environment Politics: denialists drought scientific method sustainability Water
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 29: Happy Birthday
The Southwest is in for a rough summer. The Albuquerque Journal (NM):
With the preliminary April 1 runoff forecast numbers in hand, this is “the worst year ever” on the Rio Grande, according to Phil King, New Mexico State University professor and the water management adviser to the Elephant Butte Irrigation District. “Ever” in this case translates to a century of water management on the river system through modern New Mexico.
The most likely forecast calls for just 14 percent of the long term average for spring runoff into Elephant Butte Reservoir, according to federal forecasters. That’s not a surprise – King and others were watching the March weather and knew the numbers would be bad. But still… “It hurts to get slugged in the stomach,” King told me this afternoon, “even if you were expecting it.”
EBID will begin releasing what limited water it has to lower Rio Grande farmers beginning in early June, and hope for a big monsoon, King said.
Upstream, farmers in the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District are seeing water already in their ditches, but it’s not clear how long that will last, according to David Gensler, the agency’s water manager. The District will run out of stored water in upstream dams sometime in late June, according to Gensler, after which farmers will depend on whatever meager supply comes from natural river flow.
“This is going to be one of, if not the worst years in memory,” Gensler said.
Synchronicity, I call it. May 17:
While climatology cannot state definitively that this summer’s projected extreme drought is a direct consequence of climate change, observations and analysis do allow us to understand that the burgeoning greenhouse effect is having an alarming impact. For exmple, atmospheric circulation in the northern hemisphere was distorted for several months following the breakdown of the polar vortex, and extreme high pressure above the Labrador sea pushed the normal storm track south of its usual Atlantic position. All of these changes happening across the globe will hardly leave the Southwest untouched, and in fact it looks like a third straight year of tinderbox conditions lies ahead for New Mexico.
Sure, it might be just a “coincidence” that climatologists have predicted just the sort of harsher droughts and extreme weather that are now making headlines. But if so, it’s a coincidence that’s happening all over the world, with steadily increasing frequency and intensity.
Warren Senders
environment India Politics: climate refugees denialists glacial melt irrigation mountains
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 27: River Deep, Mountain High
The LA Times, on Mount Everest. So to speak.
A warming climate is melting the glaciers of Mount Everest, shrinking the frozen cloak of Earth’s highest peak by 13% in the last 50 years, researchers have found.
Rocks and natural debris previously covered by snow are appearing now as the snow line has retreated 590 feet, according to Sudeep Thakuri, a University of Milan scientist who led the research.
The pessimistic view of Earth’s tallest peak was presented during a meeting Tuesday of the American Geophysical Union in Cancun, Mexico.
Researchers said they believe the observed changes could be due to human-generated greenhouse gases altering global climate, although their research has not established a firm connection.
The team reconstructed the glacial history of the area using satellite imagery and topographic maps of Everest and the surrounding 713-square-mile Sagarmatha National Park. Their statistical analysis shows that the majority of the glaciers in the national park are retreating at an increasing rate, Thakuri said.
Why? Because it’s not there. May 15:
Once we set aside the iconic importance of a shrinking Mount Everest, the really ominous facts about disappearing ice caps in the Himalayas are the numbers of people whose lives depend on them. Whether it’s for irrigation, hydroelectric generation, or clean drinking water, this steady flow from the world’s tallest mountains is crucial for the existence of almost a seventh of the world’s population. If we subtract that water from the picture, what’s left are hundreds of millions of climate refugees, desperate, landless, hungry, thirsty.
But these people may be more fortunate than many in the developed world who rely on elaborate infrastructure for their food and water. Why? Because they can simply look up and see the daily changes on these peaks, they’re not tempted by magical thinking and ideologically-motivated denialism, like those whose air-conditioned lives have allowed them to ignore the climate crisis until it’s already upon them.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes conspiracy theories denialists false equivalency idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 17: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over
Radical economist Winona LaDuke, in the Duluth News-Tribune:
The problems facing our nation can’t be solved in Washington, D.C., said Winona LaDuke, economist, author and two-time vice presidential candidate for the Green Party. The solution starts at home.
“You’re either at the table or on the menu,” LaDuke, a member of the White Earth band of Ojibwe, said in a speech Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.
She focused on three main issues: climate change, extreme energy addiction and the rising cost to transport food.
“I’d really like to get people to hang around another thousand years,” LaDuke said. “And so the question is how are we going to do that?”
People today have two paths in front of them, one well-worn and scorched, the other green and less traveled.
“We’re the ones who can keep them from putting a mine in … our watershed, which is the wrong thing to do,” she said. “We’re the ones that can keep them from combusting the planet to oblivion. We’re the ones that can keep them from changing the direction of any more rivers or blowing off the top of mountains, yeah. Or genetically engineering the world’s food chain … what a great spiritual opportunity that is, to be those people, to do the right thing.”
I like Winona LaDuke; I think she’d probably agree with the gist of this letter. May 4:
It’s indisputable that the struggle to address global heating and its devastating consequences must be waged on the home front, and Winona LaDuke is correct in her assertion that for the most part, useful approaches to the climate crisis will probably not emerge from Washington, DC. But this simplistic formulation ignores the role that our notoriously dysfunctional Congress plays in making it exponentially more difficult for individual, local, and regional solutions to develop and flourish.
When Republican Representatives and Senators demonize science and block even the most eminently sensible legislation for patently political motivations, this sets them in opposition to the American people’s natural impulse to action and innovation. When conservative media downplay the danger of climate change and instead assert bizarre conspiracy theories, they corrupt the national conversation and make it harder for ordinary citizens to stay well-informed about the grave threat posed by a runaway greenhouse effect.
Warren Senders
atheism environment India Politics: apocalypse assholes Christians denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 15: Shut Up He Explained
This study is red-hot, and most newspapers aren’t going to touch it. But the Central Michigan Morning Sun’s Eric Baerren takes it on. Good for him:
Will Christianity destroy humanity? Is it making the End Times a self-fulfilling prophesy?
That’s only a half-fair assessment. To be truthful, religious beliefs don’t shape people’s general attitudes. They only reflect them. People who are prone to hating homosexuals, for instance, are prone to find reason in their religious tomes for doing it.
A study a few years back found that 76 percent of Republican voters believe that the end of times will come soon, kicking off one final epic conflict between God and the Antichrist. After God wins, he’ll clean up the planet and all of God’s believers get to spend eternity in paradise. Growing up, I attended a church attended by people who believe this. It was also in a part of the state notable for using religion as an excuse to rave on about the Apocalypse. And, let’s be clear about what this means: About 35 percent of the electorate is reliably Republican. If the poll is accurate, that means that the percentage of the American electorate who believes that the Biblical end is near is about 25 percent.
People who believe in the End Times are also statistically more prone to opposing things intended to curb climate change, which is the point of this. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Conservatism is underpinned by a fear of change, and doing things to mitigate climate change means changing the way we do things. If you fear change, then you don’t want to do that, so naturally you find excuses not to like denying climate change or pretending that it’s all part of God’s plan.
Damn hard to get all this into 175 words. May 3:
While it’s true that religious beliefs don’t necessarily direct individual attitudes, it is indisputable that they can profoundly shape a society. Western civilization has been steeped for centuries in Christian theology; regardless of whether particular men and women believe in a Biblical apocalypse, there is no doubt that New Testament conceptions of time, progress and eschatology have steered our nominally secular society towards a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In every aspect of our culture — symphonies, movies, fairy tales — we observe “ways of ending” similar to those in the Book of Revelations: a dramatic final conflict, and a happy resolution. Study of other cultures shows that these models of closure are by no means universal.
End-times Christian opposition to significant action on climate change is only the visible face of a broader societal inability to imagine any other way to end our collective story. Believers see themselves living happily ever after; climate scientists, however, are much less sanguine about the coming centuries of life on Earth if we fail to address the unsettling facts of a runaway greenhouse effect.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism rising seas scientific method
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 14: An Inconvenient Tooth
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (VA) reports on what a bunch of shrill tree-hugging hippies had to say:
A panel of speakers laid out a grim scenario for Hampton Roads’ future Monday night, predicting devastating effects if the region fails to adapt to escalating climate change.
It is a scenario that is particularly troubling to the Navy because of its enormous footprint in the area, said Rear Adm. Philip Hart Cullom, deputy chief of naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics.
Cullom was one of five speakers at a town hall meeting at Nauticus organized by Operation Free, a national coalition of veterans and security experts that portrays climate change as a threat to national security.
“We have to figure out how we’re going to adapt,” Cullom said. “There are good futures. There are bad futures. It depends on what path we choose.”
Hampton Roads is threatened by rising sea level, increased flooding and more frequent natural disasters, said Joe Bouchard, a retired Navy captain and a former commanding officer of Norfolk Naval Station.
Taking another opportunity to mock Teapublicans. May 2:
If Virginia wants to prepare for the rising seas and increasingly severe weather that is certain to accompany Earth’s climbing atmospheric temperatures, the state’s politicians must recognize that they cannot legislate climate change out of existence. All over America, Republican lawmakers have declared open hostility to scientific method, in which hypotheses are tested, experiments analyzed, and false results rejected. Instead, these legislators have chosen to exalt a kind of politicized wishful thinking, in which inconvenient facts are either erased from the record or not allowed in the first place. South Carolina’s recently enacted law requiring the use inaccurate projections of sea-level rise is one of many examples.
When it comes to climate, ideology trumps reality in the minds of conservative politicians. This is the worst sort of magical thinking, endangering the lives and livelihoods of millions of people through deliberate and cynical pandering to the forces of ignorance and denial.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists economics skiing sports sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 10: You Need A Hug
The Berkshire Eagle assesses climatic impact on the economy of Western Massachusetts:
By the end of the century, the Berkshire County economy — much like the global economy — may be forever altered by the effects of climate change. Some local economic changes have already begun in response to impacts expected from climate change in the coming decades.
Land-use planners and policy specialists in the insurance industry are preparing for changes likely to be brought on by warmer temperatures and more severe weather events. Local farmers and business owners are already looking to their future, many doubtful about the climate change concept, but still determined to build revenue streams that will withstand climate changes or compensate for weather-generated losses.
In one example of a specific local economic effect likely to result from climate change, Cameron Wake, associate professor with the Institute of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire and a lead author of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists, had a dire assessment of the local ski industry: “By the end of the century, the only ski areas that remain viable [in the Northeast] will be in the western mountains of Maine.”
It’s one of my favorite parts of the world. April 27:
The Berkshires aren’t alone in experiencing the accelerating impact of climate change, a real-world crisis that even the most vehement denialists cannot ignore much longer. Between dwindling snowpacks, multi-year droughts, unseasonal monsoons, and the arrival of invasive insect pests, this planetary phenomenon manifests itself at local and regional levels in ways that will bring significant economic, social and environmental effects. There may be temporary benefits for a few species here and there, a few communities poised to take advantage of short-term circumstances — but the future offered by our radically transforming climate is almost entirely bleak.
Are there positive aspects to this slo-mo disaster? Only that we humans may, at long last, fully grasp that our individual and collective behaviors have effects far distant in space and time. The lives of our descendants hinge on our recognition that the greenhouse effect renders political and cultural distinctions utterly and finally irrelevant.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists Republican obstructionism sociopaths sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 4: Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries
The San Angelo Standard-Times runs a column by one Bonnie Erbe, purporting to offer good news:
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Finally, there’s some good news on reducing climate change, which is great news as far as I’m concerned.
I’m a climate skeptic. It’s not that I’m skeptical about the existence of climate change, but I’m extremely skeptical about mankind’s collective willingness to do anything about it in a timely manner.
Late last year, the Global Carbon Project issued a report showing global emissions of carbon dioxide rose to record levels in 2011 and were on track to rise even higher in 2012. Carbon dioxide is produced most often by the burning of coal, the largest global source of energy used to generate electricity.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes glaciers and ice sheets to melt and warming oceans to expand. But a new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Scripps Institution for Oceanography, and Climate Central shows that by limiting four other pollutants that might be easier to control, scientists can make significant progress toward stemming rising sea levels.
For a host of reasons, international policy makers have been unable to agree on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide or CO2, the main greenhouse gas created by human activity. The new study shows that by limiting emissions of four substances — methane, soot, refrigerants and gases that lead to the formation of ground-level ozone — progress could still be made, possibly even more quickly.
Ignoring the elephant in the room, as always. April 22:
As the planetary greenhouse effect accelerates, making catastrophic climate change all but inevitable, any good news is welcome. Certainly, regulating and reducing our emissions of four other pollutants can help slow our headlong rush to disaster, although this cannot be a substitute for the real work of eliminating fossil fuels from our energy economy — ultimately the only approach to a meaningful and lasting solution to the climate crisis.
But it’s disingenuous to assert that there is a “host of reasons” for the world community’s failure to make this happen. Ultimately, there is only one reason: money. Big oil and coal corporations reap huge profits from processing and selling the fossilized solar energy of the Carboniferous Era, but they can’t make similar margins from sunlight when it’s fresh. The sums involved are staggeringly huge; buying a few politicians or a few governments is cost-effective for these corporate malefactors, if it can delay a global shift to renewables for even a few more years.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists sustainability wine
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 3: When You Gonna Let Me Get Sober?
The Riverside Press-Enterprise (CA) talks about climate change’s effect on winemakers in the area:
Grape growing in the Temecula Valley Wine Country and other prime wine-producing regions of California would wither by mid-century if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated and farmers don’t make significant adjustments to their crops, say the authors of a new climate change study.
Under a worst-case scenario, the area suitable for wine production in the Temecula region would shrink by more than half by 2050, according to the work by Conservation International and Environmental Defense Fund, which looked at the impacts of climate change on wine production and conservation. The loss would be smaller if international agreements were reached to reduce emissions, researchers said.
“Certainly in the lowlands it looks like there’s plenty of declining suitability,” said study co-author Patrick Roehrdanz, a researcher at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. “We don’t use the word disappear, but you have to do something to compensate for decline in precipitation.”
Under state projections, temperatures around the Temecula wine country would increase about 2 degrees by 2050 under the lowest emission levels. The average temperature in the area was 62.6 degrees in 1975; by 2050, it is expected to be 67.2 degrees, according to the Cal-Adapt website.
And those projections are the conservative ones. April 21:
As California winemakers assess the impact of climate change on their grapes, they can feel comforted that conservative politicians and media figures believe the greenhouse effect is a liberal hoax. These prominent denialists also believe that decades of careful scientific research on the world’s climate are irrelevant, since scientists are only interested in money. By viewing the climate crisis through ideological lenses, they’ve made it impossible to discuss science without a political slant — and the consequences are going to be devastating to agriculture in America and the world.
The undisputed facts of global warming have been part of climate science for decades, but denialists have steadily hindered and delayed action for the basest of motives: short-term greed. Their radical refusal address the consequences of our greenhouse emissions is now bearing fruit, and as Temecula Valley vintners are coming to realize, it’s going to be a bitter vintage indeed.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists economics idiots Republican obstructionism sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 2: Crips And Dips
The York County Journal-Tribune (ME) talks about Earth Day and climate change:
Climate change is the focus of Earth Day 2013, a movement that is now in its 43rd year, and it’s a timely theme for anyone who cares about the environment in which we live.
For years, this phenomenon was labeled as “global warming,” but it’s much more complex than just increased temperatures. It’s true that Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.4°F over the past century, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and it’s projected to rise another 2 to 11.5°F over the next 100 years.
It’s also well-documented by scientific evidence that human beings – particularly our burning of fossil fuels – are the main contributor to this, since greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Global warming, however, is only part of bigger picture of climate change. The extra heat, in turn, causes long-term changes in rainfall that lead to floods, droughts or intense rain; as well as more frequent and severe heat waves, according to the EPA. As well, the EPA notes that oceans are warming and ice caps melting, raising sea levels and changing the nature of the ocean in which so many creatures live.
It’s easy to laugh off “global warming” when you’re shivering in subzero temperatures during a Maine winter, but we have to keep in mind that it’s the big picture over many years, not the day-to-day temperatures, that reveal the warming trend. And this phenomenon is no laughing matter, as it will affect all of our lives through its impact on our health, agriculture, air and water quality, electrical power and transportation.
Political action is necessary to combat climate change, since the biggest problems cannot be addressed by individuals alone. It’s great for each of us to do our own part – by recycling, cleaning up litter on our beaches and parks, conserving energy, planting a tree, and limiting our contribution to pollution – but while those efforts certainly add up to make a difference, they’re small potatoes in the face of major contributors such as the coal burning power industries.
It’s no small task to convince political leaders around the world that we must take significant action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The energy industries are powerful and have significant amounts of money to lobby for their cause rather than for the cause of the environment, which is why the world is so delayed in responding to this threat. As well, some politicians can’t even be convinced that climate change is happening, or believe it’s just the natural course of the environment, despite the solid evidence that it’s a man-made and dangerous phenomenon.
Just reinforcing their sentiments here; these are just ii-V-I licks I’ve strung together. April 20:
Meaningful responses to the threat of climate change have to happen in multiple ways, and on multiple levels. All of us have to be activists and educators — mobilizing our fellow citizens to put pressure on the political establishment, while making it clear to everyone that the science of global heating is absolutely unambiguous. On the individual level, we’ve got to change our lightbulbs and scrutinize our buying habits to eliminate waste — and on the national level, we’ve got to fight against the largest and most powerful corporate lobby in existence.
Major energy corporations are the biggest source of funding for many American politicians, a state of affairs that has hindered the formation of a robust national policy on climate change. Transforming the entrenched thinking of our leadership and the economic models that they exemplify is far more challenging than installing an energy-efficient water heater or composting our lawn clippings.
The coming century could be the saddest story ever told, the farewell of a species doomed by destructive ignorance and hubris. Or it could be the greatest story ever told — a tale of knowledge, conscience, cooperation and progress. The choice is ours.
Warren Senders
atheism environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 27: My Ding-A-Ling
The National Post (Canada) tells us about important news on the diplomatic front:
WASHINGTON – The world’s two biggest polluters have signed what could be a groundbreaking agreement and “call to action” on the fight against escalating climate change.
The United States and China announced Sunday they would accelerate action to reduce greenhouse gases by advancing cooperation on technology, research, conservation, and alternative and renewable energy.
But while the listed actions sound relatively mundane, the words that accompanied the announcement were not. In a joint and quite powerful statement on the dangers of climate change, the two sides said they “consider that the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding climate change constitutes a compelling call to action crucial to having a global impact on climate change.”
The statement recognizes an “urgent need to intensify global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions… is more critical than ever.” It goes on to say, “Such action is crucial both to contain climate change and to set the kind of powerful example that can inspire the world.”
Just one problem…Sent April 15:
A US-China agreement on tackling global warming may indeed help Canada recognize that its positions on climate are inconsistent with the rest of the developed world. However, there’s another industrialized country with an appallingly backwards stance on this issue. “Conservastan” is a religion-dominated nation-state whose borders match those of the United States, and whose lawmakers have for decades adopted willful obduracy and inflexible scientific ignorance as policy.
Conservastani politicians have inordinate influence on US affairs, often exploiting their dual-citizenship status to block or hinder important treaties and legislation, often for bizarrely ignorant reasons. Texan Congressman Joe Barton recently cited Noah’s flood as an example of climate change unconnected to CO2 emissions, and asserted that this Bronze Age myth provided a “scientific” justification for ignoring the conclusions of the world’s climatologists.
While this intellectually backwards theocracy maintains its geopolitical influence, agreements between China and the USA may never be ratified.
Warren Senders