environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 16: My Ding-A-Ling?
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a columnist named Reg Henry, who takes on a certain frothy former Senator in a meticulous piece of dissection:
While nobody can be certain that the early spring here in the East is a manifestation of global warming, you know the old saying: Something that looks like a groundhog, walks like a groundhog and makes weather forecasts like a groundhog is probably a groundhog that gets his information from talk radio, as filtered through men in top hats.
Indeed, the party that looks out for the interests of men in top hats is pretty much united in the belief that global warming is a hoax — in particular, man’s alleged role in it.
Pennsylvania’s own Rick Santorum has been in the forefront of such remarks, in the belief that the Republican primaries are a competition to say the stupidest things. This strategy has been quite successful for him. While he won’t win, he hopes to parlay his victories into an appointment as Grand Inquisitor in the Romney administration.
Unfortunately, the climate — not knowing concepts such as conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat — just goes on getting weirder and weirder, pretty much as climate change theory predicts. Tragically, this erratic weather is also becoming more deadly each passing year, with hurricanes, tornadoes and floods of growing ferocity.
Of course, in bursts of sanity, some conservative politicians admit that perhaps the world’s scientists have a point, but the perpetrators are soon forced to recant lest they be considered elitist — which these days, as you know, means anyone who thinks.
This was enjoyable. Sent April 8:
Rick Santorum’s massive ignorance would be a lot funnier if he didn’t represent a worldview shared by millions of Americans. While Pennsylvania’s embarrassment of an ex-senator embodies resurgent American anti-intellectualism, there’s no doubt he’s happy to use the products of the past few centuries’ worth of scientific progress (confining ourselves to the letter “A,” these might include antibiotics, automobiles, airplanes, anesthesia, and antiseptics, without which Mr. Santorum’s life would probably have been very different).
Apparently, science is invalid only when it contradicts the senator’s ideology. Nowhere is this more problematic than in his position on global climate change, which he believes is a worldwide scientific conspiracy (one which, curiously, includes the Pope, whose infallibility doesn’t seem to extend that far).
Deliberate ignorance of the facts is both intellectually and morally irresponsible; for human civilization to survive the burgeoning climate crisis, denialists like Rick Santorum must remove their mental chastity belts.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 15: Harper Valley PTA
Neela Banerjee writes in the LA Times about Tennessee’s embarrassing new legislation, which is eagerly awaiting its gubernatorial flourish before slime-spattering students throughout the state:
WASHINGTON — Tennessee is poised to adopt a law that would allow public schoolteachers to challenge climate change and evolution in their classrooms without fear of sanction, according to educators and civil libertarians in the state.
Passed by the state Legislature and awaiting Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s signature, the measure is likely to stoke growing concerns among science teachers around the country that teaching climate science is becoming the same kind of classroom and community flash point as evolution. If it becomes law, Tennessee will become the second state, after Louisiana, to allow the teaching of alternatives to accepted science on climate change.
The Tennessee measure does not require the teaching of alternatives to scientific theories of evolution, climate change, human cloning and “the chemical origins of life.” Instead, the legislation would prevent school administrators from reining in teachers who expound on alternative hypotheses to those topics.
The measure’s primary sponsor, Republican state Sen. Bo Watson, said it was meant to give teachers the clarity and security to discuss alternative ideas to evolution and climate change that students may have picked up at home and want to explore in class.
Morons. Sorry — that should be Morans; my bad. Sent April 7:
When contemporary conservatives want schools to “teach the controversy,” it’s a sure bet they’re referring to controversies they’ve created themselves. Tennessee’s new legislation is an excellent example of this; the notion that science teachers are somehow restricted by requiring them to actually teach science is a fabrication of the evangelical subset of American conservatism.
The arguments within climatology concern the details of feedback and forcing mechanisms in Earth’s environment, and what they portend for the future of the planet and its inhabitants; the human causes of global warming are as fully settled as the basic processes of Darwinian evolution. Assertions to the contrary are either mendacious or ignorant; probably both.
But what the hell — let’s teach the controversy: is Marxist economics valid? Is the Earth flat? Does your astrological sign influence your life? Is Elvis alive? Is Paul dead? Is there really a Flying Spaghetti Monster? Welcome to school.
Warren Senders
environment: automobiles corporate irresponsibility corporate responsibility denialists Heartland Institute
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 9: Little Deuce Coupe
General Motors is now a certified left-wing tree-hugger (The Boise Weekly):
The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes denial of climate change, lost funding from General Motors last week. The Los Angeles Times reports that a leak of confidential funding documents showed that the General Motors Foundation provided funds to the institute during the last two years.
“GM operates its business as if climate change is real,” said GM spokesman Greg Martin.
The move received immediate praise from environmental groups.
“We applaud GM’s decision and the message it sends—that it is no longer acceptable for corporations to promote the denial of climate change,” said Daniel Souweine, campaign director for Forecast the Facts, a group that urges meteorologists to talk more openly about climate change. “Support for an organization like Heartland is not in line with GM’s values.”
It’s about eleven meta-levels away from actual good news, but I’ll take what I can get. Sent April 2:
In pulling its funding from the anti-science Heartland Institute, General Motors is demonstrating readiness to engage with the factual realities of climate change. While nobody enjoys contemplating a civilizational threat of such magnitude, the evidence of impending drastic alterations of the Earth’s climate is now so irrefutable that denialist posturing is morally, environmentally and fiscally irresponsible.
Since Americans’ love affair with their cars shows no sign of ending, it’s imperative that the automobile industry recognize the urgency of the crisis and begin developing newer, less wasteful technologies — a move that General Motors seems to be making.
Heartland Institute, by contrast, is doubling down, rejecting unambiguous science in favor of ideologically convenient misinterpretations that support the profitability of their funders. GM’s decision to sever ties with this secretive right-wing think tank reflects a deeper understanding of a simple fact: a global climate catastrophe would be terrible for business.
Warren Senders
Education environment: denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 8: The International Homework Alarmist Conspiracy!
Anne Zammit, in the Times of Malta, notes that the time for denial is long past:
Scepticism is essential for good science but the time for debate has long been over. Scientists (notably climatologists) reached consensus that global warming is happening but it took decades for the problem to penetrate public discourse.
Indications that human activity is having an effect on the climate are nothing new:
In 1896, Swedish Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius presented his findings that human activities releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could change the earth’s climate.
Scientists Charles Keeling and Roger Revelle demonstrated in the 1950s that a large part of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of coal, oil and gas was remaining in the atmosphere because the oceans couldn’t absorb it fast enough.
A scientific advisory panel warned US President Lyndon Johnson of the dangers of adding greenhouses gases to the atmosphere back in 1965.
By 2007 there were no credible scientific sceptics left to challenge the broad projections and underlying scientific theory of climate change.
Two years later the National Academies of Science of the world’s major industrialised nations issued an unprecedented joint statement on the reality of climate change and the need for immediate action.
Despite overwhelming evidence, a cell of climate change deniers showed up for a debate last month in Valletta, organised by the Euro Media forum, a discussion platform which “celebrates freedom of expression while respecting diversity in society”.
Letters like this one are easy; the media’s incredible irresponsibility is a ludicrous target. Sent April 1:
From schoolchildren shirking homework to cardiac patients disregarding the advice of their doctors, there’s no shortage of people who act as if ignoring a crisis will make it vanish. But the psychological mechanisms of denial are not the only thing to blame for the widespread rejection of the scientific reality of global warming.
Imagine a world in which the simple existence of heart disease was vigorously disputed; a world where the media promulgated an equivalency between concerned pulmonary specialists and those proclaiming that heart attacks and COPD are fabrications of an international conspiracy. It sounds bizarre — but it’s analogous to the way many news outlets address the issue of climate change.
Climate scientists are, in essence, “planetary physicians.” While their diagnosis is scary and their advice inconvenient, we owe it to our descendants to stop pretending that the problem will go away if we don’t acknowledge it.
Warren Senders
And it’s printed.
environment Politics: clueless denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 7: The Door Is Open
The Worcester Telegram (MA) has a columnist named Bill Fortier. Sigh:
They say that as the climate warms, the weather will become more extreme, or, in today’s world of instant communication, perhaps we just see it more often. Although it does seem that when we were kids we never saw summer-like, mid-winter thunderstorms like we’ve had the past three winters.
While that is worrisome, I’m sure I’m not alone in saying there is something good to be said about our changing weather.
To wit, it was most enjoyable to go all winter without putting on layers of winter clothes and clunky boots.
And it was great to hear the spring peepers March 13, the first time I have ever heard them before St. Patrick’s Day.
We spent last week in Washington, D.C., where the cherry blossoms reached their peak March 20, the third earliest date ever.
We wore shorts all week, had dinner outside twice and walked on King Street in Alexandria, Va., eating ice cream like we would on a July night. If the climate is changing, bring it on.
George W. Bush said that, too, inviting attacks on our soldiers. Idiots. Sent March 31:
Bill Fortier asserts that people who know “way, way more” than he does cannot state with certainty whether the greenhouse gases we release affect the climate. Actually, they can, and do. Science is silent on whether the accelerating greenhouse effect is responsible for a specific incidence of extreme weather, simply because that’s not how science works — but there is no doubt whatsoever that extra atmospheric methane and CO2 are having radically destabilizing effects.
Meanwhile, Mr. Fortier wonders what’s wrong with a warmer winter. Rhapsodizing over his ability to wear shorts on a March day, he writes, “If the climate is changing, bring it on.” Maybe he should talk to New England’s fruit farmers, whose trees are blooming too early, or ask foresters what happens when there aren’t enough freezing temperatures to destroy the larvae of insect pests.
Bring it on, huh? Climate change is coming, invited or not.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots IPCC scientific method
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 4: They’ll Pry My Light Bulbs Out Of My Cold Dead Sockets…Or Something
The Boston Globe covers the IPCC report:
Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts, and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday. The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe – from Mumbai to Miami – is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges, and droughts.
More of the same. Sent March 29:
The latest IPCC report forecasting greatly increased risks of extreme weather disasters caused by global climate change is sure to surprise no one.
The people who’ve been paying attention to the ongoing war on the environment are already gloomily aware that things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better, given that it’s going to take the planet’s climate centuries or millennia to recover from the past century’s profligate carbon-burning spree.
And the people who believe in a giant secret cabal planning to raise our taxes and outlaw incandescent bulbs are already fully convinced that the IPCC is in on the conspiracy.
Given that science has an impressive record of steadily-more-accurate predictions and a built-in self-correction system — unlike political conservatives, who have been consistently wrong about pretty much everything — perhaps it’s time for our politicians and media to pay attention to the IPCC’s report.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots IPCC scientific method
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 3: But They’re So Un-Serious
The Laredo Morning Times runs an AP article by Seth Borenstein on the most recent IPCC report, headlined “Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters”. Heh:
WASHINGTON — Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists said in a new report issued Wednesday.
The greatest threat from extreme weather is to highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe — from Mumbai to Miami — is immune. The document, by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists, forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.
The 594-page report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations, has generally focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming. This report by the panel is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes, which lately have been costing on average about $80 billion a year in damage.
Watch the denialists rise up in outraged hordes to smite algore! Sent March 28:
It’s certainly possible that the climatologists in the IPCC have it wrong in their predictions of extreme weather and heavy storms. Scientific errors have happened in the past; they’ll happen again. But let’s make a few comparisons.
Science has a built-in error-correction mechanism. When scientific results are published, people everywhere around the planet try to reproduce the experiments, searching for errors or misinterpretations. Scientific method has become the most potent truth-finding tool in humanity’s arsenal, steadily enhancing its predictive accuracy; the storms of today were forecast by climate scientists decades ago.
By contrast, those vehemently disputing the IPCC’s findings have time and time again been proven wrong. They were proven wrong about Iraqi WMDs, proven wrong about tax cuts on the richest 1 percent — and they’ll eventually be proven wrong on climate change, too.
Perhaps it’s time to pay more attention to the people who’ve been proven right.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes creationists denialists idiots morons
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 1: Do You Know Where Your Fools Are? I Do.
Three actual scientists are heard in the pages of the Tennesseean, arguing against the newly introduced legislation that would require all kinds of silly-ass nonsense to be taught equivalently in science classes:
Almost 90 years ago, Tennessee became a national laughingstock with the Scopes trial of 1925, when a young teacher was prosecuted for violating a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. With the passage of two bills, House Bill 368 and Senate Bill 893, the Tennessee legislature is doing the unbelievable: attempting to roll the clock back to 1925 by attempting to insert religious beliefs in the teaching of science.
These bills, if enacted, would encourage teachers to present the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of “controversial” topics such as “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” As such, the bills are misleading, unnecessary, likely to provoke unnecessary and divisive legal proceedings, and likely to have adverse economic consequences for the state.
It is misleading to describe these topics as scientifically controversial. What is taught about evolution, the origin of life, and climate change in the public school science curriculum is — as with all scientific topics — based on the settled consensus of the scientific community. While there is no doubt social controversy about these topics, the actual science is solid.
This one was a bit long, but they had a 250-word limit, so I let myself go a bit. Maybe there’ll be another paper with the same article tomorrow, and I can cut things down. Sent March 26:
The difference between social and scientific controversy is simple: the former is based on opinion, the latter on facts. Since opinions change with each successive generation, we can safely say our species will keep generating new social controversies for millennia to come.
Science, on the other hand, builds knowledge incrementally through a process of rigorous testing and analysis. A scientific controversy is created either by a new fact that doesn’t fit the accepted consensus understanding (as J.B.S. Haldane famously said when asked what could falsify evolutionary theory, “Fossil rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian”), or by a new theory that offers a more robust explanation for the facts that already exist.
Neither of these criteria are met by the arguments of climate change denialists. Their cries of “teach the controversy” are disingenuous; shall we teach the medieval theory of humours, phlogiston, or the “luminiferous aether”? These were all controversial in their time, and all have been disproved and relegated to the scrap heap of history.
Rather, the individuals fighting genuine education on climate change do it for simple and selfish reasons: they don’t wish to be inconvenienced. The corporations funding elaborate misinformation campaigns about global warming do it because they don’t wish to surrender their profit margins.
The scientific consensus is unambiguous: if we continue our profligate consumption of fossil fuels our CO2 emissions will trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, with consequences including rising sea levels, droughts, and extreme weather. Unless we change our ways, our descendants will indeed inherit the wind.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 31: Where There’s A Way, Unfortunately There’s A Will
Well, this is…unsurprising. The Very Serious People at the Washington Post are wondering why Americans don’t seem to care about climate change.
Rising sea levels threaten to inundate low-lying roads in Louisiana, costing billions in port activity, The Post’s Juliet Eilperin reports. Northrop Grumman sees potential damage to billions in shoreline defense infrastructure, such as the imperiled drydock in Hampton Roads built to construct the next generation of aircraft carriers. Other factors are also at work in these examples of rapid coastline loss. But Louisiana and Virginia offer a picture of how further sea-level rise and higher storm surges — just one set of climate-related risks — could seriously disrupt human activity.
America, meanwhile, is fixated on . . . paying an extra buck per gallon at the gas pump.
A recent report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) underscores how myopic the country’s energy debate is — and, consequently, how delinquent the United States has been in leading the world. The organization calculated that the world is on course to increase its carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2050. That’s because global energy use will increase by 80 percent by mid-century, with 85 percent of the energy mix coming from fossil fuels. That would likely raise global temperatures well past the target of 2 degrees Celsius, beyond which scientists say climate change could be extremely dangerous. It would also produce lethal amounts of air pollution, manifested in more heart attacks, asthma and other maladies.
Coming from the paper that has given the odious George Will a platform for decades, that’s pretty rich. Sent March 25:
If Americans are fixated on gas prices and political trivia rather than on the dangers of global climate change, perhaps we should ask how this happened. What influences could let us ignore a threat of unprecedented magnitude for so long?
Politicians averse to having their actions and statements exposed will readily blame the media when reality intrudes on their prefabricated narratives. Unfortunately, when it comes to climate change, American news media tend to insert political narratives into reality rather than the other way around.
When conservative legislators block sane climate policies, it’s often framed as “a loss for environmentalists,” as if those advocating for our species’ long-term survival were just another special-interest group. If print and broadcast media discussed the real-world consequences of a failure to address climate change (droughts, famines, geopolitical upheavals, megadeaths) rather than treating it as mere political gamesmanship, perhaps more Americans would take the issue seriously.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 29: A Bitter Cup
The Logan Herald-Journal (UT) notes a slight change in people’s thinking:
The public debate over global climate change in Cache Valley could be shifting.
Local institutions are clearing up confusion by adopting clear positions on the topic, even making them easily accessible for the public to see. A recent move by Utah State University’s Department of Geology, for instance, shows how global and local organizations are taking a formal stance on the issue. A link on the department’s homepage takes viewers to an official position on global warming.
“There were a lot of inquiries from students, particularly in the large, introductory classes,” says Dave Liddell, geology department head. “The faculty thought it would be useful to highlight our position on the topic.”
Liddell says he and his team of academics strongly support the scientific consensus that climate change is happening.
“The Department of Geology supports the Geological Society of America position paper on Global Warming,” the site reads. “We agree that the Earth’s climate is indeed changing and the changes are due, at least in part, to human activities. This is a critical environmental challenge that will require active study and long-term planning and mitigation.”
The department is not alone in its decision to air its position. The Bridgerland Audubon Society board shared its view. It says rapid physical changes will affect biological systems that will compromise habitat and disrupt wildlife populations that cannot adapt fast enough.
Sent March 23:
While it’s encouraging that institutions are working to “clarify their positions” on climate change, the fact remains that in a halfway sane world, such a concept would be recognized as an absurdity. One might as well require institutions to “clarify” their positions on the three Laws of Thermodynamics. But because our national cup of crazy is more full than empty, the factuality of global warming is now the basis of a “controversy.”
How did that happen?
The world’s climate scientists overwhelmingly agree on the basic facts: the greenhouse effect exists; it is exacerbated by human CO2 emissions; the impact of this on Earthly life and human civilization is going to be significant. The so-called “controversy” is the production of people and organizations heavily in the thrall of big oil and coal companies which anticipate reduced profits should our country move to an energy economy based on sustainability.
At a time when we should be working both to prepare for the problems of the climate crisis and to mitigate its worst effects, time wasted is a luxury we can no longer afford.
Warren Senders