Uncategorized: assholes Cancun idiots
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Month 12, Day 1: We’re Number One!
The Guardian’s US Environment correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg, reports on America’s stance going into the Cancun talks. My country really really really needs a talking to.
It is a curious irony that the Republican champions of American exceptionalism currently poised to take over the U.S. House of Representatives are opposed to any sort of meaningful action on climate change — because it is “too hard” on businesses, taxpayers and consumers. Trumpeting the notion that America is the only country that has a “can-do” spirit, they simultaneously assert that American industries are too fragile to participate in a world economy with rules have drastically changed by environmental exigencies. Apparently, since its participation in World War II was crucial to an Allied victory, America deserves a lifetime free pass from the rest of the globe. While it’s unfortunate for the likelihood of a genuine emissions agreement that climate change is represented by massed statistics rather than mustached dictators, the deaths and tragedies brought about by this more insidious enemy will exceed all of humanity’s wars combined.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes climate zombies idiots Michael Mann plagiarism
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Month 11, Day 23: Surprise!
The 2006 report criticizing Michael Mann and his colleagues for methodological slip-ups was in large part plagiarized, reports USA Today.
Goodness. I’m shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
There are two important things to understand about the news that a 2006 report to Congress which fostered a Republican cottage industry of climate conspiracy theorizing was substantially plagiarized. Dan Vergano’s article correctly notes that plagiarized material in the report doesn’t necessarily invalidate its conclusion that the climate scientists whose work Dr. Wegman examined made methodological errors. But the corollary point is that such problems don’t necessarily invalidate the climatologists’ conclusions. Innumerable subsequent studies have validated their work; the world is indeed getting hotter exactly as Mann and his colleagues predicted. Not that this will make a difference to the “climate zombies” entering the House of Representatives, who are now poised to spend the next two years holding irrelevant hearing after irrelevant hearing, wasting the time of scientists who are struggling to address the most significant threat humanity has yet faced in its millennia of existence on this planet.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes climate zombie idiots
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Month 11, Day 21: Republicans Cause More Pollution Than Trees AND Automobiles
The Washington Post runs a column by former Republican congressman Sherwood Boehlert, decrying the outbreak of climate zombie-ism among the incoming GOP Congress.
Once these people are out of office, they show refreshing signs of independent thought and scientific awareness. Apparently, among Republicans, power stupidifies, and absolute power stupidifies absolutely. Or something.
Because the WaPo rules out letters that have been published online, I am going to make random changes to particular letters (replacing “s” with a dollar sign, for example). That may prevent them from finding this, should they deem it worthy of publication. After a few days have gone by, I’ll replace the text with the original, unaltered version.
$herw00d B0ehlert finds inc0mprehen$ible the 0b$tin@te @dherence t0 @ $cience-blind ide0l0gy 0n the p@rt 0f hi$ fell0w Republic@n$. Hi$ @ttempt to buck the prev@iling $entiment in the G0P i$ c0mmend@ble, f0r the f@ct$ 0f clim@te ch@nge @re inc0ntr0vertible @nd the thre@t it pre$ent$ i$ terrifyingly re@l. B0ehlert cite$ R0n@ld Re@g@n @$ @ Republic@n pre$ident wh0 “embr@ced $cientific under$t@nding of the envir0nment and p0llution.” Well, um, n0. Th@t w0uld be the $ame R0nald Reagan wh0 f@m0u$ly 0pined that “tree$ cau$e m0re p0lluti0n than @ut0m0bile$ d0,” and wh0 in$talled J@me$ W@tt and Anne G0r$uch, 0ne @ biblic@l r@pturi$t wh0 $aw n0 need t0 pre$erve the envir0nment ($ince the End 0f Time$ w@$ imminent), the 0ther @n EPA chief wh0$e @ttempt$ t0 gut the Cle@n Air Act t00k C0ngre$$ ye@r$ to und0. Wh@t I find inc0mprehen$ible is Boehlert’$ @ttempt t0 $@nitize the Republic@n p@rty’$ multi-dec@de hi$t0ry 0f denying ide0l0gic@lly inc0nvenient f@ct$.
W@rren$ender$
environment: assholes idiots
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Month 11, Day 19: An Insult To Douchenozzles Everywhere
The Wall Street Journal prints a letter from a well-known denier, J. Scott Armstrong, a marketing/forecasting maven from Pennsylvania.
Bjorn Lomborg (“Can Anything Serious Happen in Cancun?”, op-ed, Nov. 12) claims that government spending on global warming policies is wasted, but he assumes that global warming caused by carbon dioxide is a fact. It is not. We base this statement not on the opinions of 31,000 American scientists who signed a public statement rejecting this warming hypothesis (the “Oregon Petition”), but rather because the forecasts of global warming were derived from faulty procedures.
We published a peer-reviewed paper showing that the forecasting procedures used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change violated 72 of 89 relevant principles (e.g., “provide full disclosure of methods”). The IPCC has been unable to explain why it violated such principles. In response, we developed a model that follows the principles. Because the climate is complex and poorly understood, our model predicts that global average temperatures will not change.
Inspired by his letter, I did some research on the guy. What a douchenozzle.
J. Scott Armstrong’s letter very admirably states a goal: fact-based, science-based policy, which is something to which any and all governments should aspire. But Mr. Armstrong’s panegyric to factuality is larded with misleading statements and damning omissions. His apophatic reference to the so-called “Oregon Petition” and its thirty-one thousand signatures fails to note that the document in question has been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked. It would be naive to expect him to note the results of his 2007 “Global Warming Challenge” to Al Gore (in which he famously wagered ten thousand dollars that global mean temperatures wouldn’t rise): his own website conveniently stopped noting monthly outcomes in March of this year after the earth obstinately kept on getting hotter and hotter. Mr. Armstrong’s background in marketing is hardly relevant to his understanding of climate — and his disingenuous phraseology is an insult to the scientific integrity he purports to uphold.
Warren Senders
Education: assholes Bob Ingliss idiots
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Month 11, Day 18: Wait For It….Wait For It….Wait For It!
The outgoing GOP congressman from South Carolina, Bob Ingliss, was primaried by a tea-partier and lost, badly. He attributes this to his support for climate change legislation (and, indeed, for the notion that climate change exists at all). Now that he’s on the way out, he’s ready to educate his fellow Republicans.
Inglis, who has served six terms in the House, was soundly defeated by a more conservative opponent in a Republican primary this year and has blamed the loss in part on his belief in climate science, which hurt him with voters. Inglis made his frustration clear this morning at a House Science subcommittee hearing on the science of climate change.
“To my free enterprise colleagues, whether you think it’s all a bunch of hooey, what we talk about in this committee — the Chinese don’t, and they plan on eating our lunch in the next century, working on these problems,” Inglis said. “We may press the pause button for a few years, but China is pressing the fast-forward button.”
Inglis, ranking member of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, also took aim at “people who make a lot of money on talk radio and talk TV saying a lot of things. They slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and they’re experts on climate change. They substitute their judgment for people who have Ph.D.s and work tirelessly” on climate change.
This is the second letter this week to the NYT.
While it’s welcome news that Bob Ingliss has gone public with criticism of the GOP caucus’ rejections of climate science, it’s something of a tragedy that he didn’t take more advantage of his six terms in the House to educate his fellow Republicans on the matter. Given that there is a great deal of money to be made in so-called “green technology,” one would expect corporate-friendly conservatives to be champing at the bit for new investment opportunities. Instead, these “climate zombies” have donned an ideological armor that no facts can penetrate. Perhaps it’s because liberal Democrats (gasp!) think climate change is important, and Republicans cannot risk agreement with Democrats on anything anymore. Or they may believe global warming is the initial manifestation of their long-awaited Biblical Armageddon — which means that the new majority party in the US House is eager to bring about the extinction of our species. Uh-oh.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Chris Christie idiots scientific consensus
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Month 11, Day 12: Idiocracy, Here We Come
The Newark Star-Ledger runs an AP article about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s “skepticism” about climate change:
Asked by a man attending the event whether he thought mankind was responsible for global warming, Christie says he’s seen evidence on both sides of the argument but thinks it hasn’t been proven one way or another.
Christie says “more science” is needed to convince him.
Moron.
I figured I’d offer him a list of resources.
So Governor Christie needs “more science” before he’s convinced that human beings are causing global warming? Okay. Perhaps Mr. Christie didn’t know that the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Meteorological Society, the International Union for Quaternary Research, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and hundreds of other scientific societies and associations have issued position papers asserting that the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is indisputable. But wait! But wait! Perhaps the evidence the governor really wants is in the dissenting 2007 statement from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the only scientific body in the world to dispute human causes of global climate change, and, unsurprisingly, an organization heavily subsidized by the oil industry. Mr. Christie is no “skeptic.” Rather, he is a so-called “climate zombie” — a politician for whom denial of scientific fact is an article of faith.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes good guys idiots media irresponsibility
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Month 11, Day 8: High Noon!
The Cleveland Plain Dealer runs an McClatchy article about climate scientists preparing to enter the media circus.
“This group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists,” said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.
“We are taking the fight to them because we are . . . tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed.”
Poor bastards. I’m going to send them all some letters of support; they’ll need all the help they can get.
It is terrific news that climatologists are preparing to challenge climate-change denialists. With the GOP takeover of the House, we can look forward to a long two years of anti-science theatrics, like Representative Darryl Issa’s promised hearings on the “climategate” non-scandal. Climate denialism is a linchpin of Republican ideology; these politicians insist (despite mountains of evidence and an overwhelming scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic global warming) that the problem either: A – doesn’t exist, B – exists but isn’t caused by humans, C – was fabricated by Al Gore and an international conspiracy of climate experts, or D – is too expensive to address. Each of these positions has been debunked many times over, but the minds of GOP politicians are, alas, closed to persuasion. I hope that the members of the proposed “climate rapid response team” are ready for the most exasperating and baffling arguments they’ll ever experience.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Food Security idiots United Nations
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Month 11, Day 6: It’s Always A Good Day When I Discover a Good Word
Business Week runs a short AP squib on a plea from the UN Conference on Food Security, asking that the potentially devastating impact of climate change on agricultural systems be taken into account in developing a meaningful climate treaty.
This letter introduces a new and useful word: veriphobia. It means “fear of truth.” Use it in good health.
The message from the UN Conference on Food Security inadvertently provides an excellent illustration of the extraordinary disconnect between reality and the Republican Party. The actual facts show conclusively that climate change is real, it’s causing huge damage already, and it’s going to have a devastating effect on agriculture all over the world. But the facts are no longer relevant to today’s GOP, which is deeply invested in an irrationally anti-science ideology built entirely on opposition to ideas or policies suggested by its political opponents. Does anyone think it’s likely that Republican politicians (even those from farming states which will bear the brunt of global warming’s effects over the next century) will acknowledge or accommodate the needs of climate-threatened farming nations? To do so (alas for the rest of us) would threaten these veriphobic denialists with a terrifying fate: having to admit error.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes greed idiots lawsuits
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 5: Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
The New York Times notes that post-election, we’re likely to see more lawsuits challenging climate change laws at the state level, as corporate players are emboldened to act even more stupidly.
If the business community’s attention span was somewhat longer, many of the lawsuits aimed at neutralizing state climate change laws would be seen for what they are: desperate attempts to change the subject. The truth is simple: global warming is real and humans are responsible; the planet is already experiencing its effects everywhere from Moscow to Manhattan, and things are going to get worse before they get better no matter what we do. The orchestra of chaos is only tuning up, and if we don’t cut our carbon emissions drastically and immediately, we’re in for a world of hurt. Prioritization of short-term profits will play a major part in the demise of many corporate players over the coming decades. It is a sad commentary on our country when both the investment and manufacturing sectors have replaced fact-based institutional policy with petulant demands that reality be repealed.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Darryl Issa idiots
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Month 11, Day 3: This Is Awful.
In the wake of the bloodbath, I wrote the following to the Boston Globe, hanging it on a generic article about how having a Republican-controlled house will slow President Obama’s agenda.
Gee, ya think?
The bright spots are few and far between. As of this writing it looks like California is safe and the odious Proposition 23 has gone down. But given the post- Citizens United climate in our country, I am not sanguine about our future. If you thought the last two years were ugly, just watch the next two.
With the Republican takeover in the House of Representatives, we can look forward to a long two years of show trials from luminaries like Darryl Issa and James Sensenbrenner. These two worthies have already announced their intentions to hold hearings into the multiply-debunked “Climategate” non-scandal; like the rest of the GOP caucus, they are ideologically wedded to the notion that climate change is a liberal conspiracy cooked up by Al Gore and his henchmen in the scientific establishment. The climatologists who are working around the clock on the dimensions of global warming (arguably the worst threat humanity has ever faced) are now going to have their time squandered on empty theatrics by a group of anti-science congressmen. It would be nice to imagine that these politicians could have their minds changed by scientific evidence, but given the troubled relationship between reality and these Republicans, I wouldn’t count on it.
Warren Senders