environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Rick Perry scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 6: Please Pass The Brain Bleach.
Another report on the Texas Tornado, this time from the Concord Monitor (NH):
One man challenged Perry about his skepticism of global warming. The man charged that Perry had ducked a question in a previous debate when moderators had asked him what sources served as his evidence.
“I’m ready for you this time,” Perry said, prompting a laugh. He went on to say that in recent weeks a “Nobel laureate of some acclaim,” whom he did not name, had decided there is no definite proof that global warming has been caused by humans. The audience applauded.
“For us to take a snapshot in time and say what is going on in this country today and the climate change that is going on is man’s fault and we need to jeopardize America’s economy,” he said. “I’m not afraid to say I’m a skeptic.”
For “skeptic” read “dingaling.” Sent October 2:
While Rick Perry feels the need to cite a “Nobel Laureate” to bolster his rejection of the near-universal scientific consensus on global climate change, he didn’t mention the hundreds of Nobelists in multiple disciplines who support the findings of the vast majority of the world’s climatologists.
Mr. Perry prefers the contrarian position of Dr. Ivar Giaever, a physicist who won the prize in 1973 for his work with semiconductors and superconductors, and whose climatological experience is limited to participation in a single discussion panel at a convention of Nobel laureates. He’s done no research in climate science and has no published papers in the field, despite a lucrative affiliation with petrol-subsidized conservative think tanks like the Cato Institute.
Mr. Perry’s rejection of science when it’s inconvenient to his political aspirations is contemporary Republican realpolitik at its best. A Nobelist’s opinion? Valid — if it supports his ideological preconceptions. Otherwise? “Junk science!”
Warren Senders
Uncategorized: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism Rick Perry scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 5: Some Days These Letters Are No Damn Fun At All
The LA Times for September 30 reports on Rick Perry’s eagerness to embrace climate denial in all its forms:
At a New Hampshire town-hall style meeting, his first of the campaign, the Texas governor sparred Friday evening with a questioner who tried to pin him down on the issue. The man, whom Perry addressed as “Mike,” began by noting a 2011 report from a panel of experts chosen by the National Academy of Sciences, which concluded that climate change is occurring and “is very likely caused primarily by the emission of greenhouse gases from human activities.” The man noted that Perry had ducked—twice–when asked at the Reagan Library debate this month to name the scientists he found most credible on the subject.
Spending more than three seconds contemplating the vile opportunist that is Rick Perry is enough to send me screaming in search of a shower. Sent October 1:
Governor Perry’s rejection of climate change reflects the conservative base to which he must pander. In his public remarks on the subject, he’s frequently accused climate scientists of manipulating data in order to secure remunerative grants. Given the sordid history of Republican data-manipulation, this is projection at best, knowing hypocrisy at worst. Similarly, his readiness to accept the views of scientists when they bolster his preconceptions demonstrates that for Mr. Perry, like other GOP aspirants, ideology trumps reality.
Remember the Cheney doctrine that a miniscule chance of Iraqi WMDs was justification for an invasion? By all rules of logic, a similarly small probability that climate change is a genuine civilizational threat should galvanize us into action. However, since Republicans don’t “do” logic and are motivated only by nonexistent threats, the worldwide scientific consensus on climate change is sufficient only to trigger rhetorical posturing, and a grotesque rejection of genuine expertise.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 4: Hats Back On, Gentlemen — An Idiot.
Hey, gang! Want to make fun of an idiot? Check out Norah Flanagan, in the Enid, Oklahoma, “News and Eagle.” You can’t make this shit up. Well, actually, you can:
I would probably be a bit more concerned about belching cows heating up the atmosphere than I am if the people doing the so called tests and crying in their green tea weren’t treating the climate changes like a religion. Every time I hear anything about the subject I get this ultra nasty picture in my head of goofy looking Moonies (that cult that hands out flowers and plays tambourines on streets) I’ve never seen a Moony with my own two eyes, only pictures in magazines and on TV, but these climate people remind me of them. They’re goofy.
Has the weather changed in the last few years? Yes it has. We’re cruising toward three seasons rather than four. Freeze your nostrils shut cold winter, monsoon season, and hot enough to fry eggs in the dirt at 6 a.m. summers. When you take into consideration that this area right here, the Canisteo Valley, was once a tropical rain forest, and that we had a mini ice age back in the Middle Ages, then it doesn’t take a big stretch for a thinking person to figure out that we’ve entered ANOTHER weather cycle. All things have a cycle, there’s light, there’s dark, there’s cold, there’s hot, there’s life, there’s death. Nothing stays the same. Absolutely nothing. So why in the world would people think that the weather should? Besides, Al Gore being the poster child for the Global Warming/ Moony freaks is a good nuff reason for me to shoot darts at the theory. I didn’t trust the guy back when he was Bill Clinton’s number 2 and now that he’s got those wiggly jowel thingies and does a comb over he creeps me out even worse.
When it comes to Global Warming, it’s kinda like God, you either believe or you don’t. I’m just one of those skeptics who like to see the actual data right in front of me. I don’t need a nerd in a lab coat deciphering the numbers for me, I’m quite capable of reading graphs and numbers all by myself, and the last thing that I want to see when I’m looking at data is the word ‘projected’. What? Projected means in the future, not right now. Projected means maybe. I don’t want maybe. I want this is what has happened/this is what will result.
The Enid News And Eagle only accepts letters in the mail — no email. So this one went off on Saturday morning, October 30. It’s been too long since I mocked an idiot.
When it comes to climate change, Norah Flanagan doesn’t need a “nerd in a lab coat deciphering the numbers for me”), and deprecates words like “projected” as meaningless. How does this attitude work in other areas?
One day her doctor finds a suspicious lump, but Norah feels fine — so she doesn’t care.
She reads the numbers on her biopsy results, but doesn’t understand them. A big number is good. Or is it bad?
A “nerd in a lab coat” (who happens, usefully, to be an oncologist) recommends a course of therapy and tells her the projected survival rate. But since she doesn’t want “maybe,” the advice goes unheeded. Plus which, the doctor has “wiggly jowl thingies” so she knows he’s a quack.
I hope she would not be so reckless. Experts spend years mastering a subject or a skill; we trust mechanics with our cars and surgeons with our lives for this reason.
Climate scientists (whom she compares to deluded cultists) have spent years learning to interpret the data on our planet’s health. If an overwhelming consensus of planetary diagnosticians tell us there’s a problem, dismissing them simply because their words are unwelcome (or because they’re funny-looking) is as foolish as ignoring an oncologist’s advice in the face of a metastasizing cancer.
Warren Senders
I will give an Antigravity CD to the first person to correctly identify the provenance of my headline.
environment Politics: denialists idiots National parks Yellowstone Park
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 3: Yogi?
More on the dire predictions for Yellowstone National Park, this time printed in the Idaho State Journal for September 27:
According to new climate projections conducted for the report, the average of many models is for Yellowstone National Park summers to get 9.7 degrees hotter by 2070-2099 with medium-high future emissions. With a scenario of lower emissions, the average projection is for summers to get 5.6 degrees hotter. This illustrates that the most extreme effects of climate change can be avoided by taking action to reduce emissions. In fact, even the lower-emissions scenario does not assume new policies to reduce heat-trapping pollutants, and with new policies it would be possible to hold future climate change to an even smaller degree.
The effects of a disrupted climate threaten not only Greater Yellowstone’s ecology but also a $700 million annual tourism economy dependent on the region’s unique resources, says the report, which also notes that surveys indicate visitation could be substantially impacted by warming temperatures.
“What we humans are doing to the climate isn’t just melting polar ice caps, it’s disrupting the places that are nearest and dearest to us,” said Stephen Saunders, RMCO president and lead author of the report. “Already, threads are being pulled out of the tapestries of Yellowstone and other special places, and they are losing some of their luster.”
Variations on the theme. Sent September 29:
There’s nowhere on Earth like Yellowstone. With its rare and unusual wildlife and complex ecosystems, America’s greatest park is now gravely endangered by the ravages of climate change; those unique forms of life are extremely vulnerable to a runaway greenhouse effect.
It’s not just a 9.7 degree rise in predicted temperature that’s so frightening. That single figure conceals complex and unpredictable phenomena: wider swings from hot to cold, more extreme precipitation, and a loss of the climatic stability that allowed a complex ecology like Yellowstone’s to evolve in the first place.
Meanwhile, politicians and pundits irresponsibly assert that climate change is a liberal plot, or a fabrication by an international cabal of scientists desperately seeking funding.
Ultimately, of course, it’s not just Yellowstone that’s endangered, but all environments with complex ecologies. The time for concerted action on the climate crisis is now; there is no longer any time to waste.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists ecosystems National parks
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 2: Boo Boo?
The September 27 issue of Billings, Montana, Gazette reports on a new study that highlights climate change’s probable effects on Yellowstone National Park:
The weather in Yellowstone National Park could feel more like that of Los Angeles in 60 years if climate change continues to accelerate, according to a new report released Tuesday.
Under that “medium high” climate change scenario, the average summer temperature in the nation’s first national park would rise by 9.7 degrees by 2070.
Stephen Saunders of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, lead author of the report that was underwritten by the Bozeman-based Greater Yellowstone Coalition, said “9.7 degrees of additional heat would totally transform the ecosystem.”
A climate like LA’s, huh? Old Faithful — with rats, pigeons and roaches. Rock’n’roll!
Sent Sept. 28:
The numbers in environmental predictions can be misleading. When we hear, for example, that Yellowstone National Park may be nine degrees warmer by 2070, it’s relatively easy to dismiss; after all, temperatures can vary by far more than that amount in a single day, so what’s the fuss about?
But that nine-degree figure conceals some of the worst ravages of climate change. Hot weather evaporates more water, boosting the moisture content of the air and making extreme precipitation more likely — catastrophic floods, infrastructure-crippling snowfalls. An increase in average temperature doesn’t just mean the mercury goes up; it means wilder swings, hotter hots and colder colds.
Yellowstone is home to richly complex and unique ecosystems — micro-communities of life that are found nowhere else on the planet. Uniqueness, of course, implies vulnerability. If, as the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization report suggests, the park’s summer climate in 2070 could resemble that of today’s Los Angeles, it’s a fair bet that many of the plants and animals that have made it a worldwide tourist attraction aren’t going to survive.
The politicians and media figures who promote the denial of climate change are sacrificing our shared national heritage for their own short-term enrichment — a grotesque betrayal of the public trust.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: adaptation denialists Massachusetts
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 1: I’m Telling You They’ll Be Telling You I Told You So.
The headline in the September 27 issues of the Boston Globe says it all: “State report sees a hotter Massachusetts, outlines ways to adapt to climate change”. Check it out:
Imagine a Massachusetts where it’s 90 degrees or more for 30 to 60 days in the summer. Where the temperature climbs to 100 as many as 28 days. Imagine the ocean temperature 8 degrees warmer, turning brisk dips into warm baths. More rain and less snow in the winter. And the coast being eaten away by an inexorably rising ocean and catastrophic storms.
That’s the disheartening scenario for the Bay State 90 years from now painted in a new report prepared by the state’s Climate Change Adaptation Advisory Committee with the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
The report issued today offers an overview of climate changes that have already happened, changes that are predicted, the anticipated impacts, and strategies to prepare for the change, state officials said.
“Climate change is the greatest environmental challenge of this generation, with potentially profound effects on the economy, public health, water resources, infrastructure, coastal resources, energy demand, natural features, and recreation,” the report said. “The time to address climate change is now.”
After reading Jeff Jacoby (the Globe’s resident conservative, and an especially virulent know-nothing) repeating the same denialist shibboleths in his Sunday column, it’s good to see some honest bad news seeing print. I hate Jacoby, but I couldn’t bring myself to write a letter in response to his column; it was just too unpleasant. I’m not even going to link to it, because it was so damned icky. This article, however, gave me enough emotional headroom to craft a response. Sent Sept. 27:
The evidence on climate change has been piling up for years, and the past few decades have seen the introduction of extremely refined methods with exceptional predictive power and accuracy. The newly released report from the Climate Change Adaptation Advisory Committee takes the accumulated data and extrapolates it into the future with results that are scary enough to send many chronic denialists into full head-in-the-sand mode.
Unfortunately, many of those trying to wish away the greenhouse effect are in positions where they can delay actions that are necessary to mitigate catastrophe. Future generations in our state may be lucky compared to those elsewhere in the world, but in a Massachusetts buffeted by extreme weather and parched by frequent bouts of tropical heat, they’ll have harsh words for the politicians and media figures who’ve ensured that our only national response is inaction in the face of a clear and present danger.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists false equivalence media irresponsibility scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 9, Day 29: Potayto, Potahto, Tomayto, Tomahto
The Bangor Daily News runs an excellent piece of analysis on why climate denialism is so deeply rooted in our contemporary culture. Spread this piece far and wide!
NEW YORK — Tucked between treatises on algae and prehistoric turquoise beads, the study on page 460 of a long-ago issue of the U.S. journal Science drew little attention.
“I don’t think there were any newspaper articles about it or anything like that,” the author recalls.
But the headline on the 1975 report was bold: “Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of “global warming” didn’t set off an instant outcry of angry denial.
In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the “greenhouse effect” is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.
What’s going on?
Read it and weep. Here’s my response, sent Sept. 25:
While much climate denialism is simply rooted in people’s unwillingess to accept unpleasant news, we must also consider the role of the American news media. The principle of false equivalence facilitates journalistic irresponsibility: as long as both sides’ positions are reported, the reporter’s work is done, regardless of their truth or falsity.
However, the two positions in the climate change “debate” are not equally true. On one side: tens of thousands of climate experts from all over the world, building a robust scientific consensus with predictive power that have steadily increased over the past several decades. On the other: a few well-publicized contrarians amply funded by the fossil fuel industry.
Which is likelier? Thousands of climatologists all making spurious claims in order to get funding — or the world’s wealthiest corporations trying to rig the game, as they’ve done so many times before? Denialism is not supported by the facts.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots Republicans scientific method
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Year 2, Month 9, Day 26: Stupid Is As Stupid Does
The Sept. 22 edition of the Cypress Times (TX) notes the idiotic readiness of conservative voters to reject climate change and evolution in one fell swoop:
WASHINGTON, D.C.—While nearly 7-in-10 (69%) Americans believe there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades, and nearly 6-in-10 (57%) Americans believe humans and other living things evolved over time, a new survey finds that approximately half of Americans who identify with the Tea Party reject both (50% reject global warming and 51% reject evolution).
The new PRRI/RNS Religion News Survey was conducted by Public Religion Research Institute, in partnership with the Religion News Service, amid back and forth among Republican presidential candidates on religion and science, especially the issues of climate change and evolution.
I guess I just felt like lecturing them a bit on how dumb they’re being. Note the Old-Testament metaphor in my final sentence. Sent Sept. 22:
That many Republican primary voters enthusiastically repudiate evolutionary theory and global climate change is a sad indicator of the state of education in America. These same voters are perfectly ready to endorse scientific results when they’re ideologically neutral — just ask any “tea-party” member to give up antibiotics, chest x-rays, air travel, telephones or the internal combustion engine and see how far you’ll get. It’s also acceptable when science is used to support conservative policy objectives, as in the application of the latest and most advanced war-making technology — all developed by researchers applying the scientific method.
This method — the testing of falsifiable hypotheses — has created an understanding of the world overwhelmingly more accurate than any other in human history. To reject scientific results when they’re ideologically inconvenient — as in the case of climate denialists — is to bow before the golden calf of willful ignorance.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Bill Clinton Carbon Pricing denialists fee and dividend idiots IMF World Bank
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Year 2, Month 9, Day 25: Blind Pigs And All That
Usually I have almost nothing but contempt for the World Bank, the IMF and the other tentacles of the global vampire squid. But as the September 21st issue of the Washington Post tells us, they’ve got something right:
AMSTERDAM — Global financial institutions are recommending raising money to fight climate change by trimming subsidies for fossil fuels, putting a price tag of $25 per ton on carbon emissions and collecting a surcharge on aviation and shipping fuels.
The recommendations are part of a draft paper by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international groups prepared for a meeting Friday in Washington of G20 finance and development ministers. It was leaked prematurely and distributed Wednesday by aid agencies.
The ministers of the world’s 20 largest economies are responding to a commitment to channel $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to global warming and develop low-carbon economies.
But Republicans won’t eat acorns, no matter what. Sent Sept. 21:
If the recommendations from the World Bank and the IMF actually gain traction in the policy-making sectors of government, it would mark a sea-change in political approaches to the climate crisis. Their suggestions err only on in being too conservative; fossil fuel prices should reflect the true cost of these commodities, including not only the long-term mitigation of their health and environmental effects but all those expensive wars we fight to protect our sources. When these factors are taken into account it is evident that burning carbon is an exceptionally costly to fuel a civilization.
A price on carbon likewise cries out for implementation. A “fee-and-dividend” scheme would return monies directly to consumers, partially offsetting increased energy costs.
Alas, Washington is unlikely to respond meaningfully to these recommendations. As Mr. Clinton remarked, GOP-induced policy paralysis and reflexive climate denialism makes America a joke in the eyes of the world.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Bill Clinton denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 9, Day 24: The Punch Line Is A Punch In The Face
The Seattle Times runs an AP story on Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative, which handles the Big Dog’s remarks rather tamely:
Former President Bill Clinton’s annual philanthropic conference will get under way in New York City with a discussion about climate change.
The Clinton Global Initiative is set to begin Tuesday morning with an opening session focused on addressing global climate challenges in coming years. The session will be co-hosted by Mexican President Felipe Calderon and South African President Jacob Zuma.
They left out his characterization of GOP climate denialism as making the US into a “joke” in the eyes of the world:
Former President Bill Clinton has some tough words for Republican climate-change deniers: quit making the U.S. “look like a joke.”
Kicking off his Clinton Global Initiative in New York, the former president said Americans should make it “politically unacceptable” for people to engage in climate change denial, according to Politico.
“I mean, it makes us — we look like a joke, right?” Clinton said. “You can’t win the nomination of one of the major parties in the country if you admit that scientists are right?”‘
So I mentioned it in my letter, sent September 20:
In his opening remarks at the Clinton Global Initiative, Bill Clinton spoke forcefully about Republicans’ rejection of science, saying that their unwillingness to admit the existence of global climate change makes the U.S.A. “look like a joke” to the rest of the world.
Indeed. When a huge slice of our country’s population is represented by petroleum-funded, science-denying, reality-phobic politicians who value the petty exigencies of political gamesmanship over meaningful policy responses to genuine emergencies — well, it means trouble any way you look at it.
It’s trouble for our country, as much-needed investments in renewable energy and conservation are blocked by GOP legislators. It’s trouble for the planet, as America continues to emit more CO2 per capita than any other country in the world. With Republican obstructionism blocking our response to the climate crisis, our country may look like a joke — but no one’s laughing anymore.
Warren Senders