere is getting warmer. The Koch brothers must be seething; conservatives don’t like surprises.
For his part, Dr. Muller is going to discover what life is like when the petroleum funding evaporates. Welcome, sir, to the ninety-nine percent!
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility denialists media irresponsibility Richard Muller scientific method
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 4: Paraphrasing WHO?
Dr. Richard Muller continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, this time with an opinion piece in the Midland (MI) Daily News:
Richard Muller has been quoted by climate skeptics the world over as one of the leading authorities on why we should not take the climate science behind global warming on its face.
This past week, a study that took Muller two years to complete, concluded that climate scientists are right about one thing: The land is 1.6 degrees warmer than it was in the 1950s.
Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, conducted the study by focusing in on two chief criticisms of the skeptics — that weather stations are unreliable and that cities, which create heat islands, skew results.
“The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago,” Muller said in a telephone interview. “And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias.”
How often do I get to evoke Don Rumsfeld? Sent on Halloween:
Stop the presses! A scientist confirms other scientists’ results!
Of course, science is supposed to work like that, with constant checking and cross-checking leading to ever-more-accurate descriptions and analyses of the world. Dr. Richard Muller’s readiness to change his mind when confronted with irrefutable proof of climate change’s factuality is simple responsibility to the norms of his profession.
In a sane world, this wouldn’t be news.
Unfortunately, ours is not a sane world, but one where billionaires push ideologically-driven distortions of the scientific process, politicians are the captives of corporate interests, our media promotes a false equivalency between petro-funded contrarians and genuinely worried climatologists — and the best interests of the American people are betrayed. In a sane world, we’d have started addressing the dangers of climate change long ago. But as Donald Rumsfeld might say, we live in the world we’ve got, not the world we wish we had.
It’s crazy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republicans Richar Muller scientific consensus scientific method
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 3: A Truffle!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution runs another article on Muller’s epiphany:
WASHINGTON — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.
The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.
Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
Notice that this guy was fooled by “Climategate.” He wasn’t paying too much attention, I guess. Sent on October 30:
Richard Muller’s capacity for intellectual integrity will cost him dearly among those who’ve used his earlier stances to bolster their rabid denial of climate change. After an exhaustive study partially funded by two arch-denialist billionaires, he’s concluded that all the other researchers on the issue were right: the earth’s atmosphere is warming. Perhaps in his subsequent research, he’ll tackle the question of whether human beings are responsible for the burgeoning greenhouse effect that is triggering extreme weather all over the planet — and eventually come around to the conclusion already shared by the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists: human civilization is indeed the driving force behind global warming. In the meantime, Dr. Muller is about to learn that his erstwhile sponsors couldn’t care less for scientific integrity; the Koch brothers and their political allies in the GOP only support skepticism when they stand to benefit from it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Mitt Romney
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 2: Is Being An Opportunistic Hypocrite Genetic, Or A Lifestyle Choice?
The Wall Street Journal notes that the Mittster has been inconsistent on climate change. Heh heh heh heh.
Rivals of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday repeated their accusations of flip-flopping on core issues, after he told an audience on Thursday that he didn’t know what caused global warming.
Mr. Romney said earlier this year that human activity played a role.
“Mitt Romney’s positions change, often dramatically, depending on the audience or location,” said Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also a GOP candidate. “Voters need to consider the fact that Romney, in one week, changed positions on man-made global warming, capping carbon emissions and Ohio’s efforts to curb union powers.”
It took me longer than I expected to write this letter, given that it was essentially a rephrasing of yesterday’s. Sent October 29:
Having learned early on that an inadvertent bit of truth-telling can deep-six a politician’s aspirations, Mitt Romney should know never to question conservative shibboleths.
Young Willard Romney was only 20 when he watched his father’s 1968 presidential run spin out of control when George Romney spoke of being “brainwashed” by advocates of the Vietnam war. While history has vindicated the Michigan Republican’s apostasy on our Southeast Asian misadventure, primary voters at the time rejected him soundly. So it is today, with the conservative base unified in its absolute denial of climate change.
Like father, like son. Historians will undoubtedly recognize Romney the Younger’s timid statement on global warming as a piece of truth-telling uncannily similar to that which sank Romney the Elder’s presidential run. Anti-science Republican absolutists will never acknowledge climate change, and Mitt’s subsequent equivocations may not be enough to undo the damage done by his brief flirtation with the truth.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots Mitt Romney Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 1: Please Lie To Me!
The former governor of my state is a soulless sociopath with the intellectual depth of a life-size Ken doll. The Boston Globe for October 28:
Is Mitt Romney tweaking his position on global warming?
The former Massachusetts governor had been one of the few Republican presidential candidates to embrace the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change. But in a speech in Pittsburgh on Thursday, he sounded like more of a skeptic.
“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet,” Romney said in the speech, a clip of which was posted by the liberal blog Think Progress. “And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”
Romney gave a different answer in June, when he was asked whether humans contribute to climate change.
“I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course,” Romney said at a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire. “But I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.”
I wrote a similar letter to the Globe years ago, and they published it. Maybe this one will work, too. Sent October 28:
Mitt Romney learned a valuable political lesson from his father’s experience: don’t tell the truth if you can help it.
Returning from a 1967 visit to Vietnam, George Romney remarked that his earlier support for the Vietnam War was the result of “brainwashing” by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam, and the ensuing storm of bad publicity ran his presidential campaign into a ditch.
While the light of history shows that the elder Romney was telling the truth, that didn’t help him with the Republican electorate, then as now acutely sensitive to any flouting of its shibboleths. Romney the younger’s acknowledgment of climate change is a similar misstep; it’s gratifying that our erstwhile governor has taken his father’s experience to heart and is now walking back his heretical stance on scientific expertise.
Mitt’s finally figured it out: when it comes to wooing GOP primary voters, facts are best left unaddressed.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism Richard Muller
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 31: DFH Edition
The San Antonio Express-News reprints Eugene Robinson’s column (see yesterday’s letter for another quote):
Muller and his colleagues examined five times as many temperature readings as did other researchers — a total of 1.6 billion records — and now have put that merged database online. The results have not yet been subjected to peer review. But Muller’s plain-spoken admonition that “you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer” has humbled many deniers.
Not so, I predict, with the blowhards such as Perry, Cain and Bachmann, who, out of ignorance or perceived self-interest, are willing to play politics with the Earth’s future
Here is what we know: The rise in temperatures over the past five decades is abrupt and large. It is consistent with models developed by other researchers that posit greenhouse gas emissions — the burning of fossil fuels by humans — as the cause.
Nobody’s fudging the numbers. Nobody’s manipulating data to win research grants, as Perry claims, or making an undue fuss over a “naturally occurring” warm-up, as Bachmann alleges. Contrary to what Cain says, the science is real.
It is the know-nothing politicians — not scientists — who commit an unforgivable fraud.
Muller has no idea what’s going to hit him. Sent October 26:
It’s an axiom of modern American politics: to find out what Republicans are up to, listen to what they accuse others of doing. This strategy, perfected by Karl Rove and his collaborators, is on vivid display in the GOP presidential primary, as aspirants vie with one another to make ever-more-revealing statements about their inability to accept the facts of climate change.
When Rick Perry claims that climatologists fake or cherry-pick evidence in order to win grant funding, it’s because he and members of his administration are notorious for fudging facts for personal gain. Michelle Bachmann’s claims of misinterpreted data are particularly risible; the White Queen of conservative wonderland can believe six impossible things before breakfast without even breaking a sweat.
Dr. Richard Muller, the erstwhile “climate skeptic” whose recent study undercut oft-repeated Republican shibboleths, is going to find himself stigmatized as a dirty hippie before the end of the week.
Warren Senders