environment Politics: Al Gore assholes Bill O'Reilly denialists false equivalency idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 10: Just Stop It. Stop It. Right Now.
Under a snarky and dismissive headline (“Al Gore’s Snow Job”), Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun talks about Al Gore’s futile attempt to educate Bill “the tide goes in, the tide goes out” O’Reilly and his audience about how global warming is linked to all this f***ing snow. As snarky and dismissive pieces go, it’s not that bad, pointing out that all Gore’s claims are correct and all of O’Reilly’s statements are stupid…but it nevertheless treats the 2000 popular vote winner as a vaguely comic figure. Our media is so, so, so, so damned lazy.
Sent on February 3:
Lorrie Goldstein notes that Al Gore’s name now triggers reflexive skepticism among people who are anxious to dismiss the very real threat of global climate change as somehow chimerical. But her column inadequately addresses the reasons for this. The former vice-president and Nobel laureate has done his homework; his prescience on the issue of global warming is, or should be, a foregone conclusion by now. Instead, many media outlets dismiss his hard-won expertise, either through a simplistic Bill O’Reilly-style confusion of weather and climate, or through the marginally more sophisticated tactic of false equivalency, in which a statement by a genuinely worried climatologist (or a former VP) is “balanced” by pronunciamenti from petroleum industry mouthpieces. Yes, it’s true that the climate debate has become politically polarized — but environmentalists haven’t been doing the politicizing. That responsibility belongs to the Republican party and its sponsors, Big Oil and Big Coal.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialism idiots scientific consensus Storms
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 9: Auntie Em?
The Kansas City Star takes on the big storms & crazy weather by acknowledging that, as the headline puts it, “Some scientists believe extreme weather events becoming the norm.” The comments on this article are what prompted the closing sentences in my letter (mailed 2/2/11):
The phrase “some scientists” is misleading; it’s just about impossible for the scientific consensus on human causes of global warming to get any stronger. Barring a few petroleum-funded contrarians, the overwhelming majority of climate specialists agree: anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are warming the atmosphere, and the results are going to bring us a world of hurt in the coming decades. The current crop of freak weather events all over the world is just a preview of coming attractions; for decades climatologists have been predicting a worldwide increase in anomalous weather as a consequence of the greenhouse effect. Now their predictions are coming true from Queensland to Kansas as hundreds of millions of lives are disrupted by severe storms, flooding, snow, and drought. But climate-change deniers cannot admit they’ve been misled; their ideologically-driven rejection of global warming’s factuality is not susceptible to actual evidence, no matter how much of it piles up on their doorsteps.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots teapartiers
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 7: (facepalm)
Paul LePage, the new governor of Maine, is an asshole of the first order:
“I believe in real, strong environmental laws,” Gov. Paul LePage announced to a room full of environmentally-minded Mainers a little more than a week ago. “I would never challenge a strong environmental law that’s based in science.”
Four days later, LePage launched a broadside against Maine’s environmental protections, targeting for elimination virtually every state environmental law and regulation in existence, regardless of their scientific merit, importance to Maine’s economy and citizen health, or even their bipartisan support.
The changes he proposed to the regulatory reform committee would rezone 3 million acres of wilderness for development, allow toxic chemicals back into children’s toys and baby bottles, lower air and water pollution standards, reduce fines for polluters, eliminate the Board of Environmental Protection and shift the burden for recycling electronic waste away from manufacturers and onto the people of Maine.
Actually that’s probably an insult to assholes everywhere. My letter to the Sentinel:
Paul LePage’s proposed changes in Maine environmental protections are examples of the kind of nihilism that should have no place in politics. The Tea-Party governor apparently feels beholden only to his ideological allies, rather than to the long-term good of the state. Furthermore, the anti-government zealots who voted for him are themselves being manipulated by cynical and destructive big-business forces whose best interests are nowhere aligned with Maine’s. Unfortunately, ruined natural resources cannot be instantly remedied in the next election cycle; LePage is proposing to spend the state’s environmental capital for the benefit of his corporate sponsors rather than steward it wisely. One suspects that some part of the governor’s anti-nature crusade is simply gleeful “hippie-punching” — political maneuvers taken for no other reason than to offend people who actually give a damn about some of the most beautiful places in the country and the world.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialism idiots scientific literacy
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 3: Who Needs Experts When We Can Just Look Out The Window?
The Vancouver Times-Colonist points out that winter storms don’t disprove climate change. Since the headline (“Winter storms don’t undermine global warming science, climate experts say”) includes the phrase “experts say,” I am confidently expecting a barrage of “why would we trust them damn experts” comments, but I may be disappointed. Actually I couldn’t see any comments at all; perhaps the Times-Colonist doesn’t allow them? Anyway, rather than mock the deniers, I’m trying to be diagnostic.
Those who deny the existence of global climate change are caught in several all-too-human problems. One is the question of timescale; climatic shifts, while accelerating rapidly due to the greenhouse effect, are still too slow for most people to perceive (and by the time they’re happening fast enough for us to notice, it’ll be too late to do anything about it). Then there’s our inability to grasp the statistics of probability (since global warming doesn’t cause any single storm, flood, drought or weather event, but makes such events more likely everywhere). This innumeracy is part and parcel of the larger crisis of scientific ignorance; how can we understand all the crazy weather we’re having unless we know enough chemistry and physics to figure out how evaporation works? And finally, of course, is the sad fact that we in the developed world consider abandoning our conveniences a fate worse than death.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots Occam's Razor
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 31: A Taxonomy of Stupid
In the Missourian, David Rosman takes on the people who hold up recent heavy snowfalls as proof that climate change is nonexistent. It’s a good piece, and triggered a somewhat longer response than usual. As far as I could make out, the paper has no length limits on LTEs, so I’m up around 200 or so. This was a fun piece to write.
Climate change deniers have many fascinating ways to avoid confronting reality. A few hew to a form of Biblical literalism in which humans can’t possibly affect our global environment because — well, because God won’t allow it. Others make the argument from personal incredulity: “global warming isn’t happening because I don’t understand how it works.” A closely related approach is the argument from apparent contradiction: if it’s snowing in your neighborhood, then global warming is disproved. While the latter two arguments may be consistent intellectual stances, ignorance, as Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” once said, is not a point of view. And then there are the truly convoluted theories — avaricious scientists forming a worldwide conspiracy headed by Al Gore (or, as Limbaugh’s minions prefer, “algore”) in which every bike path, public transport system and solar panel is a step on the road to a Socialist New World Order. Next up? Compulsory Carbon Footprint Re-Education Camps for SUV drivers!
These notions fail Occam’s Razor, of course. The simpler explanation is the correct one: industrial civilizations burn a lot of carbon, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, and it’s warming the planet. A lot.
But since doing something about it would require adjusting our habits and reducing the profit margins of big oil companies, it’s easier to stay ignorant.
Our descendants won’t have that luxury.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots money in politics Oil Addiction petroleum
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 30: I’ve Got To Learn To Dance If It Takes Me All Night And Day
USA Today ran an article on Carol Browner’s departure, and the diminished hopes for meaningful climate legislation from the WH. The comments, predictably, are dumb, dumb, dumb.
The departure of Carol Browner from the Obama administration is an unfortunate testimonial to the power of moneyed interests in our nation’s governance. Because changes in energy policy would be bad for the balance sheets of the world’s most profitable industry, politicians bankrolled by big oil and big coal made sure that even the 111th Congress’ relatively weak climate change legislation had no chance of passing. Lost in the fiscal and political maneuvering are the simple facts that our current petroleum dependence is unsustainable, and our planet’s atmosphere is warming faster than even the most pessimistic climate scientists predicted; catastrophic changes are on the horizon if we fail to act. Carol Browner’s mandate was to help us bring that action to pass; her failure is our failure, and the administration’s loss is a loss for all of us — and a victory for mendacity and cupidity in America’s politics.
Warren Senders
Politics: assholes idiots scientific literacy
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Look Who’s Running The Country!
Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA) on Bill Maher’s show:
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Ken Cuccinelli Michael Mann University of Virginia
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 21: There’s IDIOTS and Then There’s *I*D*I*O*T*S*
C-Ville Weekly, a local paper in Charlottesville, has more on the Cuccinelli/Mann/UVA harassment story.
Since May, Cuccinelli has sought Mann’s documents as part of an investigation into whether Mann violated Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA). UVA hired outside counsel to fight Cuccinelli’s demands, and the case is still before the courts, though UVA won an initial legal victory.
The legal bills for the initial defense cost UVA more than $350,000, paid for through private donations. In a separate request, ATI and Marshall also seek release of documents regarding the funding UVA used to fight Cuccinelli’s demands. The University responded that it has no documents that aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege, according to Horner.
The entire mess stems from so-called Climate-gate, the controversy regarding the contents of a pilfered server from Britain’s East Anglia University published online in late 2009. Global warming skeptics pounced on exposed e-mail chains between climate scientists, pointing to language like “trick” and “manipulation” as evidence of deliberately doctored data. Investigations in the U.S. and abroad have so far cleared scientists involved of wrongdoing.
The only good thing about this whole megillah is that it makes letter-writing easy.
Attorney General Cuccinelli’s continued harassment of Dr. Michael Mann is a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars and an embarrassment to the state of Virginia. Multiply exonerated of any wrong-doing or scientific malpractice by separate independent investigations, Mann has been singled out in an attempt to make the practice of climate science (and perhaps, finally, any and all science) impossible. The cost in Mann’s time and resources required to defend himself against state-sanctioned stalking is ultimately deducted from his scientific work; even in a less critical area of research this would be a shame, but given the magnitude of the problems Mann is investigating, Cuccinelli’s vendetta is particularly ill-considered. The Attorney General is patently unable to comprehend scientific method and practice, and his “climate zombie” stance is clearly designed to ingratiate himself with those voters who are offended by anything they can’t understand — a bloc that is, unfortunately, growing.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 15: You Bet Jurassic!
USA Today notes that last year tied 2005 as the warmest year the planet has ever experienced since we began keeping records. I thought I’d use it as a hook to scold some of the deniers, and bring the car-crash analogy out for another run.
Yes, 2010 was Earth’s warmest year in recorded history. As the slow-motion disaster of climate change unfolds, that record won’t stand for long. Along with many who deny it’s happening at all, there are those who claim that humans will thrive on a warmer earth. After all, they say, the planet was a lot warmer during the time of the dinosaurs! Left out is the fact that it took millions of years to build up high levels of atmospheric CO2 back in the Pleistocene — while human industrial civilization is accomplishing the same feat in a century or less. A million years gives life time to adapt; on a geological time-scale, a hundred years is shatteringly abrupt — like hitting a cement wall at ninety miles an hour. Unfortunately, the climate-change deniers in the House of Representatives are going to make sure we’re not wearing our seat belts.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots ignorance Texas
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 13: I’m Gonna Build A Big Fence Around Texas
The Dallas Morning News has a piece on Texas’ ongoing struggle to block the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job.
In attempting to block the regulatory initiatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, Texas is leading the way. Perhaps the rest of America will eventually follow — but to where? On the one hand, the state’s attempt to limit the EPA’s authority will make it easier for major polluters to continue their ongoing destruction of the planetary environment; increasing greenhouse emissions will soon bring Earth to levels of CO2 last seen hundreds of millions of years ago. On the other hand, the level of scientific ignorance used to justify anti-EPA lawsuits demonstrates that in at least some quarters, prehistoric ways of thinking already dominate. Unable or unwilling to grasp the relevance and reality of climatological data, the conservative groups attempting to stop the EPA’s work are leading Texas backward — all the way to the Carboniferous Period.
Warren Senders