environment Politics: agriculture denialists droughts Rex Tillerson scientific consensus sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 25: Also Younger Than The Sun
The Belleville News-Democrat (IL) runs an opinion piece on the need for a transformation in our way of thinking about the environment:
For decades environmentalists have been guided in their work by what became known as the “precautionary principle.” This decision-making guide was first put forward in environmental terms by pioneering naturalist and biologist Aldo Leopold in his landmark 1940s essay “Round River.”
His focus was the complexity of the environment.
“If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering,” Leopold wrote.
This is the major logic behind the Endangered Species Act, the strongest environmental law ever written. For the United States to allow a species to go extinct, it must go through an exhaustive process that is politically perilous.
This imperative has strong support. John Turner, the director of the U.S. Wildlife Service under George H.W. Bush, was a Republican president of the Wyoming Senate and a rancher. He regularly told a story of how his grandfather had kept all of the broken farm equipment he ever owned.
“My granddad and my dad used to say ‘It’s important to save all the parts,’ ” Turner said. “You never know when you’re going to need them.”
Protecting all the parts was a daunting task before. In the face of climate change that could dramatically transform or destroy ecosystems across the globe, it has become impossible.
This is a fairly generic letter; it could go to any source that admits the existence of the problem. Sent October 18:
Earlier this year, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson finally admitted that climate change was both real and caused by human activity. But the oil baron also blithely asserted that humanity would adapt; the problem, he said, was essentially one of “engineering.”
Well, maybe so. Our innovative, forward-looking, technological species will undoubtedly find ways of fixing some of what we’ve broken and restoring some of the things we’ve destroyed. But as environmentalist Bill McKibben asked recently, “What are you going to develop that replaces Iowa?” Global warming is going to drastically reduce agricultural yields, which is hard to reconcile with our expanding global population. Unless we address the causes of the climate crisis, adopting better farming practices essentially amounts to putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.
And if climate change can actually be “solved by engineering,” isn’t it time for our fossil-fueled politicians to stop denying the existence of the crisis — and instead aggressively fund the engineers and scientists we’ll be needing more than ever over the coming decades?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture assholes denialists droughts idiots sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 24: Hellzapoppin…
More on the agricultural disaster currently underway: the same article as yesterday, this time reprinted in the Mitchell Daily Republic (KS):
“I don’t have a place to store pinto beans, OK?” said Rowe, who has managed his community’s grain elevator for 25 years. “This is corn and soybean ground. The reason someone else is more diverse is because there’s more money in being diverse. It’s all economics.”
Still, the hotter, dryer weather pattern may change crop rotations even in the heart of the Corn Belt. “Wheat acres will be very high” next year, said Tabitha Craig, who sells crop insurance for Young Enterprises, an agricultural services and input dealer in New Hartford, Mo.
Climate change will probably push corn-growing regions north while making alternatives to the grain more important elsewhere, said John Soper, the vice president of crop genetics research and development for Pioneer, the seed division of DuPont. The company’s researchers anticipate more corn in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, traditional Canadian wheat-growing areas, while sorghum and sunflowers may experience a revival in Kansas as rainfall declines and irrigation becomes less practical, he said.
The company is developing new varieties of corn, both in traditional hybrid and genetically modified seeds, while boosting research in sorghum and other crops that don’t need irrigation in areas where they’re expected to make a comeback, he said.
Still, fighting drought with better seeds and new trade sources only mitigates the effects of climate change, said Roger Beachy, the first head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture and now a plant biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
Revising yesterday’s letter…very busy today. Sent October 17:
Those parched cornfields are a preview of coming attractions. Scientists predict a 10 percent drop in crop yields for each degree of temperature increase; given that we’re on track for a six-degree rise by the end of the century, we’re looking at agricultural output that could well be cut in half. And that’s not just in America, but everywhere. History and common sense tell us that crop failures trigger food shortages, which can turn whole populations into refugees fleeing a land that can no longer support them.
Unfortunately one of our country’s two major political parties has rejected science, history, and common sense as guidelines for policy, which means that any government attempts to prepare for these environmental, humanitarian, and geopolitical crises will inevitably be hamstrung by irrational posturing and gamesmanship. When the coming century promises to uprooting millions of human lives, such a deny-and-delay strategy is intellectually and morally abhorrent.
Warren Senders
atheism environment: atheism denialists religion
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 21: The Air, The Air Is Everywhere
The Jakarta Post opines that the faithful are motivated to do something about climate change as a consequence of their beliefs. Okay, if you say so…
The Green Bible is a 2008 edition of the Christian holy book, published by HarperCollins. There are more than 1,000 references to the Earth in the Bible, and this 2008 copy is printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink.
Likewise, Islam’s Koran also contains numerous surahs (chapters) that both enlighten and command Muslims to use and not abuse the natural bounty the Earth provides. “Do not commit abuse on the Earth, spreading corruption.” (Al-Ankabut 29:36) is just one example.
Meanwhile in Bali, adherents to Hinduism, the island’s majority faith, believe in the trihita karana. This is the belief that happiness derives from the relationship between people and God, the relationship between people and people, and the relationship between people and nature.
Religious writer and scholar Fachruddin M. Mangunjaya raised a profound question in a recent paper on climate change and religion: Who were the first environmental campaigners? Answer: Followers of the world’s religions.
Fachruddin, a lecturer in biology at the National University in Jakarta, told a September 2012 climate change writing clinic for youths in Jakarta that religion had been a major mover, which had established numerous world civilizations.
Now with environmental crises and the impact of climate change casting threats on human civilization, people are returning to religious teachings and reassessing their meaning of and obligations in life.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Oh, wait… Sent October 14:
When it comes to taking meaningful action on climate change, many followers of the great religious traditions find inspiration and motivation in their beliefs. But it is a grave error to assume that all religiously-driven individuals will be receptive to the scientific facts of the climate crisis. In the United States, many devout Christians decided long ago that science could only be regarded as an enemy of their faith — and this antipathy towards scientific method and results carries over into their attitude towards environmental problems, which are strongly identified with the scientists who research and describe them.
A significant minority of Christians also adhere to doctrines which preach the imminence of a “day of judgement” in which the Earth as we know it will be destroyed and afterlife preference given to “true believers.” It is self-evident that such a belief is antithetical to any notion of sustainability as a desirable goal.
If we are to reconcile the directives of faith and the long-term requirements of our planetary environment, religious leaders must work with scientists in the interests of our civilization, our species, and the web of life of which we humans are a part.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists economics extreme weather insurance sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 18: No Joke
More on the Munich Re report, this time from USA Today:
5:07PM EST October 10. 2012 – The number of natural disasters per year has been rising dramatically on all continents since 1980, but the trend is steepest for North America where countries have been battered by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, searing heat and drought, a new report says.
The study being released today by Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance firm, sees climate change driving the increase and predicts those influences will continue in years ahead, though a number of experts question that conclusion.
Whatever the causes, the report shows that if you thought the weather has been getting worse, you’re right.
The report finds that weather disasters in North America are among the worst and most volatile in the world: “North America is the continent with the largest increases in disasters,” says Munich Re’s Peter Hoppe.
This letter seemed to fall into two parts. I don’t know if it’s effective, but I write the letters I write, not the letters I wish I’d write. Sent October 11:
The Munich Re report linking climate change with three decades of steadily increasing natural disasters everywhere on Earth provides yet more support for those who maintain that the rapidly metastasizing greenhouse effect is a clear and present danger to our civilization. Despite the absurd mischaracterizations of conservative opinionators, this group (aka the “reality-based community”) isn’t just comprised of liberal environmentalists, climatologists, and hippies, but also includes the American armed forces, the intelligence community, and the insurance industry.
While it’d be nice to discover that the free market system is the most effective way to deal with the consequences of a century of fossil-fuel consumption, the evidence so far suggests otherwise. Today’s loudest advocates of deregulation and laissez-faire economics are also the ones most conspicuously ignoring or denying scientific reality. The accelerating climate crisis demands action on a scale that the private sector cannot possibly encompass — a planetary Manhattan project.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists insurance public health
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 17: Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair
The Burlington Free Press (VT) notes that another big insurance organization has gone all DFH on us:
The number of natural disasters per year has been rising dramatically on all continents since 1980, but the trend is steepest for North America where countries have been battered by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, searing heat and drought, a new report says.
The study being released today by Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance firm, sees climate change driving the increase and predicts those influences will continue in years ahead, though a number of experts question that conclusion.
Whatever the causes, the report shows that if you thought the weather has been getting worse, you’re right.
The report finds that weather disasters in North America are among the worst and most volatile in the world: “North America is the continent with the largest increases in disasters,” says Munich Re’s Peter Roder.
The report focuses on weather disasters since 1980 in the USA, Canada, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Roder says this report represents the first finding of a climate change “footprint” in the data from natural catastrophes.
Take a bath, you lazy flower children. Sent October 10:
How often are we reminded that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?” The newly released Munich Re report on the likely impact of climate change should bring that old maxim back to the forefront of our thinking. Insurers are quite rightly anxious about having to shell out big bucks to pay for our national failure to anticipate the disastrous consequences of global warming in our own country and around the world.
Conservative politicians may extol the virtues of the free market, but this is merely rhetoric; their deny-and-delay policies will do incalculable damage to our economy when the bill finally comes due. And what a bill: coping with devastated agriculture, crippled infrastructure, decimated biodiversity, geopolitical instability, and catastrophic public-health impacts is going to cost trillions of dollars. It’s both economically and environmentally sensible to address the climate crisis before it’s too late.
Prevention, not cure.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists drought idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 16: Our Love Is Here To Stay?
The McCook Daily Gazette (NE) reports on a panel discussion featuring a bunch of frantic hippies:
LINCOLN, Nebraska — Things are about to start heating up.
So say a panel of five environmental scholars and professionals, who presented “Climate Change and Nebraska: What Does Our Future Hold?” Saturday at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to warn of the dangers of a potential four-to-10 degree temperature increase in the state.
The speakers examined the scientific evidence for climate change, the impact this could have on the future and the steps that can be taken to assuage it. Robert Oglesby, a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UNL, said after considering all the factors, the one that is the cause for most alarm in Nebraska is the reduction of snowpack in the Rocky Mountains.
“We need that steady release of water due to the slow, steady melt of the snow in the spring through early summer to maintain river flow of the Platte,” Oglesby said.
Song Feng, of the School of Natural Resources at UNL, offered a study into the effect droughts have had in the United States and the likelihood of their continuation in the future.
“The drought will become the normal condition by the end of the century,” Feng said.
It’s going to get harder and harder to be a denialist in the years ahead. Won’t stop ’em, though. Sent October 9:
While it makes a good opening for an article on the findings of climate scientists, “things are about to start heating up” is a pretty misleading sentence. The mercury’s been rising for quite a while now, as witness this single statistic: July 2012 was the 329th consecutive month to exceed the global average temperature for the twentieth century. While this increase is bad news for us all, we can still make it worse — by rejecting the reality of global warming, and by blocking action until catastrophic consequences are unavoidable.
It’s impossible to imagine a more cynical and destructive approach to governance than the deny-and-delay strategy that is the modus operandi of conservative politicians when it comes to addressing the climate crisis. Self-styled “deficit hawks” who claim that reducing our greenhouse emissions would be prohibitively expensive are essentially telling us that prevention costs more than cure — a notion both logically absurd and morally bankrupt.
We cannot afford further inaction on climate change.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots media irresponsibility Republicans scientific literacy scientific method
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 15: All Right — From Now On, No More Doctor Nice Guy
The Lincoln Journal-Star tells us about some Nebraska climatologists who are speaking out with one well-projected voice:
A warning sign on the first floor directs people to the basement of Bessey Hall in the event of a tornado.
An open door offers a view of an instructor pointing to a video display of the world’s prime monsoon regions.
Upstairs, on the third floor of his City Campus office, Clinton Rowe is dealing with a less familiar task.
He’s explaining why he and four colleagues decided it was time to go proactive, why they needed to issue a joint public statement on the evidence of increasing climate extremes and the potential for more tornadoes, droughts and floods.
The attention they’re getting for raising the alarm about global warming may have less to do with the side they’re on than with their methods.
In his 26 years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Rowe can’t remember a time when his department has chosen a similar course toward group activism.
“Have we ever done anything like this? Not that I can think of.”
It’s been two weeks since he and four other NU faculty members from climate and climate-related ranks offered their shared view.
“The time for debate is over,” they said. “The time for action is here.”
In the next few decades, they warned, average temperatures in Nebraska will rise by 4 to 10 degrees. Because of diminished snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, flows in the Platte River will drop and Lake McConaughy could become “a ditch in midsummer.”
Enviro-nazis! Sent October 8:
The traditional language of science is restrained and cautious, which is a hindrance for climatologists when it comes to spreading the word about global warming and the dangers it poses to America and the world. When climate experts shout, it’s with careful statements using phrases like “statistically significant relationship” and “robust correlation,” which, while accurate, lack the emotional force necessary to galvanize ordinary citizens into action.
Meanwhile, those who oppose responsible climate and energy policies feel free to misrepresent the science and engage in character assassination, as witness the blizzard of obloquy hurled at Dr. Michael Mann and others who have stood up for the future of our species and our civilization. In the aftermath of their forceful statement on the climate crisis, let’s hope Dr. Clinton Rowe and his colleagues at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln receive respect and gratitude from their fellow citizens, rather than the ignorance and mockery we’ve come to expect from the anti-science politicians of the GOP and their enablers in the print and broadcast media.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes cap and trade denialists idiots Republicans
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 14: I Thought Love Was Only True In Fairy Tales
The Helena Independent-Record (MT) notes incumbent Senator Jon Tester’s support for a tepid cap-and-trade approach, and contrasts it with that of his challenger, a typical Republican denialist twit named Denny Rehberg:
Last week we received a giant colorful postcard from Montana’s Republican Party — no mention of what Congressman Denny Rehberg has done — (What has he done?), but of Sen. Jon Tester supporting cap and trade. Rehberg’s not supporting sensible climate solutions terrifies me.
What is cap and trade? Sightline Institute says: “cap” is a legal limit on the quantity of greenhouse gases that a region can emit each year and “trade” means that companies may swap among themselves the … permits to emit greenhouse gases … Cap and trade commits us to responsible limits on global warming emissions and gradually steps down those limits … Setting commonsense rules, cap and trade sparks the competitiveness and ingenuity of the marketplace to reduce emissions as smoothly, efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
Peter Pan governance — just clap your hands! Sent October 7:
While a “cap and trade” system for reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a relatively weak approach to the threat of global climate change, Senator Tester’s support for this policy has the advantage of being based on scientific reality rather than the ideologically-driven wishful thinking so prevalent among modern-day Republican politicians and pundits. Their approach to the problems of contemporary society is to assert that when a fact clashes with one’s wishes or preconceptions, the problem lies with the fact, not the preconceptions — an inexcusably irresponsible attitude. While a Southern GOP congressman who believes that modern physics is of Satanic origin is pretty hilarious, science-denial isn’t very funny when it comes to climate change.
The metastasizing greenhouse effect threatens American agriculture, infrastructure, and public health systems, as well as the health of our planet. Rejecting scientific evidence because it’s ideologically inconvenient (or because it threatens the profits of your biggest campaign donors) should immediately disqualify any candidate for public office.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists economics greenhouse effect Renewable Energy
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 11: Change Is Gonna Come
The Des Moines Register offers an op-ed titled: “Climate Change Is About Jobs And The Economy.” Indeed:
Climate chaos is not a future threat. It’s real, it’s here today, and it’s causing misery in Iowa. Left unchecked, it will get worse.
Iowa is ground central for climate change. Almost 60 percent of the state is in extreme drought, with 80 percent of its soils moisture deficient. Nearly three quarters of the corn crop is threatened, driving the price from $5.50 a bushel last year to over $8.
If food prices climb as predicted, a family of four will spend $600 more next year to buy food.
Hot enough for you? From rivers of dead fish to dry wells, Iowans are experiencing firsthand why America’s decade of ignoring climate science has been a horrible mistake. Both the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warn that unless we implement energy saving practices immediately we will, perhaps as early as 2017, lock in 6 degrees Celsius warming.
The impacts Iowa is experiencing now have come from a 1.5 degree warming. Unless Iowa acts to capture the green economy, it faces a grim prospect, both from the weather and from an economy strangled by its fossil fuel past.
Those old chestnuts are rattling around in my brain these days. Sent October 4:
When it comes to climate change, the old saying is really true: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Once the greenhouse effect has accelerated, we won’t have very many options left — and the choices will range from devastatingly expensive to simply devastating. To be sure, addressing the aftereffects of our past century’s worth of fossil-fuel consumption won’t be cheap — but it’s going to be a heck of a lot cheaper if we start right away. Waiting until climate change intensifies to the point that its effects are inescapable and undeniable is like delaying therapy until the tumor becomes malignant.
Self-styled “skeptics” who deny the work of the international climate science community are doing America, and the world, a grave disservice. On environmental, humanitarian, and economic grounds, a robust and comprehensive strategy for mitigating the effects of global warming is the right thing to do.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture assholes denialists media irresponsibility Republicans Senate Republicans
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 8: It’s The Pits
The San Joaquin Record Net (CA) reports on local agriculture and the regional preponderance of denialism:
Today: cherries and the Valley mind.
In the past few days, the media reported that climate change threatens Valley crops. What is interesting about this is most Valley farmers don’t believe in climate change.
Farmers are realists; but most Valley farmers reject (what I believe to be) global warming reality. Something in the Valley’s conservative mindset impels them to.
“The climate does change,” said cherry grower Bruce Fry. “It’s not, in my opinion, because of humans. Look what volcanoes can do.”
Fry does not believe greenhouse gases are causing the greenhouse effect. Rather, he believes the Earth’s vast weather cycles bring changes naturally.
It doesn’t change his mind that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has warned Valley farmers to prepare for climate change by finding warmer-weather crops.
“The problem is I don’t trust Uncle Sam,” Fry said.
Government alienates Valley farmers mainly with its regulations. Farmers resent regulations as intrusive, ill-conceived and bad for business – which sometimes they are.
“These guys up at their offices in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., need to get out of their offices and see what is reality, not according to their spreadsheet and the book,” Fry said.
Nor does it persuade him that the overwhelming majority of scientists agree the Earth is warming.
The state Department of Water Resources, for example, said spring runoff has declined 10 percent over the past 100 years; double that in recent years.
A recent University of California, Davis, study found Valley “chilling hours” – cold temperatures required by many crops (including cherries) – have declined up to 30 percent.
“Usually there’s two sides to the scientific data, too,” Fry said. “Just like in statistics, you can manipulate that one way or the other.”
Cherries and the Valley mind. Sheesh. Sent September 30:
Of all the assaults on reason perpetrated by conservative politicians and their collaborators in the media, their relentless campaign of disinformation on the issue of global climate change is certainly the most damaging. While their ideologically driven policies on practically every issue may cause huge amounts of harm (whether it’s more people lost to gun violence, more people living in poverty, or more unnecessary wars), but there is always the hope that given enough time, our species can find solutions and resolutions. Given another millennium, who can believe humanity won’t figure out a better way?
But when it comes to global warming, the Right’s misrepresentations and anti-science rhetoric may have ensured that we won’t have the time we need. We’ve known about the greenhouse effect for more than 150 years; scientists have been urging American presidents to act on limiting CO2 emissions for half a century — and conservative media and politicians have been blocking meaningful action for just as long. But the kicker lies in the fact of “tipping points.” Climatologists predict that when certain temperature thresholds are exceeded, planetary climate systems will trigger rapidly escalating feedback loops of civilization-ending power — and we’re currently exceeding those thresholds, right now.
This year’s cherry crop may be a good one, but unless all of us recognize the threat and act rapidly and decisively on a global level, the long-term forecast is for a bitter harvest indeed.
Warren Senders