environment: denialists Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 27: Phlogiston?
The Miami Herald has an opinion piece by Fred Grimm. It’s shrill:
A sobering study released by Florida Atlantic University contemplated the effects of global warming in specific terms, particularly for South Florida, considered one of the more vulnerable metropolitan areas in the world, with six million residents clustered by the ocean, living barely above sea level.
The study from FAU’s Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions, adding to an overwhelming scientific consensus about the disastrous effects of global warming, and along with growing hard evidence that temperature changes are already altering the environment, ought to have sent tremors through the halls of government.
Except it didn’t. Perhaps the most peculiar phenomenon associated with global warming has been a burgeoning disdain for climate science even as scientific consensus grows more urgent. Forget the stickier question of whether global warming has been fueled by human activity (as an overwhelming percentage of climate scientists believe), a poll by the Pew last year found that only 59 percent of Americans will even acknowledge the earth is warming, compared to 79 percent just five years ago.
I’m busy; this letter is largely recycled material. Sent October 23:
Conservative zealots have politicized the public discussion of climate change, thereby turning science into an ideology. As with their many other adventures in regressive thinking, we will eventually hear them protest that, “nobody could have known…” Nobody could have known that dismissing warnings about Osama Bin Laden would be a bad idea, that an invasion based on fabricated evidence would turn out badly, that ignoring engineers’ warnings about levees would help to destroy a vibrant city — or that politicizing climate science would paralyze our nation in the face of the most serious threat humanity’s yet confronted. And the many of us who knew were mocked and derogated for our cries of warning.
Eventually, climate-change denial will be as dead as phlogiston and the medieval theory of humours. Unfortunately, by then all that “empirical evidence” will have submerged vast areas of land, crippled agriculture, and profoundly disrupted our civilization.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists Richard Muller scientific method
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 25: But They Say There’s A Hell. What The Hell. What The Hell Do They Think This Is? Do They Think About That?
The October 21 Irish Times also reports on the Richard Muller study:
An analysis of 1.6 billion temperature records dating as far back as 1800 gave results that are similar to data series by the British Met Office, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature said in a report published today.
“Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously,” the project’s founder, Richard Muller, said in a statement. “This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.”
The project was established to try to produce a definitive temperature series after climate sceptics – including US senator James Inhofe – said leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia showed data were manipulated. The British school helps compile the Met Office temperature series.
Three inquiries into the contents of the leaked e-mails found scientists hadn’t manipulated data, though they had tried to avoid disclosing data.
Wonder what Inhofe will say about this? Sent October 21:
We can be glad that the team of scientists from the University of California has verified the data on Earth’s rising temperature, but if the best news we’ve got is that some formerly doubting researchers are now convinced that important data on climate change really and truly wasn’t fabricated, things have gotten pretty grim. Those scientific skeptics may have been well-intentioned, but their stance has been adopted by conservative ideologues in American politics as an excuse for inaction — and by the complacent American news media as a way to avoid doing actual journalistic work. The UC study was commissioned by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, who have been supporting climate-change denialists for many years, and who must be terribly disappointed by these results.
This is a crisis of the utmost urgency; only a commitment to genuine action from the world’s political leaders would constitute genuinely good news.
I will award one free Internet to anyone who can identify the provenance of this post’s title.
environment Politics: denialists scientific consensus scientific method
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 24: I Pity The Fool
Erstwhile climate skeptic Dr. Richard Muller is changing his tune for the second time this year, reports the LA Times:
Remember when scientists who had cast doubt on global temperature studies boldly embarked on an effort to “reconsider” the evidence?
They have. And they conclude that their doubt was misplaced.
UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller and others were looking at the so-called urban heat island effect — the notion that because more urban temperature stations are included in global temperature data sets than are rural ones, the global average temperature was being skewed upward because these sites tend to retain more heat. Hence, global warming trends are exaggerated.
Using data from such urban heat islands as Tokyo, they hypothesized, could introduce “a severe warming bias in global averages using urban stations.”
In fact, the data trend was “opposite in sign to that expected if the urban heat island effect was adding anomalous warming to the record. The small size, and its negative sign, supports the key conclusion of prior groups that urban warming does not unduly bias estimates of recent global temperature change.”
Researchers conclude that “[t]he trend analysis also supports the view that the spurious contribution of urban heating to the global average, if present, is not a strong effect; this agrees with the conclusions in the literature that we cited previously.”
The literature they cite is the basis for the conclusion that the Earth has been warming in an unnatural way during the period of human industrialization.
There is another version of this news published by the Wall Street Journal. The comments demonstrate the nut of my letter exactly. Sent October 20:
When scientists change their minds, it means they’ve learned something new and important. This would appear to be the case with Dr. Richard Muller, the no-longer-skeptical physicist from the University of California.
When ideologically driven politicians change their minds, on the other hand, it means they are trying to avoid learning something new. We now have the opportunity to watch this happen in real time, as conservative Republicans who have in the past regarded Muller as an important authority (because of his contrarian climate-change stance) will now rush to rebrand him as a liberal hippie treehugger whose opinions are irrelevant and unrealistic.
Having their most heartfelt beliefs continually undercut by inconvenient facts must be terribly difficult for conservatives. The GOP’s climate-denial cohort must be feeling terribly betrayed by Muller’s act of intellectual honesty. It almost makes one feel sorry for them.
Almost.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots Rick Perry scientific method sea levels
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 23: Governor Canute?
The Iowa State Daily, a college paper, comments on Rick Perry’s denial industry:
It is a sad time we live in when scientific findings are censored and silenced in favor of personal or political biases. This cannot be more apparent than in the recent example of Texan officials doing some unofficial editing of a environmental report.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has a contract with the Houston Advanced Research Center to report on the state of Galveston Bay, but their recent paper was apparently too full of references to climate change, destruction of wetlands or sea level to pass muster.
It’s probably not surprising, really, considering that the TCEQ has several top officials appointed by Rick Perry, who shares similar views on climate change.
This is a rehash of a number of earlier letters on similar themes. It’s too bad that this material continues to be relevant and useful. Sent October 19:
It was during the Bush presidency’s boom years that an unnamed administration official mocked journalist Ron Suskind as a member of the “reality-based community.” The aide went on to say that America was an empire, “and when we act, we create our own reality.” Of course, reality-based reality eventually caught up with the previous president and his team, most notably in the form of Hurricane Katrina and in the utter failure to find the Iraqi WMDs we were assured were there.
But the Republican party’s political experts still believe that troublesome facts can be negated with the right combination of photo opportunities, obfuscation, and stout denial. Maybe so, in the surreal world of electoral politics.
In the reality-based world, however, no amount of bluster can stop the rising sea levels in Galveston Bay, and denying ideologically inconvenient data can never be the foundation of good policy or good government.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots scientific method sea levels Texas
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 22: Today Is The Tomorrow You Worried About Yesterday
The Columbus, Indiana “Republic” runs an AP article on the censorship of climate science in Texas:
GALVESTON, Texas — A Rice University oceanographer says the state’s environmental agency is refusing to publish his research article on a Texas bay unless he agrees to delete key references to rising sea levels and human involvement in climate change.
Professor John Anderson has declined the proposed edits by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, calling the changes to a report on Galveston Bay “censorship” and an attempt to mislead the public.
Consequently, the state agency said it will remove Anderson’s article, which deals with long-term sea level rise and mentions manmade climate change, which commissioners have publicly questioned in the past.
Republicans are the hardest Sapir-Whorfians of us all. If there are no words for the problem, there is no problem. Presto! Sent October 18:
It is an axiom of many politicians that many difficult problems are easily solved by eliminating them from the historical record. Military records and embarrassing photographs can be destroyed or made to vanish; statements are rendered “inoperative”; actions can simply be firmly denied. A compliant media enables this behavior by fostering a simulacrum of journalism in which the presentation of two divergent opinions is considered “objective.”
But when policy is based on science, absolute veracity is essential. The recent censorship of climate scientists’ work in an oceanographic report on Galveston Bay is a case in point.
Climate-change denial may be electorally convenient for Texan lawmakers, but rejecting actual measurements and analysis when they don’t fit a preset ideology is both unethical and stupid. Rising ocean levels aren’t Republican or Democratic; the greenhouse effect is neither conservative nor liberal.
Those who politicize scientific research destroy the value of both politics and science.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Al Gore denialists Great Lakes idiots
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 18: How Long Do You Think It Would Take Them To Change Positions?
The Chicago Tribune runs another version of the Al Gore/Great Lakes story:
DETROIT—Former Vice President Al Gore says dealing with the climate change crisis is essential to fixing some of the environmental problems plaguing the Great Lakes.
Gore drew links between results of a warming planet and regional issues affecting the lakes in a speech Thursday in Detroit during the annual meeting of the International Joint Commission, an U.S.-Canadian agency that advises both nations on shared waterways.
So I figured I’d get his back. Sent October 14:
Mr. Gore’s recent statement on the Great Lakes’ vulnerability is a scientifically grounded, calmly stated analysis of a very alarming situation. Conservative denialists, of course, don’t care that he has the facts on his side — they’ll still deride the former Vice-President, because they don’t know how to do anything else.
But at some point in the not-so-distant future, global climate change will be so obvious that no one will be able to dispute it any more. At that point, we can expect the Republican party’s talking points to shift rapidly. Their current favorite (“the global warming hoax is a socialist plot to impose one-world government”) will give way to something new. My prediction: the GOP will claim that climate chaos can only be mitigated by tax cuts on the wealthiest one percent of society. After which, they’ll insult Mr. Gore again, presumably for having been right too early.
Warren Senders
environment: Al Gore algae denialists Great Lakes idiots
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 17: Repent!
The Worthington Daily Globe (MN) runs an AP piece on Al Gore’s words about the Great Lakes, which are shrill:
Former Vice President Al Gore says dealing with the climate change crisis is essential to fixing some of the environmental problems plaguing the Great Lakes.
Gore drew links between results of a warming planet and regional issues affecting the lakes in a speech Thursday in Detroit during the annual meeting of the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian agency that advises both nations on shared waterways.
He said increasingly intense storms likely caused by global warming are overwhelming wastewater treatment systems in the region. They dump excessive nutrients and sewage into the lakes, leading to beach closings and algae blooms.
Gore said climate change also causes more evaporation, which drives lake levels down.
I’m in a bit of a hurry today, and this letter’s joinery is slightly rickety in places. What the hell. Sent October 13:
While it’s fashionable in some circles to dismiss Al Gore’s words of warning on climate change, his facts are irrefutable. Excess precipitation has indeed overwhelmed water management systems — not just in the Great Lakes area, but all over the planet — triggering massive blooms of algae, contaminating public areas and impacting fish and wildlife populations.
Of course, this is just one aspect of a systemic problem so enormous it’s no wonder climate-change denialists prefer to ignore it entirely. Whether it’s the loss of biodiversity, the shocking decline in Arctic sea ice, or the uptick in extreme weather events everywhere on Earth, the evidence substantiating the danger posed by the greenhouse effect is now overwhelming — and very scary.
While the former Vice-President has the facts on his side, it’s fair to say that, unlike most prophets, Mr. Gore won’t gain any personal satisfaction from being proved right in the end.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 15: “Wading” Is An Apt Verb
An outlet called the Texas Tribune seems to have at least a vaguely DFH perspective on Texas’ current idiot-in-chief:
Between the year-long drought and Gov. Rick Perry campaigning for the presidency, global warming has become a big topic in Texas these days — and the head of the University of Texas Energy Institute, Raymond Orbach, is wading into the debate with a new paper aiming to debunk eight “myths” about climate change.
The paper, “Our Sustainable Earth,” appears in the forthcoming issue of Reports on Progress in Physics, a British journal known for encouraging (relatively) simple language from its contributors. In it, Orbach summarizes existing scientific evidence to argue that humans bear responsibility for climate change and an 80 percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions by 2050 is needed to stabilize global temperatures. Otherwise, he writes, “current global temperature rises will continue, and even accelerate” as greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising.
Orbach got the idea, he says, when he was reading about eight myths about global warming on a UT campus website. “When I started looking at literature, I noticed that there was warming beginning in 1980,” he says. (Indeed, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that temperatures across the United States have increased by 1.5 degrees since the 1970s.)
Read the piece. I like it when he says that Perry’s entitled to his own opinion. Sent October 11:
Dr. Raymond Orbach’s going to have his work cut out for him when it comes to restoring scientific truth to the discussion of climate change. Unlimited monetary resources and equally unlimited access to mass media outlets has allowed the voices of denial to keep the public “debate” unresolved. Since a failure of consensus automatically translates into a failure to act, our governing institutions are unable to move forward on addressing the climate crisis.
And there’s the rub: while Dr. Orbach’s voice is sorely needed, it’s the grim truth that denialists in our political system are influenced not by evidence and analysis, but by the wishes of their financial masters. Governor Perry’s antipathy to facts demonstrates that he’s not a “skeptic,” but an intellectually incurious hypocrite who’s ready to believe six impossible things before breakfast — but who espouses doubt when it is convenient for the corporations whose interests he serves.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Inhofe Senate Republicans
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 11: Snicker. Snicker. Snicker. Guffaw.
Heh heh heh (the Oct. 7 Tulsa World):
If Norman wasn’t the place to be for weather research in the south, or even the nation, this announcement today should help.
The U.S. Department of the Interior selected the University of Oklahoma to be one of eight regional climate science centers nationwide, school and Interior officials announced Friday.
The center, which will be housed at the OU Research Campus in Norman, will aim to provide a link between weather and climate projections about how to manage federal lands, natural resources and fish and wildlife, according to a release from the OU College of Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences today.
“The nationwide network of Climate Science Centers will provide the scientific talent and commitment necessary for understanding how climate change and other landscape stressors will change the face of the United States, and how the Department of the Interior, as our nation’s chief steward of natural and cultural resources, can prepare and respond,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.
Every once in a while these letters are fun. Sent Oct. 7:
With the selection of the University of Oklahoma’s Norman campus as one of the nation’s new climate science centers, the irony is thick on the ground. This news surely sticks in James Inhofe’s craw. After all, the Senator is a man who prefers improbable conspiracy theories to observable realities, and who chooses to go on record as denying the relevance of climate science. Perhaps there will be a dedication ceremony when the new offices are opened. It would be a gracious gesture to invite America’s most famous denialist to the reception.
Perhaps he could say a few words?
Or perhaps he could lay aside his petrol-powered preconceptions and listen carefully to what climatologists are actually saying about the threats we’re all going to face in the coming centuries?
Naaaah. Senator Inhofe listening respectfully to climate scientists? That would be even more unusual than an unseasonal snowfall in Washington, DC.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 9: Say That To His Face, Why Don’cha?
Michael Mann kicks some serious butt in the October 1 issue of the Vail Daily (CO):
An individual named Martin Hertzberg did a grave disservice to your readers by making false and defamatory statements about me and my climate scientist colleagues in his recent commentary in your paper.
It’s hard to imagine anyone packing more lies and distortions into a single commentary. Mr. Hertzberg uses libelous language in characterizing the so-called “hockey stick” — work of my own published more than a decade ago showing that recent warming is unusual over at least the past 1,000 years — as “fraudulent,” and claiming that it “it was fabricated from carefully selected tree-ring measurements with a phony computer program.”
These are just lies, regurgitation of dishonest smears that have been manufactured by fossil fuel industry-funded climate change deniers, and those who do their bidding by lying to the public about the science.
The highest scientific body in the nation, the National Academy of Sciences affirmed my research findings in an exhaustive independent review published in June 2006 (see e.g. “Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate,” New York Times, June 22, 2006, among many others).
Dozens of independent groups of scientists have independently reproduced and confirmed our findings, and more recent work by several groups shows that recent warmth is unusual over an even longer time frame.
They have a 500 (!) word limit. It’s always fun to stand up on behalf of the good guys. Sent October 5:
By rights, Michael Mann should sound a lot angrier than he does in his rebuke to Martin Hertzberg. It isn’t every day that a responsible researcher with a lifelong record of scientific integrity has his work and findings impugned so cavalierly.
Well, let me qualify that. Such irresponsible public treatment isn’t on the menu for most scientists — but it is now the norm for climatologists, whose message appears highly unwelcome to the fossil fuel industry. The giant multinational corporations which have grown rich from building a petroleum addiction/delivery mechanism into our society are naturally resistant to anything that will end their profitability, and they have invested millions upon millions of dollars to build a denialist infrastructure which has successfully muddied the debate, delaying action on what is certainly the gravest threat our species has faced in recorded history.
Provoked by their paymasters, the unhinged voices of talk radio hosts and mendacious professional dissenters have created a working environment in which climate scientists now regularly receive death threats along with frivolous lawsuits and public mockery. Are there any other scientists whose work is treated so badly? The only parallel in recent history is the defamation campaign waged against the researchers who uncovered definitive links between smoking and cancer. It is illuminating to realize that many of the same individuals who spread calumnies about these conscientious investigators are now in the pay of Big Oil and Big Coal — once again taking fat paychecks in exchange for misleading the public.
Considering that his lifework has been derided, his integrity has been impugned, and he’s been subjected to frivolous investigation after frivolous investigation, Dr. Mann’s rebuke to Martin Hertzberg’s misrepresentations is extraordinarily civil. My hat’s off to him; under analogous circumstances, I could never be as courteous.
Warren Senders
UPDATE: And I’m in print, although they decided I was from Medford, Oregon.