environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility extreme weather media irresponsibility United Nations
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 3: Painful.
The June 18 issue of the China Daily sounds an alarm:
Christiana Figueres, the official responsible for overseeing United Nations organized climate negotiations in Bonn, has admitted that a gap in enforcing the emission reduction regime is already unavoidable. Even if countries are willing to sign up to new reduction targets in December, they will still require legislative ratifications by governments around the world, which is unlikely to be completed by 2012.
The discrepancy between the stance adopted by developed and developing nations makes reaching an agreement extremely uncertain. While poor nations have put a high priority on renewing the Kyoto Protocol, some industrialized countries, such as Japan and Canada, have voiced a clear intention to walk away and build up a new architecture for global emission cuts, and the United States, the world’s largest economy and carbon polluter, did not ratify the protocol in the first place.
But the time we have to save the planet from the disastrous consequences of global warming is fast ticking away.
I have been thinking long and hard on the nature of our collective insanity these days. Not much fun. It would be nice to have more music.
Sent June 18:
In the year 3000, as humanity continues its fight to recover from the effects of a huge increase in atmospheric carbon a thousand years before, scholars of ancient history will be baffled by the inability of the world’s nations to act in a timely fashion to avert a grave catastrophe. They will look back and wonder, noting that we had ample notice of the consequences of the greenhouse effect; ample time to change our energy infrastructure, keeping millions of years’ worth of fossil carbon in the ground instead of burning it. They will shake their heads in amazement at the failure of our communications systems — at the globe-spanning media that remained focused on trivialities and gossip rather than a civilizational threat requiring concerted action. For all the technological and cultural accomplishments of this time in human history, we will probably be remembered, and reviled, for what we failed to do.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: American exceptionalism Bangladesh Bonn Conference Industrialized nations
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 2: We’re Number What?
The Bonn talks conclude today, June 17; Mexico and Papua New Guinea have a proposal on the table:
After years of incremental progress in U.N. climate talks, a proposal is on the table to change the rules.
The joint initiative from Mexico and Papua New Guinea is meant to break what some delegates call built-in deadlock, where a handful of nations — or even a single delegation — can stymie agreements.
The plan is to allow the 193 nations to adopt decisions by an “overwhelming” majority vote.
But the proposal faces Herculean obstacles from countries both large and small who jealously protect their power to influence, delay and ultimately block
I figured this was a good time to play the shame card, and I did it by exploiting the news that Bangladesh is amending its constitution to give its government the powers needed to address climate change. Unlike America, where we’re reluctant to admit that our government has any powers at all, unless it’s to bomb brown people or read our own citizens’ mail. Sheesh.
Sent June 17:
The appalling political stalemate on display at the Bonn Climate Conference is a demonstration of systemic failure on the part of our governing institutions; not just those of the United States, but of industrialized societies worldwide. The inability of the richest and most developed countries to take responsibility for the side-effects of their own successes is a grotesque object lesson for the rest of the world — especially those nations which have the most at stake in the battle against the effects of global heating. Nations like Bangladesh, which plans to amend its constitution to include a provision outlining the government’s responsibilities in addressing climate change. By seizing the initiative, the poorest and most vulnerable members of the international community have shamed the rest of the world. To be first of the nations where partisan gamesmanship has rendered meaningful policy essentially impossible is an especially tragic sort of American exceptionalism.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: scientific consensus wildfires
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 1: Who Burned Cock Robin?
When it comes to those disastrous forest fires (still raging as this is being written on June 16), the experts are reluctant to point the finger of blame:
The fires searing parts of the West are an eerie echo of the past, a frightening reminder of a once terrible danger that had been held largely at bay for decades.
The number of large wildfires has been rising for roughly the past 25 years, and they are lasting longer during fire seasons that also last longer.
Is it global warming? Experts won’t say that, pointing instead to a variety of factors, including weather, insect infestations and more people living and camping in the woods.
Fortunately, I’m not an expert.
Sent June 16:
The unwillingness of climatologists to assert that global climate change has caused the Arizona wildfires says a lot more about scientific integrity than it does about the way those conflagrations got started. Ethical and responsible scientists are reluctant to describe a complex situation in simplistic ways; a climate specialist who asserted direct causality between global warming and increased forest fires would be rightly criticized by his or her professional colleagues. But when we dig a little deeper (something our media often forgets to do), we discover that these same scientists have been predicting for decades that an accelerating greenhouse effect will create conditions likely to bring more frequent fires, floods, snowstorms, tornadoes, and any other extreme environmental event you can imagine. While professional responsibility prevents scientists from stating unambiguous causality, moral responsibility demands that our politicians stop wasting time on trivialities, and address the looming threat of catastrophic climate change.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Al Franken Arizona fire management Forest Service Lisa Murkowski wildfires
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 30: This Is Not Funny
Big fires happening in Arizona. Big discussions in the Senate. Al Franken brought something up:
Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, one of the witnesses present at the hearing, cited research from within the service to link fires and climate change.
(snip)
Tidwell’s testimony was prompted by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who used the positive response to chide committee members into considering climate change as one of the committee’s key issues.
“I would just like to underscore that for members of our body, when we have discussions about the impact of climate change, the cost of this,” he said. “It would be all well and good for members to understand that this is related to climate change, and how important it is for us to address and take national action to reduce our carbon emissions.”
Following which, Lisa Murkowski criticized the Government’s performance in handling fire management:
However, climate change was not the focus of members’ disapproval of current fire management. Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was quick to point to poor management and slow policy implementation as the primary factor for out-of-control fires, caused by recent cuts to the Forest Service budget as well as a strategy of tackling smaller areas rather than larger projects. Murkowski criticized the Forest Service for not implementing the Healthy Forest Restoration Act to its fullest extent. Less than a third of the authorized projects were ever completed, according to Murkowski.
Now, I don’t know a thing about Fire Management, or about how the Federal Government is handling it. There’s probably as much ineptitude there as anywhere else in a big bureaucracy, but I don’t see that as an anti-government argument; it’s an anti-ineptitude argument.
But today I was in a hurry, so I just pointed out that Republicans are anti-science dingleberries without exception. Easy. Sent June 15:
As Alaska’s Senator Murkowski asserts, lags in implementing forest management policy are a big factor in forest fires like the one currently devastating huge swaths of Arizona. As Senator Franken points out, so is climate change. And there in a nutshell is the difference between the two parties’ approaches to environmental issues. Republicans bend every effort to underfund essential programs, then cite their failures as reasons to mistrust “big government.” Republicans are forced — from above by their energy-industry sponsors, from below by their ideologically inflamed tea-party base — to deny the relevance of basic science. When it comes to environmental policy, necessarily based on measurements, facts, and probabilities, the GOP’s approach is practically surrealist in its gleeful disregard of ideologically inconvenient expertise. Whether or not the Wallow fire is directly linked to climate change, the connection between Republican climate denialism and the failure of American environmental policy is unequivocal.
Warren Senders
environment: conservation energy efficiency
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 29: Sense and Sensibility…
The Ocala Star-Banner editorializes about the need for energy conservation:
The key to energy independence — as well as cleaner energy and a sustainable environment — is to reduce consumption through conservation. And Americans can do that. In fact, we have done it.
As part of a national campaign to reduce oil and gasoline use and foster energy independence, Congress should again enact conservation strategies such as those recommended in a 2009 report by the business consultant McKinsey & Co.
McKinsey cited research showing that — through energy efficiency alone — “the U.S. economy has the potential to reduce annual non-transportation energy consumption by roughly 23 percent by 2020.”
The recommendations include: 1) better consumer education on potential energy-efficiency savings; 2) tighter efficiency requirements for appliances, and 3) stronger financial incentives for energy improvements.
I figured a little support was in order. Sent June 14:
Looking at the social history of the word “conservation,” it’s obvious that Ronald Reagan’s fundamentally wasteful worldview has become the national norm. The simple facts of energy efficiency would seem to make it an inherently attractive proposition — burn less, save more. Leaving aside the spurious debate about global climate change, the steadily rising cost of energy should make this a no-brainer. But many of our fellow citizens have absorbed the notion that conservation is somehow alien to the American character; listening to Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk inveighing against anything that would change our rate of consumption is deeply disturbing. We should remember that recycling and reduced usage patterns were part of what brought America to victory in World War II, and are key to establishing our energy independence today. “Conservation” is a social good in every respect; it is “waste” that is, literally, a dirty word.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots New Hampshire Republican obstructionism RGGI
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 28: Doesn’t Sound Very Manly To Me, George…
New Hampshire is in a struggle between wise and witless:
CONCORD, N.H.—New Hampshire’s participation in a regional program designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is still up for debate in the Legislature despite the Senate sending legislation to the governor repealing the state’s law.
The Senate sent a bill to Gov. John Lynch that both ends New Hampshire’s participation in the program and also modifies the state’s shoreland protection law. Lynch promises to veto any bill that ends New Hampshire’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The Senate can’t override a veto repealing RGGI, but wants the shoreland protections.
But we all know what’s really going on. Sent June 13:
The Republican-dominated state government of New Hampshire is, typically and reflexively, against any state initiative which acknowledges the existence of human-caused climate change, or makes an effort to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing it. The recent bill ending the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is a case in point. While the scientific consensus is overwhelming, and the evidence correlating planetary heating with an increase in extreme weather throughout our country and the world is accumulating ever more rapidly, Republicans have committed themselves to denying the reality in front of their eyes. It’s a positive step that Governor Lynch plans on vetoing their plans to drop out of the RGGI, which is on track to be one of the relatively few success stories in the complex history of America’s attempts to deal with the looming threats posed by global climate change.
Warren Senders
environment: Conservatives denialists idiots Rocky Mountains Water
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 27: We Used To Use These On Mountainsides.
The Christian Science Monitor addresses the study of decreasing snow mass in the Rockies:
A blend of natural climate swings and global warming appears to be driving a long-term decline in snowpack along the Rocky Mountains rarely seen in the past 800 years.
In the process, and perhaps more important for the future, the dominant driver behind available snowpack along the continental spine appears to be shifting from precipitation to temperature, according to a study published Friday in the journal Science.
If this shift holds, the study’s team adds, it could represent a change that would accelerate the loss of the West’s natural freshwater reservoirs – if long-term average temperatures continue to rise with increasing levels of industrial greenhouse gases, as most climate scientists are convinced they will.
Ski the Rocky Mountains while you can, kids.
Sent June 12:
There aren’t a great many surprises in the new study of the Rocky Mountains’ shrinking snowpack. Rather, we find evidence that supports hundreds of other studies in the confirmation of a troubling planetary trend. The Earth is warming; human beings are causing it with emissions of greenhouse gases; it’s going to affect ecosystems all around the world in complex and disruptive ways. The Rocky Mountains are one such area, and their decreasing snow mass is going to have significant effects on the water usage patterns of the entire American West. It is a tragedy in the making, exacerbated by an ideologically-based refusal of “conservatives” to acknowledge scientific reality and its implications. In fact, self-styled conservatives are the real radicals when it comes to climate: by advocating a rapid transformation of the Earth’s atmosphere to unexplored extremes, they’re endangering all of us. That’s not conservatism, that’s reckless insanity.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 26: Bliss.
A twerp named Bronwyn Eyre writes a generic denialist screed in the June 10 Saskatoon Star-Phoenix:
I know it’s futile to complain about the weather. But are weather researchers fair game?
Last week, it was reported a University of Regina project, led by Prof. Dave Sauchyn, was being awarded $1.25 million from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to study the role of climate change in natural disasters on the Prairies.
“Climate is a pattern. One event is weather,” Sauchyn said. “But if you get a bunch of these (weather incidents) from across the Prairies and it happens again and again, we say, ‘Something is going on.’ And it’s probably climate change.”
Sounds a bit like witchcraft reasoning to me.
Look: If there’s a clear pattern of global warming – sorry, “climate change” – that can be proven without skullduggery or obfuscation, most of us will be willing to do what it takes to rectify things. But increasingly, it seems, “experts” are claiming wacky weather simply to advance an agenda.
Sigh. Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
Sent June 11:
Bronwyn Eyre’s flip dismissal of climate change relies on facile generalities when an outright misstatement of fact isn’t available. For example, the so-called “climategate” scandal has been debunked, and the researchers’ facts have been vindicated. Repeatedly. When she calls for the “hard, empirical evidence,” what does she mean? A stack of temperature readings and atmospheric CO2 levels, minus the expertise required to correlate and synthesize the data? If I’m really sick and need some tests, do I know how to interpret the results? No; without medical training, I require professional expertise. Climatologists are the professional specialists; it is destructive folly to reject their advice just because it conflicts with one’s ideological preconceptions. Arguing with a climate-change denialist like Ms. Eyre is eerily similar to arguing with a young-earth creationist who dismisses the “hard, empirical evidence” for Darwinian evolution; her glib insouciance is not genuine skepticism, but scientific ignorance and innumeracy.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots scientific consensus scientific method tree rings Water
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 25: Look! Bipartisanship!
The June 10 Seattle Times reports on yet another study confirming what we all know:
They looked at the rings of thousands of ancient trees in the mountains above the most important rivers in the West.
What they found may influence how water gets used from Arizona to Canada — and particularly in the Columbia River basin.
Despite odd years like this one, researchers have long reported declines in the mountain snows that power Western rivers. But on Thursday a group of scientists said they now also know this: Those declines are virtually unprecedented throughout most of the last millennium.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and University of Washington measured tree-ring growth from forests that included 800-year-old trees. They learned that snowpack reductions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries were unlike any other period dating to at least the year 1200, according to new research published in the journal Science.
It struck me that these results aren’t surprising to either side of the “debate” any more, and I thought I’d address that surprising unanimity of perception in this letter, sent June 10:
Of course the newest study from the U.S. Geological Survey confirms the existence of climate change, and reinforces the predictions of a complex and catastrophic future for our country and the world! Up to this point, both climate-change denialists and environmental realists are in agreement. But the realists expect to see these results because many decades worth of research on climate questions already supports the core hypothesis: climate change is human-caused, and it’s going to have severe impacts on all of our lives for generations to come. Denialists, by contrast, expect these results because they believe scientific research is part of a liberal campaign to take away their SUVs and force them to change their lightbulbs, a laughable conspiracy theory boosted by corporations afraid of lessening their quarterly returns. Sense and survival on the one hand — paranoia and profit on the other. The choice is clear.
Warren Senders
environment: Dengue Fever diseases
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Year 2, Month 6, Day 24: Nice Polite Republicans.
June 10 – NPR’s Morning Edition ran a story on an outbreak of Dengue Fever in Florida. Guess what they didn’t mention?
Sent June 10:
Your June 10th story on Dengue fever is a piece of medical reporting that manages to omit a single mention of one of the most important factors in the spread of tropical diseases in the United States. Global climate change is a hugely significant contributor to disease vectors — warmer temperatures make it easier for insect carriers to breed, while simultaneously stressing local and regional ecosystems that might otherwise be able to resist invasive species. The arrival of Dengue fever in Florida is just one example of this, and should be discussed alongside similar insect-borne conditions such as the destruction of countless acres of forest by the Pine Borer beetle. A failure to discuss climate change in this context is like discussing cholera without mentioning sanitation or plague without mentioning rats. Given that global climate change is arguably the most significant threat humanity has faced in many thousands of years, it behooves NPR to address the crisis both directly and by highlighting one of its consequences: Floridians getting sick with a disease that hadn’t been seen since the Hoover administration.
Warren Senders