environment Politics: assholes denialists false equivalency idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 19: We’re Still Learning More About Gravity!
The August 2 edition of the Deseret News (UT) contains more false equivalency bullshit:
In the face of repeated assertions that the science on global warming is “settled,” ongoing studies and developments in the area leave some insisting that claim remains true, while others say the science is anything but.
According to Gallup’s annual environmental poll, the percentage of Americans saying they worry a great deal or a fair amount about global warming has fallen from a high of 66 percent in 2008 to a stable 51 percent in 2011. Furthermore, 43 percent of Americans say the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated in the news.
A breakdown of global warming poll data shows that the issue remains mainly ideological, with 72 percent of Democrats saying they worry about global warming compared to 51 percent of Independents and 31 percent of Republicans.
As the global warming debate becomes more politicized in individual attitudes, state governments, Congress and even within the United Nations, the possibility of the science becoming truly “settled” appears unlikely.
In a study published July 25 in the science journal Remote Sensing, William Braswell and Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, suggest the Earth’s atmosphere is more efficient at releasing energy into space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”
As an atheist I strive to avoid theonormative expletives. So I have a limited rhetorical palette available for properly cursing these fuckers. Sent August 2:
It’s amazing how much faith Republican politicians and members of the media place in science. Just watch as they cite the Braswell/Spencer study as an invalidation of the work of hundreds of other researchers. Their readiness to trust a paper which has already been criticized as methodologically flawed is touching in its innocence. Of course this has nothing to do with the study’s usefulness to the anti-environmental agenda; such a suggestion is terribly cynical!
Sigh.
Scientific integrity demands that experimental results must be regarded skeptically; ideologically convenient findings should be even more subject to careful scrutiny. The scientific consensus on human causes of climate change is built on an enormous body of work that has withstood attempts at falsification. To say the “science isn’t settled” does not mean the basic principles are invalid, only that there are still gaps in our knowledge. The science of global warming is as settled as it needs to be, despite the wishful thinking of denialists in Congress and the media.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 18: They Would, However, Vote To Burn Environmentalists.
The August 1 edition of Grist notes that Henry Waxman and Ed Markey have been keeping track of the Republican anti-environment pathology:
Reps. Henry Waxman (Calif.) and Edward Markey (Mass.), of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, have been keeping tabs on Republican votes to undermine environmental legislation. They say that since taking over the majority in January, Republicans have voted 110 times to block or weaken legislation intended to protect the environment.
Waxman says of the findings that “the new Republican majority seems intent on restoring the robber-baron era,” and Markey compared the GOP agenda to a rifle “pointed right at the heart of America’s clean energy future.” This is fairly colorful, but the thing is, you don’t have to take their word for it — they have a chart with all the votes! Nothing like solid data to confirm your notion that you should be under the couch crying about the future of the country.
What would Theodore Roosevelt think of the Republican Party today? The man who created our world-renowned national park system and helped bring today’s environmental movement into being would be justifiably outraged at the behavior of modern Republicans. It’s not just anti-environment legislation, though. The current crop of tea-party zealots are anti-science, anti-math, and anti-reality, as well as anti-Democrat. What this means is that even eminently sensible and desirable bills are doomed if they’re introduced by the GOP’s political enemies, as witness their steady opposition to anything addressing our country’s energy future with anything more nuanced than “drill, baby, drill.” While Teddy is no doubt spinning in his grave as members of the GOP eviscerate environmental protections, we can’t use the power he’s generating: since it would reduce profits for the multinational corporations who own American politics lock, stock and barrel, the bill would die in committee.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: glaciers media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 17: Slippery When Wet.
Tuscon Citizen for August 1 ran a USA Today squib on the world’s melting glaciers:
Two of three Himalayan glaciers — both in humid areas of eastern Nepal — could disappear if present climate change patterns continue, a study released today predicts.
The Rikha Samba glacier, in a relatively arid area of western Nepal, showed little shrinkage in the past decade compared with the two prior decades, but the other two glaciers, known as Yala and AX010, show accelerated wastage over the last decade, according to the study.
The researchers say glaciers in humid environments can exist at lower altitudes, leaving them vulnerable to warming. They say that if climate trends observed since the 1990s continue, these two glaciers may disappear because ice masses will probably not receive enough snow to replenish the shrinkage.
After writing the letter I found they had no LTE mechanism at all…so I just left the beautifully crafted 150-word piece as a comment. The hell with it. Web comments don’t usually count as letters in my book, but I’m too tired to care at the moment. Posted August 1:
One of the most alarming aspects of the news that the world’s glaciers are dwindling rapidly under the onslaught of global climate change is that so few Americans are paying attention. Perhaps glaciers are too far away and unfamiliar, or the year of their projected final disappearance from the planet is still too remote. Perhaps people have more pressing concerns: jobs, the economy, healthcare. But ultimately there’s no greater issue than the survival of the environment; politicians’ attempts to frame it as an either/or debate are extremely misleading. Our aspirations to economic growth disregard the fact that we live on a finite world; continued expansion beyond the capacity of Earth’s natural systems is a fatally flawed aspiration. The melting glaciers are one of many indicators that the planet’s resources are failing. If Americans don’t pay attention now, we’re in for a series of very unpleasant surprises in the coming decades.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: polar bears scientific method
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 16: If This Ends Differently, I Will Be Extremely Surprised. Extremely.
The July 31 New York Times reports on Charles Monnet, the scientist who (along with Jeffrey Gleason) wrote the “dead-polar-bear” report that stirred things up among the Bushies. He’s been suspended on “integrity” issues, with the inquiry focusing on the very same report. Gee. Why does this not smell legit?
The federal government has suspended a wildlife biologist whose sightings of dead polar bears in Arctic waters became a rallying point for campaigners seeking to blunt the impact of global warming.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement notified the biologist, Charles Monnett, on July 18 that he had been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation into “integrity issues,” according to a copy of a letter posted online by the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Documents posted by the group indicate that the inquiry centers on a 2006 report that Dr. Monnett co-wrote on deaths among polar bears swimming in the Beaufort Sea.
Come on. What’s more likely? A grossly corrupt scientist — or a bureaucracy that doesn’t know what the fuck it’s doing and is staffed with stupid vengeful people? Maybe I’m an idealist about scientists, but I’ve seen a lot more vicious bureaucrats than I have corrupt research scientists. Sent July 31:
When government investigates scientists, the results are often comical at best and Kafkaesque at worst. Whereas the mechanisms of law and administration are readily susceptible to egregious misuse, those of scientific research are far harder to corrupt. The allegations of misconduct against Dr. Charles Monnet are likely to prove a singular example of this fact. Dr. Monnet, whose work was terribly inconvenient for the previous administration’s corporate sponsors, is probably the victim of a toxic combination: a scientifically ignorant bureaucrat with a grudge. We’ve heard this story before; it’s “climategate” — with bears. Although repeated investigations totally demolished the East Anglia non-scandal, the lies about it continue to spread. Similarly, we can expect eventual inquiry to vindicate Monnet and Gleason’s findings while their names nevertheless endure continued calumnies from the ignorant and vengeful. All of us are the losers thereby, for the world needs good scientists more than bad bureaucrats.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 15: Lord Of The Flies
The July 30 New York Times reports on further criminality from those crazy House Republicans, this time in the form of “riders” on other bills. Read it and weep:
While almost no one was looking, House Republicans embarked last week on a broad assault on the nation’s environmental laws, using as their weapon the 2012 spending bill for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. When debate began Monday, the bill included an astonishing 39 anti-environmental riders — so called because they ride along on appropriations bills even though they have nothing to do with spending and are designed to change policy, in this case disastrously.
Riders generally are not subjected to hearings or extensive debate, and many would not survive on their own. They are often written in such a way that most people, even many Capitol Hill insiders, need a guide to understand them. They are, in short, bad policy pushed forward through a bad legislative process.
A rider can be removed from the bill only with a vote to strike it. The Democrats managed one big victory on Wednesday when, by a vote of 224 to 202, the House struck one that would have gutted the Endangered Species Act by blocking the federal government from listing any new species as threatened or endangered and barring it from protecting vital habitat — a provision so extreme that even some Republicans could not countenance it.
These people are not going to be satisfied until there is nothing living in the wild, anywhere on Earth. Sent July 30:
Inserting anti-environment riders on unrelated bills is a flagrant corruption of the mechanisms of our government, but as we have seen time and time again, there is no abuse of the legislative process too egregious for the current Congress. Many of these attachments seem completely senseless until we recognize that they were written for our politicians by specialists from industries affected by environmental regulations. Since weakening of EPA or other regulatory authority translates into higher profits, industry-friendly riders are worth a lot of money.
There are some essential questions which all Americans need to ask when we learn about this practice: Should our laws be written by corporations for their own benefit? Is it possible to instill an ethic of collective responsibility in multinational corporations? Is a fixation on short-term profits the best guide for the business sector’s approach to environmental issues? The obvious answers: no, no and no.
Warren Senders
environment: IPCC Rajendra Pachauri
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 14: Is Anyone Listening?
The July 27 Manila Bulletin lets Rajendra Pachauri tell it like it is:
MANILA, Philippines — The key facts on global warming are already known and leaders should not wait for the next edition of the UN climate panel’s report to step up action, the body’s top scientist told AFP.
The 4th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released in 2007, “is very clear,” Rajendra Pachauri said Monday in Paris, ahead of a five-day meeting of the body in Brest, France.
The fifth multi-volume assessment, which summarizes peer-reviewed science to help policy makers make decisions, is due out in 2013-2014.
“We have enough evidence, enough scientific findings which should convince people that action has to be taken,” he said after a round-table discussion with France’s environment minister, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.
“Based on observation, we know that there will be more floods, more drought, more heat waves and more extreme precipitation events. These things are happening,” Pachauri said.
Sent July 29:
It is beyond foolish to delay action on mitigating the effects of climate change any further. Rajendra Pachauri is entirely correct; the accumulated evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that global warming is caused by human civilization’s emissions of greenhouse gases. Responsibility for the solution must be borne by all the world’s nations, for building a sustainable future that protects us all against the ravages of a radically transformed climate is a civilizational project. But consider the predicament of an island state facing physical elimination in consequence of rising sea levels triggered by the greenhouse effect. Because large industrialized countries have contributed far more to the problem over the past century, it is economically sensible and morally just that they should contribute proportionally to the solution. If the tables were turned, and a tiny nation’s actions threatened the existence of one of the world’s great powers, could anyone doubt the outcome?
Warren Senders
environment: Alaska denialists scientific consensus tundra
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 13: Feel The Burn!
Alaska had a big fire back in 2007. Turns out that it released a f**k of a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, reports the Anchorage Daily News for July 28:
Alaska’s huge Anaktuvuk River tundra fire in 2007 released as much carbon into the atmosphere as Earth’s entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year, report the BBC and Alaska Dispatch, citing a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Though the 400-square-mile fire’s long-term effects remain uncertain, it may have been a harbinger of things to come in a warmer, drier Arctic, the researchers say. It was the largest tundra fire ever recorded, releasing carbon stored over a period of 50 years and doubling the cumulative area of Alaska tundra burned in smaller fires since 1950.
Sent July 28:
The studies are coming thick and fast, each one providing further evidence of the reality of global climate change. Individually, they demonstrate that different regions all over the planet are already feeling the effects of altered weather patterns: climbing temperatures, more frequent storms, and increased precipitation. Collectively, climatological research irrefutably confirms the urgency of our situation. The University of Florida team’s analysis of carbon emissions from the 2007 Anaktuvuk River tundra fire is sobering not just for people living in the region, but for anyone who’s been paying attention to the positive feedback loops involving droughts and wildfires everywhere on Earth. And yet denialists are still desperately spinning away each piece of scientific evidence as the work of a worldwide liberal conspiracy. Their paranoid fantasies are no longer amusing; when it comes to climate change, the ignorance of the few is a grave danger to us all.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Rick Scott rising sea levels
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 12: The Water Is Wide
Well, looks like it’s time to start buying beachfront property in Northern Florida, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (July 27):
South Florida can’t afford to ignore growing dangers from pollution-fueled climate change, according to new findings from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Rising seas, more flooding from storm surge and saltwater seeping in and fouling drinking water supplies are among the looming threats from climate-altering pollution, according to the environmental group’s nationwide review released Tuesday.
South Florida, and Miami in particular, is one of the most vulnerable parts of the country, and local governments need to play a larger role in dealing with the damaging effects of climate change, according to the NRDC.
It’s a good excuse to call out Rick Scott. Sent July 27:
With even fairly conservative models suggesting a good chance that most of the Florida peninsula will be under water by the century’s end, it would seem a no-brainer for the state’s residents and government to start focusing on adaptive strategies to cope with the effects of climate change. While we humans haven’t shown much real skill at long-range planning in the course of our evolution so far, that will have to change if we are to survive in the climatically-transformed future that now seems all but inevitable. Our economic systems are built around the requirements of quick profitability, just as our political systems are geared to the exigencies of two, four, or six-year electoral cycles; it’s no wonder that we’re failing to craft a sustainable future. What we need from our business and political leaders is long-term vision; what we get from politicians like Rick Scott is myopic greed.
Warren Senders
environment Gardening India Personal photoblogging: Gardening
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Garden Photos On The Way Out The Door
I am in the airport getting ready for the first leg of my India trip. I’ll be heading out in about two hours to Paris and from there to Mumbai. Concerts in Mumbai, Nasik and Pune, and some lec-dems & workshops. And some family time, of course. I’m told my daughter caught a cold — hope she’s feeling better soon.
Anyway, before I left I took some photos of the garden and thought I’d share them. This year most of the plants are doing very well. The squash vine borers attacked my zucchini and pumpkin plants and totally killed them — but for the first time left my tromboncino squash (waaay better than zucchini IMO) totally alone. I win.
The first pictures are from my front steps, looking out over the slope.
…there are some potatoes in buckets in the foreground.
Some vegetable porn:
…kale.
…tomatoes.
…these will be orange pimiento peppers.
…muskmelon!
Now a new set of garden beds next to my garage, with some very productive tomatoes and peppers.
Coming along nicely…
And an amaranth plant, a volunteer from last year. I have an entire bed planted in amaranth but I forgot to take pictures of it. Too bad; the red plants are spectacular en masse.
And now, here are pictures of the container garden on top of our garage. This year I finished building a deck on this surface, and have moved almost all my other containers to be in the center of the space. The result is impossible to believe; we have a fabulous crop. For the next two weeks various friends will be picking, watering and keeping things going; we get back on the 25th, just in time for the really serious harvesting.
For some reason I can’t get photobucket to rotate these pictures so they embed correctly. Just turn your head 90 degrees, ‘k?
Tomatoes…
Cute little eggplants…
There is a karela vine in my greenhouse as well as several climbing the sides of the garage. They are producing very heavily. Good thing I like karela.
A Japanese karela. The Indian kind are rougher.
Ho Chi Minh hot peppers. Amazing.
Here’s what the garage-top garden looked like last year in early July. We’ve come a long way.
environment Politics: denialists National parks wildfires
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 11: Yogi & Boo-Boo Will Have To Wear Protective Clothing
The Sacramento Bee for July 25 describes a new study on the likely increase in wildfires as a consequence of climate change…and what it’s going to mean for Yellowstone National Park:
The study by Westerling and his colleagues, which will be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the expected rising temperatures caused by climate change could increase the frequency of large wildfires in Yellowstone to an unprecedented level, according to a news release from the university.
The projected increase in fires would probably cause a major shift in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, with fewer dense forests and more open woodland, grass and shrub vegetation.
The change could happen by 2050, Westerling theorizes, with forests becoming younger, the mix of tree species changing and some forests failing to regenerate after repeated fires. That would affect the region’s wildlife, hydrology, carbon storage and aesthetics, the news release said.
“What surprised us about our results was the speed and scale of the projected changes in fire in greater Yellowstone,” Westerling said. “We expected fire to increase with increased temperatures, but we did not expect it to increase so much or so quickly. We were also surprised by how consistent the changes were across different climate projections.”
Sent July 26:
Yellowstone has long been the figurehead of our nation’s National Park system. From iconic geysers to astonishing ecologies, this extraordinary area is not only one of the world’s great wonders, but an unparalleled tourist attraction. Looking into the future, however, it’s hard to imagine the same crowds will show up for the regular forest fires that the UC Merced study predicts as a consequence of regional droughts and climate change? Yellowstone isn’t alone; other parks throughout the country are already feeling the effects of the past century’s emissions of greenhouse gases. How much devastation must global warming wreak on our country’s landscape before the professional denialists and their science-blind followers come to their senses? What would Theodore Roosevelt say to the current crop of law-makers who are eagerly destroying his legacy? Between climate change and anti-environment legislators, our country’s national parks are in greater danger than ever before.
Warren Senders