environment Politics: assholes Citizens United corporate irresponsibility denialists irony Koch Brothers
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 5, Day 20: Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha.
The Koch Brothers were pranked by “Youth For Climate Truth,” a low-budget Yes Men group which sent out some phony press releases in the name of Koch Industries a while back, claiming the Bircher billionaires had seen the light on climate change and were no longer going to fund denialism in the media. Ha ha. The Kochs then proceeded to sue YFCT. Ha ha.
The suit has now been laughed out of court. Ha ha:
A federal judge in Utah on Monday tossed Koch Industries’s lawsuit against the pranksters who set up a fake website and sent out a bogus press release saying the company had found religion on climate change.
In a case being watched for First Amendment implications, Judge Dale Kimball of the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City also said Koch can’t disclose the identities of the “Youth for Climate Truth” members or use any other information obtained via subpoena from two Utah-based domain hosting companies.
The ruling is a major one as courts navigate the intersection of the First Amendment with anonymous speech and computer hacking on the Internet. Koch’s claims included charges of trademark infringement, unfair competition, cybersquatting and breach of the company website’s terms of use.
Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha.
Sent May 9:
Koch Industries’ lawsuit against “Youth For Climate Truth” was a mother lode of irony. That one of the world’s most egregiously irresponsible corporations trotted out such massive legal firepower in response to a small group of internet pranksters suggests that these notorious tea-party funders and climate-change denialists are, perhaps, a wee bit sensitive about it. Well, Judge Kimball has laughed them out of court, and rightly so. “Youth For Climate Truth,” the online activists who tweaked the corporate titans with a phony press release, merit our thanks and applause. Given their huge role in delaying and derailing meaningful political action on climate change, the Kochs and their cronies in the fossil-fuel industry have perpetrated a grotesque practical joke on all the rest of us; the American public deserves a few laughs at their expense before the coming decades’ likely ecological collapse strips all humor from the situation.
Warren Senders
environment humor Politics: assholes denialists EPA fun with analogies idiots Republican obstructionism
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 22: Move Over, Earthlings! The Planet {!Z@p&rd*p*!} Needs Lebensraum.
Chronic morosity and worriage is not generally compatible with prosidic goofiness. But today I made an exception for this LTE to the Reno News & Review, which ran a short piece about the pod people on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
This one was mailed a while back but somehow failed to make it onto the schedule for posting. Mailed March 17:
It reads like the plot of a late-night “B” movie: aliens take over the bodies of American politicians and start passing laws undermining America’s support for science. If the current crop of GOP legislators were actually extras in a “Plan 9 From Outer Space” knockoff, we’d be able to sit back and munch popcorn while making jokes at their expense. Given the potential for crippling impacts on American agriculture, infrastructure and public health from runaway climate change, it’s astonishing that the Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee won’t even admit the problem exists, let alone take steps to address it. These cynical opportunists really do walk, talk and legislate like enemies of our species, making a compelling case for the “alien enemy” hypothesis. Unfortunately, these invaders from the Tea-party Nebula are entirely real, and their anti-science agenda is endangering both our global reputation and our national future.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Inhofe Senate Republicans
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 16: Easy Target….
The Tulsa World writes about James Inhofe’s attempt to end the EPA.
Sent April 7:
James Inhofe’s ignorance of science would be hilarious if he were not in a position of significant influence. This self-proclaimed “enemy of the environment” long ago sold his political power to the highest bidder: the big oil industries who have the most to lose from any sort of meaningful climate change legislation. He and his acolytes are hostile to any information that does not fit their preconceptions. Our political process was originally intended to deal with actual verifiable reality, including the consequences of our actions and of our inaction. Political grandstanding unconnected from facts is a prescription for disaster. In reflexively obeying their corporate paymasters, Mr. Inhofe and other members of the GOP undermine their own party’s credibility; their cavalier dismissal of the entire climate science community is grossly irresponsible. With all due respect to the Senator’s fervently held beliefs, waiting for the Rapture cannot substitute for actual fact-based policy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 14: The Science Of Suspended Disbelief
T-Paw thinks there’s still some diversity of opinion on climate change, says the Iowa Independent, which is heavily festooned with tea-party advertisements. I doubt this will get printed. Sent April 5:
Tim Pawlenty’s got it right. The science on climate change is indeed divided. Let’s look more closely at this division of opinion among climate scientists — the people who’ve studied the subject in greatest depth. A whopping three percent of climatologists disagree with the rest of their profession about the human causes of climate change. Ninety-seven to three. In fairness to Governor Pawlenty, it’s likely that his only acquaintance with climate science is at the hands of Republican political consultants, who’ve determined through rigorous statistical analysis (there’s some science, right there!) that accepting the overwhelming expert consensus on anthropogenic global warming equates to an instant and overwhelming electoral loss at the hands of tea-partiers. The future of our country and our civilization be damned; what’s important to Mr. Pawlenty and the rest of the Republican Flat-Earth society is to continue enabling the profit margins of their corporate masters.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Barack Obama denialists idiots nuclear power timidity
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 11: Tearing My Hair.
The April 2 issue of the Boston Globe has a column by Derrick Jackson noting the seeming inability of our president to actually, you know, do or say something that might have an effect on the climate change front:
PRESIDENT OBAMA seems increasingly drained of the juice needed to power up a modern vision on energy. Completely absent from his address this week at Georgetown University was his promise as a candidate to go after windfall profits of oil companies and reinvest the money into wind, solar, and biofuels. Instead, he promised to expedite new shallow and deepwater oil drilling permits, even as top environmentalists say many questions remain after the BP spill disaster.
More than ever, he is wedded to pursuing “clean coal’’ and nuclear power. Meanwhile, radiation from the Japan nuclear disaster was measured thousands of times above safety levels in seawater and groundwater near the plant and in soil 25 miles away, at levels double those found in areas declared inhabitable around Chernobyl.
Most important, there continues to be no direct message to the American people that we are living in an unsustainable fantasy, consuming a quarter of the world’s energy. There was no hint of things that would instantly make Americans rethink consumption, such as a gas tax. For the moment, the road-blocking Republicans are winning the day with an ethos symbolized by Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a potential presidential candidate. Last week Barbour told Iowa Republicans, “We need more oil. We need more gas. We need more coal. We need more nuclear. We need more American energy.”
Jackson is one of the best columnists writing today; I’m very glad he’s at the Globe. This was sent April 2, and has been published:
The timidity of the Obama administration when it comes to the transformation of America’s energy economy is profoundly disturbing. The facts of climate change are firmly established, with only a few petroleum-funded contrarians on the fringes of a global scientific consensus. The economics of renewable energy look more attractive every day, as are the geopolitical ramifications of getting more of our national energy requirements from within our own borders. The long-term costs of fossil fuels are harder and harder to hide, as we confront the health effects and environmental impacts of our profligate burning of oil and coal. Why, then, is the President so leery of taking a strong stand? The pusillanimity of the present administration only makes sense when viewed diagnostically: the extent to which our politics is paralyzed on this issue is a measure of the disproportionate influence of big oil and big coal in our nation’s governance.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 10: Ignorance Is Very Expensive
The just-released Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study confirms what we all know:
Preliminary results from a controversial study of global temperature data confirm the overall warming trend long reported by government scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom, the study’s director told a House panel today.
The warming trend detected by scientists involved in the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study — a rise of 0.7 degree Celsius since 1957 — “is very similar” to the findings of independent analyses by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.K. Hadley Centre, study Chairman Richard Muller said.
“The world temperature data has sufficient integrity to be used to determine temperature trends,” said Muller, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Published by the New York Times. One hopes they’ll get on board and stop equivocating about climate change.
This letter took a long time to write for a “Republicans are idiots” motif. The idea’s shape was tricky, and I’m still not 100% satisfied. Nevertheless, this went to the NYT on April 1:
While the Berkeley study is another piece of evidence added to an overwhelming consensus on climate change, it’s probably too much to ask Congress’ denialists to pay attention. These same politicians have a long history of ignoring evidence first, and saying “who could have known?” later. Who could have known the levees would break, that there weren’t any WMDs, that management was cutting corners on the Deepwater Horizon? The increasing flow of scientific reports confirming the serious reality of global climate change should make it a little harder for Republican legislators to plead ignorance of the climate threat; perhaps in future decades their apologists will try and excuse their malfeasance by asking, who could have known it was a bad idea to so politicize scientific evidence that expert witnesses became props in a cynical theater of ignorance, and policy was crafted in utter disregard of facts? Who could have known?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 9: Maybe They’re Just Waiting For The Rapture?
It’s March 31 as I write this; it’s supposed to snow heavily tomorrow, which is crazy. Boston weather is like that anyway, and as we enter the new Anthropocene Epoch it’s going to get more and more so.
There was an excellent article in the Miami Herald giving a good slam to climate change denialism. It’s well worth a read:
Recently, I went to Capitol Hill with members of Generation Hot (and the Sierra Club, our country’s largest grass-roots environmental organization) to confront the politicians whose denials and delay have done so much to land Generation Hot in this predicament. We wanted to know why my daughter and the other 2 billion members of Generation Hot have to suffer because Republicans in Congress refuse to accept what virtually every major scientific organization in the world, including our own National Academy of Sciences, has said: Man-made climate change is happening now and extremely dangerous.
Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who has famously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” told our group that “the science is mixed” and his scientists know better than ours. Frank Maisano, a public-relations consultant for big energy companies, told us that “the science doesn’t matter”; what matters is what’s politically feasible.
“The science does matter,” Caroline Selle, a member of our group who works for the Energy Action Coalition, responded in a blog the following day. Selle added: “We face a climate catastrophe that will define our generation and the future of our country, and the solutions to this crisis will create jobs and improve public health. So why aren’t we acting? Unfortunately, the answer is simple: Capitol Hill is swarming with ‘climate cranks’ – politicians willing to trade our future for their own political gain.”
I’m very tired, sore and cranky today. Sent on March 31:
“Generation Hot” is a compelling phrase, and I’m indebted to Mark Hertsgaard for adding it to my lexicon. It is a sad commentary on the state of public discourse in America that the gravest threat our species has faced in millennia is treated as fodder for political grandstanding rather than informed discussion. The online comments on any article about climate change reveals the degree of emotional investment felt by climate denialists, who feel compelled to reject scientific expertise in favor of vague, implausible conspiracy theories (look out! Al Gore’s gonna take away your SUV!). In the 1950s and 60s, America’s positive attitude toward science led us to unimaginable heights of achievement; in the past few decades, ideological rejection of reality-based thinking has made us a nation of scientific illiterates — and led us to the brink of climatic disaster. “Generation Hot” will rightly curse us for our ignorance and irresponsibility.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists heroes idiots
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 4, Day 1: How To Handle A Fool
John Abraham is one of my heroes. He’s a climate scientist who’s actually taking the battle to the denialists, one at a time. Most recently, he skewered a neoconservative radio host named Jason Lewis who wrote a collection of the usual bullshit for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
I thought I’d get his back on this one. Sent March 23:
It is refreshing to read what an actual scientist has to say about Jason Lewis’ denialist shibboleths. John Abraham has devoted significant time and attention to the debunking that is essential for the discussion of climate and energy policy to move forward, but in one area he’s avoided the exact truth. Perhaps his gracious euphemisms indicate that he’s just too polite to describe Mr. Lewis with scientific accuracy. I’m not. Jason Lewis is a well-paid professional liar, provided with irrelevant and confusing talking points by his paymasters in the fossil fuel industries. Lewis and the rest of his denialist brethren fail to recognize that if climate change is as big a threat as scientists say it is, then there is no longer any room in responsible debate for misdirection and mendacity. Who should we trust? Scientific experts with decades of experience — or vocational misinformers with good radio voices?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists EPA idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 3, Day 25: Rush Would Like That.
The San Francisco Chronicle documents the insanity in the House of Representatives. Like the BP oil spill, Republican denialism and stupidity makes letter-writing easy. I wish it were a lot harder. Don’t you?
Sent March 16:
If only the stakes weren’t so high, we could enjoy the spectacle of the Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee steadfastly denying politically troublesome reality. Forget about adopting a meaningful energy and emissions policy; these worthies not only won’t admit that climate change might present a problem to our country’s agriculture, infrastructure and public health, they’re unwilling to go on record as acknowledging that it even exists. For anyone who’s been following the scientific evidence over the past several decades, the human causes of global warming are undeniable. Unlike the urban legend of Alabama legislators declaring pi equal to three, today’s anti-science Republicans are all too real, and their readiness to ignore evidence and expertise when formulating policy is an embarrassment to America’s reputation, and a source of grave danger to our future as a nation. What will the GOP try to nullify next? Gravity?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes blue dog democrats denialists EPA idiots quislings shame traitors to the planet
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 2, Month 3, Day 24: Subtract The Second “M”
It must be really hard to be a progressive in Utah. The Salt Lake Tribune runs a story: one of the Utah Democrats in the House inserted an amendment that acknowledges the existence of climate change, but stops short of noting that it’s caused by humans. And the guy is proud of himself:
Matheson’s language, which doesn’t require any action, simply says that there’s established science that climate change is occurring and that Congress needs to have a policy to address it.
Matheson, whose congressional website says that climate change is human-caused, says with such a partisan divide he was attempting to find common ground.
“My goal was to show there is some basis where this committee can agree on something,” Matheson said later. “The only amendment approved all day was mine. My amendment reached consensus that everyone agrees there is a problem. I think that was a positive step.”
Additionally, Matheson argued that his amendment doesn’t say human activity didn’t cause climate change.
And another one of his idiotic Blue Dog pals came up with this reeker:
Rep. Mike Ross, a fellow Blue Dog Democrat from Arkansas further changed Matheson’s language to say that Congress could only address climate change in a way that doesn’t “adversely affect the American economy, energy supplies and employment.”
Both of these guys then voted with the Republicans in favor of limiting the EPA’s regulatory authority.
Sent March 15:
Rep. Matheson’s self-congratulatory tone with regard to his amendment on climate change is baffling — for anyone who’s actually following the science. At this point, the worldwide climatological consensus is absolutely overwhelming; while Matheson’s own website states that climate change is caused by human activity, his unwillingness to stand up for this belief suggests that he values legislative consensus more than factuality. Acknowledging the existence of climate change without addressing its causes is like describing reckless driving without mentioning the guy behind the wheel. Given the effects of increased extreme weather on America’s agriculture and infrastructure, Rep. Mike Ross’ statement that attempts to deal with climatic transformations must not “adversely affect the economy” is even more absurd. Climate change is what’s going to adversely affect our economy; preparing for it is (or should be) simple common sense. When floodwaters are rising, only an idiot complains that sandbags are too expensive.
Warren Senders
This one got published, and is attracting some comments.