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Year 4, Month 11, Day 25: It Ain’t Necessarily So
The Christian Post gives column space to Pastor Darren Ferguson, who wants his flock to start facing the facts:
Whenever talking heads and political pundits start debating climate change, I honestly wish that I could turn the clock back one year and a few days to when Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast. Rush Limbaugh and other climate change deniers would likely be saying drastically different things if they had spent a few days here with us in Far Rockaway, NY. They would have trouble explaining the fact that in this New York City peninsula where I live and pastor a church, the Atlantic Ocean and Jamaica Bay had not met in over 50 years, but that is exactly what they did on October 29th, 2012.
I would invite them to read climatologist Dr. Kevin Trenberth’s article, Hurricane Sandy mixes super-storm conditions with climate change, in which he says that “the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change” is “the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.” I would invite them to listen as I advocate within my church and community for environmental stewardship, which, in my opinion, means that we have to be faithful with the earth that God has given us. Finally, I would invite them to walk through my “hood” to see homes still abandoned one year later, families still displaced one year later; a community devastated and families still fragmented one year later. These are the human and communal costs of our continued faithlessness – the effects of what Christians call sin – to our inattention to, and destruction of, our environment and planet.
I know it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be published in the Christian Post, but I didn’t mention my atheism in this letter. Let’s see. November 15:
Darren Ferguson’s plea for evangelical Christians to recognize the reality of global climate change is a welcome embrace of science-based public policy in the United States — something which communities of faith too often reject. Make no mistake: the accelerating greenhouse effect is a scientific fact — predicted over a hundred years ago, confirmed by experiment and observation, and strongly correlated with industrialized civilization’s CO2 emissions. By the way, the language of researchers is always measured and precise; phrases like “strongly correlated” are how scientists shout.
It bodes ill for our nation and the world that the undisciplined and vociferous voices of climate-change denial are still louder than the soft and careful words of the scientific community — and it reflects poorly on the faithful that those voices are overwhelmingly those of religious fundamentalists.
The “historian” David Barton, a prominent public face of evangelical Christianity, recently stated that global warming is real, but claimed it’s Divine punishment for abortions rather than the result of accumulated greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere. Such absurd assertions (does Mr. Barton really believe that if we outlawed abortion, God would re-freeze the Arctic?) do a grave disservice to the faith of people like Pastor Ferguson — a man who’s faced the climate crisis personally and is in no doubt about the dangers it poses.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 24: They’re Selling Postcards Of The Hanging
The Greenville News (SC) discusses climatic impacts on the dear old Southland:
Dow said higher temperatures could have a variety of impacts on the region and South Carolina, ranging from more diseases in fish to making air quality worse in the Columbia area as smog-forming pollutants rise. Rising temperatures and drought will make crops thirstier. That will make it harder to grow crops without irrigation, the study said.
Even so, state Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Berkeley was skeptical about the consequences for South Carolina.
“If you’re talking about (rising temperatures) causing disease and famine, and so forth, that’s simply not the case,” he said. “All you have to do is look to other states with a slightly warmer climate.”
“There’s a reason why a lot of people move to Florida.”
If I lived in South Carolina, I’d move anywhere else in the world, just to get the fuck away from Larry Grooms. November 14:
South Carolina and the rest of America’s South aren’t alone in facing the disastrous impacts of global climate change. All over the planet, from deserts to mountains, people are finally grappling with the facts of steadily more unpredictable and extreme weather, increasingly disrupted agricultural schedules, and reduced crop yields.
There is one place, however, which is well-protected from the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect. The offices and conference rooms of the Republican Party are insulated from the outside world by vast quantities of corporate money. To these folks, climate change can be a liberal conspiracy, a plot for one-world government, a running joke about Al Gore, a chance for anti-taxation demagoguery — anything but a grave danger to our civilization and our survival as a species.
After another few decades of rising temperatures, Senator Larry Grooms’ quip about people moving to Florida probably won’t seem so funny. Politicians who deny the realities of climate science are ensuring catastrophic outcomes for their constituents — and the rest of the world.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists false equivalency fiscal responsibility idiots sustainability
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 23: But They Are Always Right In The Beginning
The Cleveland Plain-Dealer (OH) tries to make some sort of point:
There is no question Typhoon Haiyan was devastating — some declared it one of the most powerful storms in recorded history. It reportedly had sustained winds near 150 mph and a storm surge of 20 feet. (Some reports say wind gusts exceeded 200 mph.) Initial reports predicting up to 10,000 dead have been scaled back to 2,000 to 2,500 by President Benigno Aquino III. The storm still wiped out large sections of cities and towns, displacing thousands, and has led to an urgent call for aid for survivors.
It also has climate watchers wondering if Haiyan is just the beginning. Like Superstorm Sandy in 2012, Haiyan’s strength and destructive impact is bringing warnings of even more powerful storms in the future because of changes in the climate.
Yeb Sano, the head of the Philippines delegation at the United Nations climate talks currently under way in Warsaw, made it clear where he stands. In a speech Monday, Sano said he will stop eating until “meaningful” progress is made on climate change. From the BBC:
“In solidarity with my countrymen who are struggling to find food back home, I will now commence a voluntary fasting for the climate. This means I will voluntarily refrain from eating food during this Cop, until a meaningful outcome is in sight. What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness, the climate crisis is madness. We can stop this madness right here in Warsaw.”
Bruce McQuain, writing for the website Hotair.com, offers sympathy to Sano and the people suffering in the Philippines. But he also says Sano is wrong about the UN taking action on climate change and says it’s not necessary. McQuain warns that proposed measures to reduce carbon emissions would “ruin” economies and bring only marginal results…
Because a conservative douchebag writing on Hotair.com has so much credibility it’s just awesome. November 13:
Self-styled fiscal conservatives who loudly proclaim that meaningful actions to address climate change would hurt economies simply demonstrate their own inability to think in timespans longer than the next quarterly report. Strategies like strengthening infrastructure, decentralizing our power grid, shifting the global energy economy to renewable sources, and developing less wasteful manufacturing practices are all sound investments in a longer-term future; they are the large-scale equivalent of preparing for flooding by reinforcing levees and stockpiling sandbags, steps which deficit hawks would no doubt deride as too costly or economically damaging.
The science is unequivocal, despite the natterings of denialists. There is no more uncertainty about the human causes of climate change — and the dangers it presents to our civilization — than there is about the causal link between smoking and cancer. Anticipating the damage from a climate-transformed world, and working proactively to minimize its extent, is fiscal common sense. Even more important, it’s the right thing to do for the posterity of our species.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes capitalism corporate irresponsibility false equivalence media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 18: These Foolish Things Remind Me Of You
The Tennessean runs an Op-Ed deploring the state of our media:
It is often the case that what is absent from the nightly news sheds more light on media priorities than what is actually covered.
The lack of any serious coverage, for example, of a topic that is front and center in most other countries is one indication of very low media quality. It’s the reason that I have had to read about the release of the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change from foreign news sources, such as The Guardian, or by reading selected U.S. sources online.
The efforts of the IPCC represent one of the largest consensus-building undertakings in human history, and deal with an issue that affects not only the present, but also future generations. The panel’s exhaustive work, both pro bono and peer-reviewed, produces policy guidelines for world leaders. As has been the case since the group’s founding in 1988, the recent report continues to confirm the dire predictions for life on this planet under the business-as-usual model.
A key update in the report is the change of a 90 percent confidence level to 95 percent concerning man’s role in the changing climate. Converging to a 95 percent level of confidence from such a diverse body of scientists is no trivial matter, and impossible to write off even for the most relentless of conspiracy theorists.
Nothin’ to see here, folks. Move along. November 8:
In an extraordinary mixture of journalistic irresponsibility and simple laziness, American news media and their financial enablers have succeeded in trivializing and minimizing what is unarguably the most important issue of our times. Observe their ludicrous false equivalence, which “balances” the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists with the unsupported rhetoric of petroleum-industry shills. Observe their relentless coverage of electoral horse-races and scantily-clad starlets, while a crisis of global proportions builds unremarked. How have we come to this pass?
For decades, the oil and coal industries have funded conservative “think tanks” which supply our media outlets with authoritative-sounding voices stridently rejecting the findings of climate scientists. They do this to perpetuate an economy built on convenience and consumption (while, oddly enough, reaping profits higher than any in our nation’s history).
America’s “can do” reputation is in tatters thanks to this ill-conceived strategy of calculated ignorance and greed. The time for denialism is over; the first step in solving the problem of climate change is to recognize its existence.
Warren Senders
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 15: Gotta Walk The Line
The Central Pennsylvania Patriot-News runs a good op-ed by CCL’s Richard Whiteford:
Scientists believe that we can’t allow the preindustrial global temperature to rise higher than another 2 degrees Celsius or human survival will be very challenging. We are almost half way there now.
The oil, gas and coal industries and their paid henchmen like the Heartland Institute and certain bought politicians distract the public with red herring issues like claiming that switching to clean energy will hurt the economy, kill jobs, and cause energy shortages.
What is mostly overlooked by them and the media is that if humans want to survive on this planet we have to stop burning fossil fuels as soon as possible.
Scientists say that we can’t put much more than another 565 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere without disastrous results. At this time, financial analysts calculate that there is already 2,795 gigatons of CO2 contained in readily available oil, gas and coal reserves. That’s five times more CO2 than we can afford to burn and expect to survive yet the plan remains to drill baby drill!
There is enough carbon in the Canadian Tar Sands oil deposits to send the global temperature above the 2 degree limit. That is the reason environmentalists are protesting the Keystone XL Pipe Line. We just can’t afford to burn that carbon and expect to survive.
Have a nice day. November 5:
As the evidence supporting both the reality and the danger of anthropogenic global heating continues to mount, the anti-expertise wing of American conservatism finds itself increasingly isolated. Propped up by mountains of fossil-fuel cash, the science-denying politicians and media figures are still muddying the national discussion of an accelerating global emergency with debunked “facts,” cherry-picked statistics, and — all too often — outright lies.
Why? The answer lies in the intersection of two factors. First, the short-term fiscal motives embedded in the language of corporate charters; companies are required by law to focus on profits above all other objectives. Second, the pro-apocalyptic orientation of fundamentalist religion, which eagerly embraces notions of a fiery Armageddon while rejecting the inconvenient conclusions of scientists. With one providing the money and the other providing the zealotry, these two combine to create a political force which is impervious to logic, data, or the notion of good environmental stewardship.
Eventually, of course, they will lose. The laws of physics and chemistry will overcome fanaticism and greed alike. The question is whether the rest of us will survive the consequences of this toxic blend of cupidity and stupidity.
Warren Senders
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 13: I Saw Mommy Kissing Elvis!
Sigh. Another day, another zombie lie. George Pieler, in Forbes, reprinted in the Chicago Tribune:
The Los Angeles Times is taking heat for announcing it will not publish any letters rejecting the hypothesis that humans are causing global warming. At least, that seems to be what the Times is doing: in an artful yet awkwardly made announcement (later defended in a pointed Op Ed), editor Paul Thornton stated that letters asserting “that there are no signs humans have caused climate change” do not get printed in the LA Times. The reason? According to Mr. Thornton, it’s because the Times traffics only in facts, and the quoted assertion is unquestionably non-factual by the paper’s standards. Those include consulting only “scientists with advanced degrees who undertake tedious research” and who, as per the UN’s climate change panel (IPCC)), say humans do cause climate change.
Jargon matters here, because the advocates of what we now call anthropomorphic climate change as the explanation for such general warming has been observed in, at least, the past 40 years, used to say ‘global warming’ not ‘climate change.’ As warming trends have failed to form to those ‘tedious researcher’ climate prediction models, the focus on warming as such has yielded to the much handier and conveniently meaningless phrase, ‘climate change.’
The Trib has never printed one of my letters. I wonder why? November 3:
In attacking the LA Times’ recent decision to exclude letters from climate change denialists, George Pieler perpetuates the conservative shibboleth that environmentalists popularized the phrase “climate change” as a way of changing the subject when “global warming” failed to materialize.
Mr. Pieler’s wrong three times. First is the simple fact that all measurements confirm that Earth’s temperature is rising dramatically. Next: the inconvenient fact that scientists (not the popular press and news media) have always called it “climate change,” because the phrase is more accurate. And last but not least is the simple truth that the phrase “climate change” was promoted to the news media by the Bush administration on the advice of Republican strategist Frank Luntz, who felt that “global warming” was too “scary.”
The Times’ decision is as sensible as rejecting submissions from hollow-Earth advocates, lizard-people conspiracy theorists, or those who reject the germ theory of disease.
Warren Senders
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 12: Like A Second Marriage
In the Asbury Park Press, CCL’s Joseph Robertson reaffirms the triumph of hope over experience:
There is deep and lasting trauma, reasonably rooted in lived experience along the coastal areas of our region, from the impact of superstorm Sandy. Some towns worry they need to be integrated into neighboring municipalities if they cannot rebuild or attract new investment. Homeowners and business owners are determined to rebuild, but face daunting obstacles.
Congress has not been eager to provide the disaster relief funding promised. Leaders focused on solving problems have found fissures that run along party lines can be a great obstacle to progress for real people.
There are a number of seasoned, rational, service-oriented conservatives in New Jersey, who are in a unique position to open a new way through the ideological divisions holding us back. For a long time, conservatives have been pressured to refuse to respond to the need for climate change mitigation policy (like a price on carbon emissions or a cap on overall emissions). Sandy made that position all but untenable for anyone representing real people facing real and unprecedented problems. Those conservatives who understand the problem, and who are willing to lead, can now do so in a new context.
The fifth consensus report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a strict, detailed and conclusive examination of scientific evidence endorsed even by oil-dependent nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran — has answered many of the most pressing questions posed by climate policy skeptics. The science is now settled, the evidence is clear and the report shows we have already burned through half of global civilization’s lifetime carbon fuel budget.
Tea-partiers. The apotheosis of vicious stupidity. November 2:
Joseph Robertson’s plea for “climate skeptics” to support a carbon tax is a sensible and well-crafted argument built on common sense, scientific reality, and a nuanced understanding of conservative values. That is to say, it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of persuading those now controlling the conservative movement and the Republican party.
Today’s GOP is not the party of Lincoln. It’s not the party of Eisenhower. It’s not the party of Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, but of ideologically-driven fanatics who fear and detest scientific expertise.
In a political environment where a plurality of primary voters still cling to bizarre birther notions and zombie conspiracy theories, even acknowledging the existence of climate change is electoral suicide. Unlike, say, the human causes of global warming, the idea that “seasoned, rational, service-oriented conservatives” will risk their careers for the good of the planet has — unfortunately — no supporting evidence whatsoever.
Warren Senders
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 9: (Head-desk)
Oh, for fuck’s sake. The Omaha World-Herald:
The Nebraska lawmaker who initiated the Legislature’s first study of climate change now prefers to see the study abandoned rather than continue along what he called a politicized, scientifically invalid path.
State Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm said Tuesday the state committee handling the study is disregarding the intent of the Legislature.
Haar, a Democrat, is asking his fellow senators to help him salvage the $44,000 study by encouraging the committee to reconsider the restrictions it published Monday in the official request for study assistance.
The request says researchers “should consider ‘cyclical climate change’ to mean a change in the state of climate due to natural internal processes and only natural external forcings such as volcanic eruptions and solar variations.”
The use of the term “natural” would rule out the primary cause of the climate changes that have occurred in the last half-century: humans.
The issue of “cyclical” climate change was successfully amended into Haar’s bill by Sen. Beau McCoy of Omaha, a Republican candidate for governor.
McCoy on Tuesday elaborated on his opposition to using state tax dollars to study man-made climate change: Humans aren’t capable of influencing climate patterns.
“I firmly believe our planet goes through cyclical weather patterns. There have been hotter times, colder times, wetter times and drier times,” he said.
A fourth-generation rancher who has become involved in construction, McCoy said he “lives and dies” by the weather. Environmental extremists, he said, are drumming up climate change hysteria to further their own agenda.
There aren’t enough faces and palms for this level of stupid. October 30:
Senator Beau McCoy’s insistent denial of human impacts on climate is a fine example of the logical error known as the “argument from incredulity” — if he can’t understand something, it can’t be real. As a fourth-generation farmer, the Senator presumably has no problem diverting water to irrigate his crops, thereby creating a localized “micro-climate” that helps his plants grow tall — but somehow the countless ways humans have already altered our environment for better or worse escape his attention.
As the history of the Dust Bowl reminds us, overgrazing leads to erosion, destroying topsoil and devastating agriculture. Pumping industrial wastes into rivers and lakes turns them toxic, and releasing smoke into the atmosphere does the same for the air we breathe. Given that it’s so easy to damage our soil, our water, and our air, it shouldn’t be that hard to affect the chemical equilibrium of our atmosphere, which is essentially how the greenhouse effect works. Legislating from ignorance may play well on TV, but the anti-science posturing of such politicians will inevitably fail in the real world, where the laws of physics and chemistry always win in the end.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 4, Month 11, Day 2: And The Horse You Rode In On…
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel offers Senator Ron Johnson an inconvenient truth or three:
This should not come as a surprise, but it appears that a refusal to recognize reality may actually hurt politicians with voters.
Case in point: Wisconsin’s own Sen. Ron Johnson and his stance on climate change.
Last summer, an ad campaign by the League of Conservation Voters targeted several federal lawmakers, Johnson among them, who don’t believe that human activities are a primary cause of climate change. Johnson, who once attributed climate change to sunspots in a meeting with the Journal Sentinel Editorial Board, has steadfastly voted against regulation of emissions that contribute to climate change.
After its ad campaign, the league did a poll of constituent attitudes, in Johnson’s case in the Green Bay market. The results, reported this week by The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, showed that a “14-point increase in those who feel less favorable toward Johnson based on what they have heard about him; an eight-point increase in his job disapproval; and an eight-point boost in constituents believing Johnson is out of step on climate change.”
Johnson’s Green Bay constituents are right. The consensus among top climate scientists is clear and has been for years. Climate change is happening. Human activity plays a huge role in that. The consequences of doing nothing could be dire and expensive. Johnson is just flat-out wrong.
I’d love to see more like this. October 23:
While conservative politicians and media figures have perpetrated many assaults on reason and factuality over the years, none offers greater potential for damage than their steady stream of disinformation on global climate change. Many right-wing celebrities may once have known the difference between real and spurious science — but after years of peddling superficially plausible nonsense, no longer recognize the distinction. Unfortunately for Wisconsin and the nation, Senator Ron Johnson is such a man.
The greenhouse effect was discovered well over a century ago, and scientists have been warning us about its consequences since the Eisenhower administrations. It testifies to the power of fossil-fuel industries in the world economy that we’ve avoided any meaningful regulation of CO2 emissions for just as long. But the laws of physics trump the laws of a nation, and climatic reality is catching up with deniers like Senator Johnson. And to the rest of us.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes carbon tax corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Koch Brothers
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 29: Jump Like A Willys
The Palm Beach Daily News reports on Bill Koch, who is (surprise!) an asshole:
As someone who states that he has energy in his DNA, billionaire oil-and-gas mogul Bill Koch says those who think carbon is bad should get a reality check.
Koch addressed an audience of 600 on Thursday for the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting at The Breakers, peppering his remarks with off-color jokes and self-deprecating humor.
“Eighty-four percent of the energy used in the world comes from carbon,” he said, explaining that decayed primeval forests below the Earth’s surface are the source of the coal, oil and gas that powers the global economy.
Those who call for taxes on carbon dioxide emissions are “on LSD,” Koch said, making the point that humans produce their share of carbon dioxide naturally and taxes aren’t levied on them. He suggested planting trees as the most efficient way to counter higher carbon levels.
The reliance on fossil fuels is not going away, he said, noting that coal is relatively low in price, that oil has been “pretty cheap” until recently and that there is an abundance of natural gas, available at a price almost competitive with coal.
Spoken like a man who’s never tripped. October 19:
When arch-conservative energy bazillionaire Bill Koch claims carbon-tax advocates are “on LSD,” he’s offering powerful evidence of his own detachment from reality. Yes, human beings produce CO2, and yes, planting more trees is an excellent policy. But the plain fact is that industrial civilization’s carbon dioxide emissions are accelerating, and unless we slow them down, all the trees we can possibly plant aren’t going to scrub our atmosphere rapidly enough to mitigate catastrophic global heating. The greenhouse effect is a scientifically demonstrated phenomenon discovered over 150 years ago and confirmed by countless studies; Mr. Koch’s sneering dismissal of climate science is based only on ideology and has no foundation in fact.
Fossil-fuel advocates like the Koch brothers ignore expensive “externalities” for which we (or our descendants) will eventually have to pay: pollution, health impacts, massive environmental cleanups, global climate change, and a great many expensive and pointless wars. If coal and oil are “cheap” forms of energy, then high-interest credit cards are a source of free money.
Bill Koch’s glib denialism demonstrates that vast quantities of money distort reality far more effectively than any drug.
Warren Senders