environment: denialists International Energy Agency
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 14: Driving The Limo Off The Cliff
The Wall Street Journal reports from the soft white (very white) underbelly of global capitalism, with their perspective on the IEA report:
LONDON—Dangerous climate change will be essentially irreversible within a little over five years, the International Energy Agency said in an annual report urging governments to do what they can to prevent this outcome.
To prevent long-term average global temperatures rising more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels—seen as the maximum possible increase without serious climate disruption—immediate, drastic changes to energy and industrial policies are needed, the IEA said in its World Energy Outlook.
Such a shift looks unlikely given current global economic problems and the move away from low-carbon nuclear power in some countries after the …
Well, that was one of the quickest remakes I’ve ever done. Sent November 9:
It’s been almost two hundred years since scientists first discovered the greenhouse effect, and more than fifty years since Arctic ice melt caused by increased atmospheric CO2 was predicted (in a 1953 edition of Popular Mechanics!). During that time an entire scientific discipline has developed, and climatologists have been steadily developing analytical and predictive tools of ever-greater precision and sophistication, as evidenced by their unsettling tendency to be right more and more often.
For five decades these scientists have warned American lawmakers about the looming climate crisis, only to see the problem get shelved for more electorally immediate concerns. No more. The International Energy Agency’s analysis is clear and sobering: we’re out of time. If our descendants are to have a world that’s fit to live in, climate-change denialists must relinquish their improbable conspiracy theories and join the rest of us in effecting a profound restructuring of our planetary energy economy.
Warren Senders
environment: Bad News denialists International Energy Agency
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 13: This Is Not A Test
The New York Daily News (GAAAH!) reports on the just-released warning from the International Energy Agency:
Time is running out to reverse the effects of global warming, according to a new report.
In a sobering analysis of the planet’s energy future, the International Energy Agency said that governments around the world have five years to reverse the course of climate change before it’s too late.
“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, told the Guardian. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety].
“The door will be closed forever.”
The World Energy Outlook report, which looks at the future of the planet’s energy system over the next 25 years, revealed that urgent investment in renewable power and energy efficiency is needed to keep global temperature gains at 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, a crucial ceiling set by climate scientists.
Once that door shuts, that’s it. Writing a historically referenced letter to the NYDN is probably an exercise in futility. I’ll paraphrase it and send tomorrow’s letter to the WSJ in a little while, which will put me five days ahead of the curve. Whee!
Sent November 9:
The greenhouse effect was first described in the early 1800s, and first measured in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish physicist. Arctic ice melt caused by increased atmospheric CO2 was postulated in 1953, and climatologists have been studying the problem ever since. Their analyses have been steadily getting more accurate, and their predictions have been confirmed time and time again.
For fifty years environmental experts have been warning American lawmakers about the consequences of our profligate energy consumption, and for the past fifty years we’ve been kicking it down the road for “the next guy” to deal with — a strategy that just ended with the release of the International Energy Agency’s “five-year warning.” The climate-change denialists need to abandon their improbable conspiracy theories and join the rest of us in making a world that’s safe for our descendants.
We can’t say we weren’t warned. We can only say we didn’t care.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists public health Republican obstructionism tropical diseases
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 11: Put It In The Trash With The Others!
The Riverside Press-Enterprise (“THE sources for news and information in Inland Southern California”) runs a story about a newly released study on the probable health impacts of climate change:
A study released Monday looked at six climate change-related events in the United States – three of them specific to the Inland region – and found that the cost of health problems, lost work and deaths totaled about $14 billion.
The work by scientists from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental action group, and UC San Francisco was published in Health Affairs, a public health journal funded by The People-to-People Health Foundation.
Though other studies have estimated future health costs related to climate change, this is the first to look at the outcomes of specific weather events, said co-author Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a staff scientist in the health and environment program at the council’s San Francisco office.
The aim of the study, she said, is to prompt policy makers to prepare for future problems. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, the group is calling for such measures as expanding programs for mosquito surveillance and control to reduce the cases of West Nile virus and implementing warning systems for heat waves.
Oh, goody! Another study!
Sent November 7:
Some of the public health effects of global climate change will simply be inconvenient (faster-growing, more virulent poison ivy), and some will be debilitating (increased pollen levels will trigger misery for millions of asthmatics). But it’s not just wheezing and itching. Migrating insect carriers will bring tropical diseases into new and vulnerable areas; catastrophic storms and heavy precipitation will wreak enormous damage on agriculture and infrastructure; droughts will trigger more frequent and more severe wildfires…the list goes on and on.
The UC/NRDC researchers, like most scientists, tend to err on the conservative side; their $14 billion estimate is probably way too low. And also like many scientists, the study’s authors are touchingly naive: they hope their work will “prompt policy makers to prepare for future problems,” when the lessons of recent history demonstrate conclusively that our politicians can only deal with future problems by denying their existence entirely.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility denialists media irresponsibility Richard Muller scientific method
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 4: Paraphrasing WHO?
Dr. Richard Muller continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, this time with an opinion piece in the Midland (MI) Daily News:
Richard Muller has been quoted by climate skeptics the world over as one of the leading authorities on why we should not take the climate science behind global warming on its face.
This past week, a study that took Muller two years to complete, concluded that climate scientists are right about one thing: The land is 1.6 degrees warmer than it was in the 1950s.
Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, conducted the study by focusing in on two chief criticisms of the skeptics — that weather stations are unreliable and that cities, which create heat islands, skew results.
“The skeptics raised valid points and everybody should have been a skeptic two years ago,” Muller said in a telephone interview. “And now we have confidence that the temperature rise that had previously been reported had been done without bias.”
How often do I get to evoke Don Rumsfeld? Sent on Halloween:
Stop the presses! A scientist confirms other scientists’ results!
Of course, science is supposed to work like that, with constant checking and cross-checking leading to ever-more-accurate descriptions and analyses of the world. Dr. Richard Muller’s readiness to change his mind when confronted with irrefutable proof of climate change’s factuality is simple responsibility to the norms of his profession.
In a sane world, this wouldn’t be news.
Unfortunately, ours is not a sane world, but one where billionaires push ideologically-driven distortions of the scientific process, politicians are the captives of corporate interests, our media promotes a false equivalency between petro-funded contrarians and genuinely worried climatologists — and the best interests of the American people are betrayed. In a sane world, we’d have started addressing the dangers of climate change long ago. But as Donald Rumsfeld might say, we live in the world we’ve got, not the world we wish we had.
It’s crazy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republicans Richar Muller scientific consensus scientific method
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 3: A Truffle!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution runs another article on Muller’s epiphany:
WASHINGTON — A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.
The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.
Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.
Notice that this guy was fooled by “Climategate.” He wasn’t paying too much attention, I guess. Sent on October 30:
Richard Muller’s capacity for intellectual integrity will cost him dearly among those who’ve used his earlier stances to bolster their rabid denial of climate change. After an exhaustive study partially funded by two arch-denialist billionaires, he’s concluded that all the other researchers on the issue were right: the earth’s atmosphere is warming. Perhaps in his subsequent research, he’ll tackle the question of whether human beings are responsible for the burgeoning greenhouse effect that is triggering extreme weather all over the planet — and eventually come around to the conclusion already shared by the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists: human civilization is indeed the driving force behind global warming. In the meantime, Dr. Muller is about to learn that his erstwhile sponsors couldn’t care less for scientific integrity; the Koch brothers and their political allies in the GOP only support skepticism when they stand to benefit from it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Mitt Romney
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 2: Is Being An Opportunistic Hypocrite Genetic, Or A Lifestyle Choice?
The Wall Street Journal notes that the Mittster has been inconsistent on climate change. Heh heh heh heh.
Rivals of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday repeated their accusations of flip-flopping on core issues, after he told an audience on Thursday that he didn’t know what caused global warming.
Mr. Romney said earlier this year that human activity played a role.
“Mitt Romney’s positions change, often dramatically, depending on the audience or location,” said Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also a GOP candidate. “Voters need to consider the fact that Romney, in one week, changed positions on man-made global warming, capping carbon emissions and Ohio’s efforts to curb union powers.”
It took me longer than I expected to write this letter, given that it was essentially a rephrasing of yesterday’s. Sent October 29:
Having learned early on that an inadvertent bit of truth-telling can deep-six a politician’s aspirations, Mitt Romney should know never to question conservative shibboleths.
Young Willard Romney was only 20 when he watched his father’s 1968 presidential run spin out of control when George Romney spoke of being “brainwashed” by advocates of the Vietnam war. While history has vindicated the Michigan Republican’s apostasy on our Southeast Asian misadventure, primary voters at the time rejected him soundly. So it is today, with the conservative base unified in its absolute denial of climate change.
Like father, like son. Historians will undoubtedly recognize Romney the Younger’s timid statement on global warming as a piece of truth-telling uncannily similar to that which sank Romney the Elder’s presidential run. Anti-science Republican absolutists will never acknowledge climate change, and Mitt’s subsequent equivocations may not be enough to undo the damage done by his brief flirtation with the truth.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism Richard Muller
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 31: DFH Edition
The San Antonio Express-News reprints Eugene Robinson’s column (see yesterday’s letter for another quote):
Muller and his colleagues examined five times as many temperature readings as did other researchers — a total of 1.6 billion records — and now have put that merged database online. The results have not yet been subjected to peer review. But Muller’s plain-spoken admonition that “you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer” has humbled many deniers.
Not so, I predict, with the blowhards such as Perry, Cain and Bachmann, who, out of ignorance or perceived self-interest, are willing to play politics with the Earth’s future
Here is what we know: The rise in temperatures over the past five decades is abrupt and large. It is consistent with models developed by other researchers that posit greenhouse gas emissions — the burning of fossil fuels by humans — as the cause.
Nobody’s fudging the numbers. Nobody’s manipulating data to win research grants, as Perry claims, or making an undue fuss over a “naturally occurring” warm-up, as Bachmann alleges. Contrary to what Cain says, the science is real.
It is the know-nothing politicians — not scientists — who commit an unforgivable fraud.
Muller has no idea what’s going to hit him. Sent October 26:
It’s an axiom of modern American politics: to find out what Republicans are up to, listen to what they accuse others of doing. This strategy, perfected by Karl Rove and his collaborators, is on vivid display in the GOP presidential primary, as aspirants vie with one another to make ever-more-revealing statements about their inability to accept the facts of climate change.
When Rick Perry claims that climatologists fake or cherry-pick evidence in order to win grant funding, it’s because he and members of his administration are notorious for fudging facts for personal gain. Michelle Bachmann’s claims of misinterpreted data are particularly risible; the White Queen of conservative wonderland can believe six impossible things before breakfast without even breaking a sweat.
Dr. Richard Muller, the erstwhile “climate skeptic” whose recent study undercut oft-repeated Republican shibboleths, is going to find himself stigmatized as a dirty hippie before the end of the week.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans Richard Muller
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 30: Sometimes These Letters Just Walk Up And Beg To Be Written
Eugene Robinson writes in the October 25 Washington Post about the logical consequences of the Muller/UC study:
For the clueless or cynical diehards who deny global warming, it’s getting awfully cold out there.The latest icy blast of reality comes from an eminent scientist whom the climate-change skeptics once lauded as one of their own. Richard Muller, a respected physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, used to dismiss alarmist climate research as being “polluted by political and activist frenzy.” Frustrated at what he considered shoddy science, Muller launched his own comprehensive study to set the record straight. Instead, the record set him straight.
“Global warming is real,” Muller wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.
Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the neo-Luddites who are turning the GOP into the anti-science party should pay attention.
Sharp learning curve ahead for Muller, who is going to find himself stigmatized as a leftist DFH within a few days. Sent Oct. 25:
In a sane political environment, the release of Dr. Richard Muller’s study confirming the reality of global climate change would be a game-changer of huge proportions. When a study administered by a leading “skeptic” and largely funded by arch-denialists the Koch brothers comes down conclusively on the other side of the debate, it should change a few minds.
And in a sane world, it would. But the people who funded Muller’s study aren’t interested in facts; they share a political philosophy with those who evinced disdain and contempt for the “reality-based community” during the previous administration. Corporate climate denialists and the politicians they subsidize have combined nihilism and solipsism in a toxic package: they care not for the continued survival of our species, because they (as a Bush official said to Ron Suskind) “create their own reality.”
And that’s why the Muller study won’t matter to Republican lawmakers.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 29: Where Do These Guys Come From?
The October 25 edition of the Baltimore Sun wastes paper on a denialist named Richard Haddad, whose buffoonery goes under the title, “Moving Past Man-Made Global Warming Alarmism.” Heh:
It seems that the man-made global warming scare, long promoted by those opposed to the burning of fossil fuel, is now behind us.
It turns out that there is no unanimity of scientists supporting man-made global warming theory and never has been. It’s also now becoming widely recognized that there is no incontrovertible evidence that global warming is caused by human activity, and that there is quite a bit of evidence that human activity is not a primary cause of such warming.
It’s becoming better known that for at least 240,000 years, a rise in CO2 has followed rather than preceded global warming. This squares with the reality that the oceans hold the vast majority of the Earth’s carbon, and when the oceans warm, they release some of their gases into the atmosphere.
Guys like this give the rest of the world’s idiots a bad name, y’know? Sent October 25:
Richard Haddad’s anti-science screed reminds me uncannily of the previous White House’s readiness to disregard well-grounded warnings from their political opponents, as when Bush officials treated the briefings they’d received from Clinton staffers about Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda as unwarranted alarmism. 9/11, of course, brought us the infamous Cheney doctrine: even a one-percent chance that Saddam had WMDs was sufficient reason to mount a military offensive.
Notice that beforehand, justified warnings were dismissed, and afterward, no evidence was required to justify action.
Mr. Haddad needs to hear a few plain facts: the earth is in fact getting hotter; the scientific consensus on human causes of global warming is exceptionally strong; the “climategate” scandal has been repeatedly debunked; the economic consequences of shifting to renewable energy are overwhelmingly positive. When scientific expertise is politicized by conservatives who prefer to deny inconvenient facts, our country and the world are the losers.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists media irresponsibility Richard Muller
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 28: Muller’s Earth
I grew up reading Popular Science (thanks to my Aunt Virginia, who gave me a gift subscription one Christmas and kept renewing it year after year). It was good to see them carry a clearly presented explanation of the UC/Muller study:
Last year, as climate change deniers were up in arms over the so-called “Climategate” controversy involving alleged manipulation of climate data, one skeptical scientist proposed taking a fresh look. Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California-Berkeley and a self-described climate skeptic, undertook to review the temperature data underlying most global warming studies. Now his team has wrapped up their work, and it apparently solidifies the other studies’ findings.
Actually, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project found the Earth is getting even warmer than other climate scientists claim.
The findings have neither been peer-reviewed nor published, so some skeptics and deniers are as yet unsatisfied, but Muller says the group has submitted the papers for publication. Meanwhile, the data is all online for anyone’s review.
I’ve never written to them before. This was fun. Sent October 24:
Now that the data on global warming has been confirmed once again, this time by a denialist-funded study led by prominent “skeptic” Richard Muller, the petro-funded anti-science talking points will have to change. We can say goodbye to “it isn’t happening, therefore it makes no sense to do anything about it,” and say hello to “nobody knows why it’s happening, therefore it makes no sense to do anything about it.”
While Dr. Muller and his colleagues made no attempt to attribute causality, this doesn’t mean that “nobody knows why it’s happening.” The scientific consensus on the primary drivers of global climate change is quite robust: it’s us — human beings, and our relentless consumption of carbon fuels.
Given the grave sociopolitical and environmental consequences of our fossil-fuel addiction, a shift to renewable energy is an absolute necessity even if we ignore global warming. All that is lacking is the will.
Warren Senders