environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 3: Little Willie Leaps
USA Today reprints a story from a Delaware paper about a visit from denialist demigod Willie Soon:
GEORGETOWN, Del. — One of the nation’s more controversial climate-change skeptics dismissed warnings about sea-level rise and global warming as “scare tactics” and “sick” science in a talk here.
Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Professor David Legates of the University of Delaware, a former climatologist for the state, bluntly rejected leading climate change claims during the Monday event organized by two nonprofit groups that promote personal and economic freedoms, the Positive Growth Alliance of Millsboro, Del. and the Caesar Rodney Institute of Dover, Del.
“They’re a very sick group,” Soon said. “They’re not talking about science at all. It is all agenda-driven, science results.”
Sick. Right ho. March 22:
Upton Sinclair pointed out that “it’s very difficult to make a man understand something when his paycheck depends on his not understanding it.” Climate-change “skeptic” Willie Soon carries Sinclair’s maxim one step further: Soon’s paycheck depends on the American public not understanding three important things. First, the facts of global warming; second, the truth about his employers’ ties to the fossil-fuel industries whose greenhouse emissions have been incontrovertibly linked to the accelerating climate crisis; third, that he was never formally trained in climatology.
Willie Soon’s lengthy affiliation with the Heartland Foundation is one of the warning signals. Decades ago, Heartland collaborated with big tobacco against the public interest — and they’re employing the same diversionary tactics now, in order to delay action on climate change for as long as possible. In the light of these troubling associations, it’s clear that Soon’s pronouncements on “sick science” are simply callous defensive rhetoric.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists heroes
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 2: A Good Guy
Pennsylvania Rep. Greg Vitali has some good ideas, which he outlines in the Delco Times:
House Bill 100 would amend the Pennsylvania Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard Act to require Pennsylvania electric distribution companies like PECO and PP&L to obtain 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2023. The requirement is currently 8 percent by 2021.
Increasing its Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard (AEPS) is the most effective way for Pennsylvania to expand its production of renewable energy. Many other states have already increased their renewable energy standards. New Jersey will require 17.88 percent of its energy to come from renewable sources by 2021.
H.B. 100 would accomplish the equivalent of taking more than 4 million cars off the road, according to the Penn-Future energy center.
The cost of Pennsylvania’s AEPS is relatively small. The PennFuture energy center estimated that the cost of implementing the AEPS in 2011 was only 6.6 cents per month for residential consumers. In contrast, the damage from Superstorm Sandy was estimated to be as high as $60 billion.
A second renewable energy bill (H.B. 200) would provide $25 million per year to the Pennsylvania Sunshine Solar program. This popular program has provided rebates to homeowners and small businesses that install solar systems. The program was initially funded by a $100 million bond issue in 2008 but it has run out of money. The new funding would come from the recently enacted Marcellus shale impact fee.
Orchids where they’re deserved. March 21:
Common-sense legislation like Rep. Greg Vitali’s alternative energy bills should be enacted throughout the United States. Unfortunately, far too many American politicians have been co-opted by the fossil fuel industry, which has invested heavily in lobbying and misinformation efforts aimed at discrediting both climate science and the viability of renewable energy sources. Since corporations don’t own the wind or sun and cannot expect to profit from renewable energy programs, their opposition is understandable — but unforgivable.
Climate change is not just a hypothesis, but a gravely dangerous reality, and while it’s decades too late for us to avert the catastrophic consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect, we can and must act rapidly to stop exacerbating the situation further by adding yet more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Lawmakers who are beholden to Big Oil and Big Coal are on the wrong side of history — and the wrong side of science.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 1: A Fool
The Otago Daily Times (NZ) notes the arrival of noted upper-class twit Lord Monckton…only they refer to him as a “skeptic,” which is a leftover bit of stupid that’s grown enough mold to solve mazes on its own.
A leading global warming skeptic, Lord Christopher Monckton, will speak in Dunedin next month. His visit is part of a national ”Climate Freedom Tour” and will include a lunch and an evening function on April 23.
Lord Monckton is a British politician, public speaker, hereditary peer and former newspaper editor.
Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, he worked for Margaret Thatcher’s Number 10 Policy Unit during the 1980s.
In recent years, he has received publicity for holding sceptical views about man-made climate change and has authored more than 100 papers on the climate issue. Dunedin organiser Jock Allison, of the New Zealand Science Coalition, said Lord Monckton was an entertaining speaker with different views from the mainstream on climate change.
Entertaining. March 20:
Lord Christopher Monckton is many things, as evidenced by his description in your recent article as “British politician, public speaker, hereditary peer and former newspaper editor” — but one thing he is not is a climate scientist. None of those four identifying phrases give his opinions on the phenomena of global climate change any credibility whatsoever. While his abilities as an “entertaining speaker” offer a feeble rationale for inviting him to speak under the auspices of the New Zealand Science Coalition, from the perspective of anyone who is sensitive to questions of scientific truth, his presence is an affront to genuine scientists and genuine science.
Would a proponent of the medieval theory of “humours” be asked to speak to a medical association, and described as an “infection skeptic”? Would a flat-Earther get an invitation to address a geological society and be billed as a “spherical skeptic”? Mr. Monckton’s assertions about global climate change have been repeatedly debunked; put simply, he’s an unscientific fraud, and describing him as a “skeptic” is doing a disservice to skeptics everywhere.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists heroes idiots Republican obstructionism timescales
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 31: The Kids Are Alright
The Seattle Times notes WA Governor Inslee’s commitment to issues that genuinely transcend politics:
OLYMPIA — There was a telling moment just before Gov. Jay Inslee raised his right hand and took the oath of office.
He was introduced as a politician who sees climate change as “an existential threat that transcends politics.”
“More than any other president or governor before him, Jay has an electoral mandate on this issue,” Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, told a packed audience in the rotunda two months ago.
If lawmakers did not grasp the significance of those remarks then, they do now.
Inslee talks about climate change all the time. He discussed it in his inaugural address, during most of his news conferences, when introducing a bill on the issue in the state House and Senate, even in announcing his choice for transportation secretary.
{snip}
Still, not everyone was expecting so much, so soon.
“I think there are greater, more pressing priorities at the moment,” said Senate Deputy Republican Leader Don Benton, R-Vancouver. “I think we need to look long term, and do little things that add up over time that will benefit and help the climate-change situation and the environment. But they are long-term strategies.”
Well, add Don Benton to our list of dingalings, I guess. March 19:
Of course State Senator Don Benton thinks there are more important things “at the moment” than climate change. Of course he’s ready to advocate “little things that add up over time” that may help us address what he charmingly calls the “climate-change situation.”
There will always be more pressing short-term issues than climate change, because even a steadily accelerating greenhouse effect is going to offer consequences on a time-scale larger than that of electoral politics. While there is no magic bullet that will fix the burgeoning climate crisis any more than there is a pill to cure lung cancer, this fact simply reinforces Governor Inslee’s sense of genuine responsibility.
That the climate “situation” is vastly larger than the problems usually preoccupying our politicians is no reason to dismiss it. There may be more important things at the moment — but climate change is not an issue of the moment, but of the millennium.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists Michael Mann
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 28: What Kind Of Girls Do You Think We Are?
The Washington Post reports on Sheldon Whitehouse’s blast at Ken Cuccinelli, who deserves to be blasted like this 24/7:
RICHMOND — U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse frequently takes to the Senate floor to warn against climate change, having done so, by his count, at least two dozen times in the past year. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before the Rhode Island Democrat got around to calling out Virginia’s most prominent global-warming skeptic by name.
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, got a backhanded shout-out in a Whitehouse floor speech last week for his unsuccessful legal battle against a University of Virginia climate scientist.
“In 2010, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli used his powers of office to harass former University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann and 39 other climate scientists and staff,” Whitehouse said in a speech Thursday, which was posted on YouTube. “As a U-Va. grad, I am proud that the university fought back against this political attack on science and on academic freedom.”
Good for him. This letter doesn’t mention Whitehouse, but it was fun to write. March 16:
When compared against the professional ethics and respect for truth demonstrated by climate scientists, Ken Cuccinelli’s vulgar denialist crusade against Dr. Michael Mann comes in a sorry second. It’s clearly projection: Mr. Cuccinelli assumes climate science is ideologically-driven because he cannot imagine any motivations beyond the sordid political expediency motivating his absurd and wasteful witch hunt.
Scientific methodology starts with observation, seeks explanations, and constantly tests and re-tests its theories’ predictive capability — an intellectual discipline which has helped humanity comprehend the universe in which we live, making our complex and interdependent civilization possible. Scientific statements require language that never overstates its conclusions and carefully quantifies uncertainty — whereas the Virginia attorney general’s hyperbolic pronouncements are often wrong, but never in doubt. Climatologists’ investigations are guided by facts and a respect for the physical laws governing atmospheric phenomena — while neither facts nor law command much respect from Mr. Cuccinelli.
Warren Senders
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environment Politics: agriculture denialists famine
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 26: No Laughing Matter
Newsday runs an AP story on the causes of the famine in Somalia. Guess what factor is accorded a central role?
(AP) — Human-induced climate change contributed to low rain levels in East Africa in 2011, making global warming one of the causes of Somalia’s famine and the tens of thousands of deaths that followed, a new study has found.
It is the first time climate change was proven to be partially to blame for such a large humanitarian disaster, an aid group said Friday.
You should force yourself! March 15:
The role played by climate change in the Somali famine deserves far more attention in our media and politics. There are far too many people who’ve chosen to ignore the humanitarian costs of a transformed climate — some who think that climate science is a wacky conspiracy, some who believe that the impact of increased atmospheric CO2 won’t be felt in their comfortable air-conditioned chambers, some who dismiss any notion of planning for global heating’s effects as “too expensive.”
While the acts of the Al-Shabab militants groups who hindered food distribution were deplorable, those extremists didn’t cause the 2011 droughts that brought on the famine in the first place. That responsibility rests with us — the developed world — and our century-long fossil-fuel binge. Somalia’s misery is a harbinger of what the rest of the world can expect as the greenhouse effect gets worse, and we ignore it at our peril.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes conservative denialists idiots military Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 23: NewThink Tanks
The Jewish Daily Forward notes the recent report on the national security implications of climate change, presented by a whole bunch of military top brass:
If you missed this one, don’t beat yourself up. Hardly anybody noticed it. It was just another one of those calls for action to combat climate change, an “open letter” to the president and Congress from about three dozen public figures. We’ve seen hundreds of these things by now. After a while, they all look the same.
If there was anything different about this one to merit a second look, it might be the fact that it didn’t mention healing the planet or saving God’s creatures. Instead, it described climate change in starkly pragmatic terms as a “serious threat to American national security interests.” And it spelled out why.
Also noteworthy is the fact that the 38 signers were a collection of some of the country’s most distinguished authorities on national security, including nine retired generals and admirals, a former CIA director, both heads of the 9/11 Commission, 15 former senators and House members (10 Republicans, five Democrats) plus former secretaries of state, defense and other cabinet members from the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and both Bush administrations, father and son.
Given that kind of heft, you might think it would have gotten some respectful press coverage. But no. One article at Politico.com and a handful at obscure specialty websites. That’s it.
The silence is particularly odd when you consider the fact that the letter comes amid a virtual barrage of new warnings from intelligence, defense and other public agencies about the security dangers posed by climate change. In the past four months, at least four lengthy scientific reports have been published that detail various aspects of the threat — one in November, one in December and two in February. Three were produced or funded by arms of the U.S. intelligence community. The fourth came from an unusual consortium of conservative and liberal think tanks.
They won’t admit they were wrong. Ever. March 11:
That ostensibly security-obsessed conservatives in America are unwilling to take the expert opinion of our country’s top military personnel on climate change is highly revealing. They are not a responsible element of a representative government, but an ideologically-driven cadre which is absolutely unwilling to change any of its positions, even those which are repeatedly proved erroneous. The same people who’ve turned xenophobia into a political platform with their unhealthy fixation on illegal immigrants are ready to dismiss the inevitability of millions of drought-driven climate refugees in the coming decades — because such an acknowledgement would conflict with their anti-science, fact-phobic public personae.
Conservative politicians and their tea-party constituents often froth at the mouth over non-existent threats: Gay marriage! Birth control! Sharia law in the US! Confiscating our assault rifles! However, let a genuine crisis loom, and we can count on them to reject meaningful action while hamstringing those who accept and understand the facts — even if it means ignoring the advice of the military they vociferously claim to support.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 21: Sigh…
Another day, another dullard. Meet Pennsylvania meteorologist Tom Russell:
Let’s say you’re an alien and your spaceship landed here on Earth in the 1500’s. Then you landed here again in 2013. Now think globally.
Would you say the climate on Planet Earth is generally the same? Same Oceans? Same land masses? You’d probably say it’s the same climate too, right?
Or maybe you’d look more closely and say the climate has changed. What? Climate change?
The point is, perspective matters.
Ken Caldeira of Stanford University says, “Climate is the statistics of weather over the long term.” Turns out the climate is always changing, no matter the time scale, hourly, monthly, yearly, per decade, etc. Even your every 500 year alien visit.
A recent Midwest snow storm was described in the media as “crippling.” Really? An 8-inch snowfall in the Midwest in February is so unusual it’s crippling? Makes you wonder if the weather really is worse than ever or just our reaction to it. Maybe we should dial it back a bit.
And our recent non-snowstorm should be a reminder of our forecast modeling limitations. Imagine carrying out that margin of error over 50 or 100 years.
His mother was a hamster and his father smelled of elderberries. March 10:
Tom Russell falls into an ancient logical fallacy: the argument from personal incredulity. But an inability to understand climate change is not a valid argument against its existence. He’s certainly correct that the extreme weather Americans are now experiencing is not unprecedented, and that the climate has always been changing. But his argument nevertheless fails.
First, no climatologist has ever said that our current weather is entirely new. Rather, they tell us that the frequency, intensity, and unpredictability of extreme weather is increasing — and that this increase is directly correlated with rising atmospheric temperatures. Second, no scientist has ever said our climate has always remained the same. Rather, they tell us that the past eleven millennia have a climate stable enough for agriculture to develop, and in its wake, a complex civilization — and that these “stable enough” conditions are currently ending.
The thing is, human intuition is poorly equipped to make sense of planet-wide data and geological timescales; Mr. Russell and his colleagues in the world of meteorology work exclusively with local and regional data on timescales a fortnight or less. Humans’ intuitions do poorly on larger scales of time and space, which is why science is important. Climatologists work with statistical analysis, historical data, and a continually improving model of the Earth’s climate — and they’ve have been making steadily more accurate predictions for decades.
Mr. Russell may not like the facts of climate change, but he’s going to have to live with them.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture assholes denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 20: You Know You Know
The Bismarck ND Tribune runs an article on a plan to study climate change impacts in the state…and introduces us to this guy:
The Senate Natural Resources Committee is mulling a resolution that would direct the committee of North Dakota legislative leaders, called Legislative Management, to study the effects of climate change. But Jeff Magrum of Hazelton told lawmakers enough studies have been done and a lot of money already has been spent worldwide looking into the issue.
Magrum, who also is an Emmons County commissioner, said if the state wants to spend money, it should buy more plows to help clear North Dakota’s snow-filled roads. The snowplows could be fitted with enhanced devices to capture carbon dioxide emissions that are blamed for global warming, “if climate change is a concern,” he said.
{snip}
Magrum, who owns an excavating business in south central North Dakota, said he has to work outside during the state’s notoriously brutal winters. He said global warming isn’t a bad thing for him.
“A little bit warmer weather wouldn’t matter to me,” Magrum said. “I’m in the construction business.”
There just aren’t enough faces and palms to go around. March 8:
In voicing opposition to studying the impact of climate change, Jeff Magrum asserts that “a little bit warmer weather wouldn’t matter,” since he works in the construction business. Well, perhaps. On the other hand, the droughts now hitting American farm states are going to raise Mr. Magrum’s grocery bills pretty significantly over the next couple of years. And when that “little bit warmer” turns into a summer like the one that recently hammered Australia (it got so hot that their national weather service had to invent new color correlations for their temperature map) — well, it’s a fair bet that he might not want to work outside at all.
But more to the point, human beings have accomplished wonders because we’ve been willing to sacrifice temporary benefits in favor of collective achievement and long-term happiness for our posterity. This is called civilization; and if we are to preserve what our species has accomplished in the past ten thousand years, we can no longer afford to dismiss the burgeoning climate crisis with the short-sighted platitudes of selfishness.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism rising sea levels
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 19: Ask Not For Whom The Poll Tells, It Polls For Thee
The Island Packet (SC) calls out the state government for trying to bury a report on climate change:
Shelving a report on climate change and its potential impact on South Carolina’s natural resources makes no scientific or political sense for an agency whose purpose is to watch over those resources.
In explaining why the report by a team of scientists wasn’t released for more than a year after it was completed, John Evans, the chairman of the state Department of Natural Resources board, said the report was “for information only” and didn’t require action.
But that’s exactly what the report’s findings do require. The agency charged with overseeing our natural resources should have no higher priority than working to manage and protect those resources in the coming decades.
The report, completed in November 2011 and presented to the board in July 2012, was labeled as a draft, but a foreword from the agency’s former director, John Frampton, stated it was ready for public review. That didn’t happen until The (Columbia) State newspaper got a copy and reported on its contents late last month.
Buncha bed-wetters. March 9:
There is only one reason to shelve a report on climate change’s effect on South Carolina: fear. Now, there are many different sorts of fear. There is that which all of us experience when facing the unknown and potentially very dangerous future awaiting us on a post-greenhouse-effect planet. Who looks forward eagerly to food shortages, resource wars, increasingly severe storms, heat waves, droughts and crumbling infrastructure? It is surely tempting to take a discomfiting document and hide it away where it won’t bother you, and perhaps the state’s Department of Natural Resources was attempting this understandable but obviously doomed-to-fail approach.
But there is another and far less excusable form of timidity. Republican politicians are petrified of offending their tea-party base, for these low-information, high-outrage voters are more sensitive to apostasy than any other constituency in America. To approve a reality-rooted report on climate change’s potential for harm in South Carolina would be politically fatal for these lawmakers, for there is hardly any heresy that more excites conservative indignation than the fact-based, scientifically-grounded analysis of our rapidly worsening climate.
Whether conservative politicians and tea-partiers like it or not, climate change is happening. Cowardice in the face of facts is always, ultimately, a losing strategy.
Warren Senders