environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans stupidity
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 23: He’s Naturally Stupid.
More fun with Tim Pawlenty’s remarks, this time courtesy of the August 5 LA Times:
Tim Pawlenty said in an interview this week that the science of global warming remains unclear and that Earth’s shifting climate is more likely due to natural causes.
The interview with the Miami Herald marked the most recent example of Pawlenty’s evolution on the issue. Once an advocate of cap-and-trade policies to reduce carbon admissions, the former Minnesota governor has since recanted his support for such proposals.
As the GOP presidential candidate told the Herald’s Marc Caputo:, “Like most of the major candidates on the Republican side to varying degrees, everybody studied it, looked at it. We did the same. But I concluded, in the end some years ago, that it was a bad idea. . . . We never actually implemented it. I concluded ultimately it was a bad idea. It would be harmful to the economy. The science was I think based on unreliable conclusions.”
Expanding on the Breslin idea from yesterday. Sent August 6:
So Tim Pawlenty thinks climate change is due to “natural causes,” eh? Sure, I’ll go along with that. As long as Mr. Pawlenty agrees that lung cancer and emphysema are “natural” responses to tobacco smoking, that heart disease is a “natural” response to obesity, and that brain damage is a “natural” consequence of traumatic head injuries.
Climate change is the atmosphere’s predictable and “natural” response to massive atmospheric releases of greenhouse gases, courtesy of the world’s industrialized civilizations. To pretend otherwise is to be deliberately ignorant of basic physics and chemistry, which may be fine for a FOX-fed tea-party zealot, but should instantly disqualify any aspirant to the nation’s highest office.
Mr. Pawlenty’s readiness to pander to the most extreme examples of anti-science zealotry in his party’s base are, of course, an opportunistic response to the exigencies of twenty-first century Republican electoral politics. I guess that’s “natural,” too.
Warren Senders
environment humor Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 22: shut up he explained.
In the Not-News-To-Anyone-Who’s-Been-Paying-Attention category, the August 4 Minnesota Star-Tribune reports that (unlike none of the other Republican presidential aspirants) Tim Pawlenty is a gutless, opportunistic, sociopath:
Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s position on climate change has now shifted from “one of the most important issues of our time” to questioning whether humans have had any effect on climate change at all.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Miami Herald, Pawlenty said that “the weight of the evidence is that most of it, maybe all of it, is because of natural causes. But to the extent there is some element of human behavior causing some of it — that’s what the scientific debate is about.”
It wasn’t too long ago that Pawlenty took a much more muscular approach to climate change. Shortly into his second term as governor, the Minnesota Republican made a big push for clean energy.
When he was named chair of the National Governors Association, Pawlenty had the theme of “Securing a Clean Energy Future.” He touted Minnesota legislation that set an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent by 2015 and 80 percent by 2050. In 2007 he said he wanted the Upper Midwest to become “the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy.”
On the other hand, he gave me the opportunity to cite, in its entirety, one of the funniest sentences ever written in English. Sent August 5:
It’s not just greenhouse emissions that are bringing on an unstable climate. Republican politicians and the Tea Party adherents to whom they are pandering are emitting steadily increasing quantities of ignorance. While we must give these anti-science, anti-environment zealots credit for absolutely right in their own minds, the facts suggest that they’re absolutely wrong everywhere else. Tim Pawlenty’s suggestion that climate change is triggered by “natural causes” reminds me of Jimmy Breslin’s Mafia-themed comic novel, “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” in which “Raymond the Wolf passed away in his sleep one night from natural causes; his heart stopped beating when the three men who slipped into his bedroom stuck knives in it.” Yes, Mr. Pawlenty, global warming is a totally natural response to an anthropogenic overdose of CO2. But I doubt that’s what The Governor Who Couldn’t Talk Straight meant; I think he’s been breathing too many tea fumes.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists false equivalency idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 19: We’re Still Learning More About Gravity!
The August 2 edition of the Deseret News (UT) contains more false equivalency bullshit:
In the face of repeated assertions that the science on global warming is “settled,” ongoing studies and developments in the area leave some insisting that claim remains true, while others say the science is anything but.
According to Gallup’s annual environmental poll, the percentage of Americans saying they worry a great deal or a fair amount about global warming has fallen from a high of 66 percent in 2008 to a stable 51 percent in 2011. Furthermore, 43 percent of Americans say the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated in the news.
A breakdown of global warming poll data shows that the issue remains mainly ideological, with 72 percent of Democrats saying they worry about global warming compared to 51 percent of Independents and 31 percent of Republicans.
As the global warming debate becomes more politicized in individual attitudes, state governments, Congress and even within the United Nations, the possibility of the science becoming truly “settled” appears unlikely.
In a study published July 25 in the science journal Remote Sensing, William Braswell and Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a former senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, suggest the Earth’s atmosphere is more efficient at releasing energy into space than models used to forecast climate change have been programmed to “believe.”
As an atheist I strive to avoid theonormative expletives. So I have a limited rhetorical palette available for properly cursing these fuckers. Sent August 2:
It’s amazing how much faith Republican politicians and members of the media place in science. Just watch as they cite the Braswell/Spencer study as an invalidation of the work of hundreds of other researchers. Their readiness to trust a paper which has already been criticized as methodologically flawed is touching in its innocence. Of course this has nothing to do with the study’s usefulness to the anti-environmental agenda; such a suggestion is terribly cynical!
Sigh.
Scientific integrity demands that experimental results must be regarded skeptically; ideologically convenient findings should be even more subject to careful scrutiny. The scientific consensus on human causes of climate change is built on an enormous body of work that has withstood attempts at falsification. To say the “science isn’t settled” does not mean the basic principles are invalid, only that there are still gaps in our knowledge. The science of global warming is as settled as it needs to be, despite the wishful thinking of denialists in Congress and the media.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 18: They Would, However, Vote To Burn Environmentalists.
The August 1 edition of Grist notes that Henry Waxman and Ed Markey have been keeping track of the Republican anti-environment pathology:
Reps. Henry Waxman (Calif.) and Edward Markey (Mass.), of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill, have been keeping tabs on Republican votes to undermine environmental legislation. They say that since taking over the majority in January, Republicans have voted 110 times to block or weaken legislation intended to protect the environment.
Waxman says of the findings that “the new Republican majority seems intent on restoring the robber-baron era,” and Markey compared the GOP agenda to a rifle “pointed right at the heart of America’s clean energy future.” This is fairly colorful, but the thing is, you don’t have to take their word for it — they have a chart with all the votes! Nothing like solid data to confirm your notion that you should be under the couch crying about the future of the country.
What would Theodore Roosevelt think of the Republican Party today? The man who created our world-renowned national park system and helped bring today’s environmental movement into being would be justifiably outraged at the behavior of modern Republicans. It’s not just anti-environment legislation, though. The current crop of tea-party zealots are anti-science, anti-math, and anti-reality, as well as anti-Democrat. What this means is that even eminently sensible and desirable bills are doomed if they’re introduced by the GOP’s political enemies, as witness their steady opposition to anything addressing our country’s energy future with anything more nuanced than “drill, baby, drill.” While Teddy is no doubt spinning in his grave as members of the GOP eviscerate environmental protections, we can’t use the power he’s generating: since it would reduce profits for the multinational corporations who own American politics lock, stock and barrel, the bill would die in committee.
Warren Senders
environment: Alaska denialists scientific consensus tundra
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 13: Feel The Burn!
Alaska had a big fire back in 2007. Turns out that it released a f**k of a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, reports the Anchorage Daily News for July 28:
Alaska’s huge Anaktuvuk River tundra fire in 2007 released as much carbon into the atmosphere as Earth’s entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year, report the BBC and Alaska Dispatch, citing a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Though the 400-square-mile fire’s long-term effects remain uncertain, it may have been a harbinger of things to come in a warmer, drier Arctic, the researchers say. It was the largest tundra fire ever recorded, releasing carbon stored over a period of 50 years and doubling the cumulative area of Alaska tundra burned in smaller fires since 1950.
Sent July 28:
The studies are coming thick and fast, each one providing further evidence of the reality of global climate change. Individually, they demonstrate that different regions all over the planet are already feeling the effects of altered weather patterns: climbing temperatures, more frequent storms, and increased precipitation. Collectively, climatological research irrefutably confirms the urgency of our situation. The University of Florida team’s analysis of carbon emissions from the 2007 Anaktuvuk River tundra fire is sobering not just for people living in the region, but for anyone who’s been paying attention to the positive feedback loops involving droughts and wildfires everywhere on Earth. And yet denialists are still desperately spinning away each piece of scientific evidence as the work of a worldwide liberal conspiracy. Their paranoid fantasies are no longer amusing; when it comes to climate change, the ignorance of the few is a grave danger to us all.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists National parks wildfires
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 11: Yogi & Boo-Boo Will Have To Wear Protective Clothing
The Sacramento Bee for July 25 describes a new study on the likely increase in wildfires as a consequence of climate change…and what it’s going to mean for Yellowstone National Park:
The study by Westerling and his colleagues, which will be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the expected rising temperatures caused by climate change could increase the frequency of large wildfires in Yellowstone to an unprecedented level, according to a news release from the university.
The projected increase in fires would probably cause a major shift in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, with fewer dense forests and more open woodland, grass and shrub vegetation.
The change could happen by 2050, Westerling theorizes, with forests becoming younger, the mix of tree species changing and some forests failing to regenerate after repeated fires. That would affect the region’s wildlife, hydrology, carbon storage and aesthetics, the news release said.
“What surprised us about our results was the speed and scale of the projected changes in fire in greater Yellowstone,” Westerling said. “We expected fire to increase with increased temperatures, but we did not expect it to increase so much or so quickly. We were also surprised by how consistent the changes were across different climate projections.”
Sent July 26:
Yellowstone has long been the figurehead of our nation’s National Park system. From iconic geysers to astonishing ecologies, this extraordinary area is not only one of the world’s great wonders, but an unparalleled tourist attraction. Looking into the future, however, it’s hard to imagine the same crowds will show up for the regular forest fires that the UC Merced study predicts as a consequence of regional droughts and climate change? Yellowstone isn’t alone; other parks throughout the country are already feeling the effects of the past century’s emissions of greenhouse gases. How much devastation must global warming wreak on our country’s landscape before the professional denialists and their science-blind followers come to their senses? What would Theodore Roosevelt say to the current crop of law-makers who are eagerly destroying his legacy? Between climate change and anti-environment legislators, our country’s national parks are in greater danger than ever before.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 6: Department of Tribal Ironies
The NYT’s blog “Scientist At Work” reports on a study done in Mongolia which shows that the herders there are very much up to date on how bad things are getting:
Mongolian herders may not know the term “global climate change,” but almost all know that their weather is changing. If asked whether the weather will get better, stay the same or get worse, most of them will say the weather will get worse. Mongolian herders already face difficult seasons with winter temperatures down to minus 40 degrees Celsius and strong, gusty cold spring winds. Summer may not offer much of a respite. The days alternate between cold nights and daytime heat waves or cold, windy, rainy days. Over the last 20 years strong wind gusts have become more frequent and storms arrive with little warning. The herders love their lives, but many are afraid there may be no future in herding for their children.
I sent this as a letter to the Times on July 20, but I’m also sending it as a comment to this blog; I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, I guess.
It used to be that the phrase “outer Mongolia” was a kind of not-so-clever shorthand for “the back of beyond” — a place utterly removed from the fast-moving news of the day, with a population steeped in ignorance and superstition. How far we’ve come. The herders of Mongolia are fully aware of the vagaries of our fluctuating climate; they may be remote, but they’re not stupid, and their lives and their livings are threatened by the rapid transformation of Earth’s atmosphere. Meanwhile, in our own country, the proudly ignorant citizens of Republicanistan cling to complex and irrational belief systems. Rejecting as irrelevant such modern concepts as evidence, proof, causality and logic, they base their tribal decision-making on magic incantations and the invocation of divine forces. What does it say about our contemporary political environment when Mongolian herders are more sensible about climate issues than over half of the US Congress?
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 5: Send In The Clowns
The July 19 Colorodoan (CO) runs an article very properly pointing out that arch-denialist Fred Singer is a buffoon:
Don’t worry, be happy about the changing climate.
And don’t believe newspaper articles like this one – the mainstream media are not to be trusted because reporters have been “brainwashed” to believe the prevailing wisdom of climate science, which suggests climate change is real and caused by people.
Those were the messages Monday evening from Colorado State University emeritus atmospheric science professor William Gray and the “dean” of climate change skeptics, Fred Singer, an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia. Singer and Gray spoke to a sometimes unruly and tense audience in a packed CSU auditorium in attempts to convince them that most climate science is “hokum” and “bunk.”
Fear about climate change, Singer said, is a “psychosis” because global warming is natural and harmless.
Presenting almost no data while being peppered with questions from some of CSU’s other atmospheric scientists and faculty, the pair emphatically denied the climate has warmed significantly in recent decades and said rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have only positive implications for humans.
It’s always good to indulge in a little bit of justified character assassination. Sent July 19:
Fred Singer is a living example of Upton Sinclair’s apothegm, “It is difficult to make a man understand something when his paycheck depends upon his not understanding it.” His denials of oil company funding are Nixonian shadings of the truth; many of the organizations he’s affiliated with rely heavily on the fossil fuel industry for their support. If he examined the evidence for human causes of climate change with the kind of genuine skepticism any good professional scientist employs, he’d be forced to abandon a gratifying and remunerative position. Accorded disproportionate prominence in the media due to his rejection of the worldwide climatological consensus on global warming, Singer’s credibility is summarized neatly in your article’s fifth paragraph. “Presenting almost no data,” is not a phrase appropriate to a credible scientist. Singer’s not a skeptic, but a corporate shill exploiting public confusion and fear for personal gain.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists scientific consensus wildfires
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 25: Smoke Signals
The July 9 edition of the Summit County Voice (CO), features a good report on how scientists are studying the relationship between climate change and the wildfires that have been wreaking havoc in the American West:
Fires are one of nature’s primary carbon-cycling mechanisms, said Dr. Melita Keywood, a researcher with Australia’s national research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
A press release from CSIRO highlighted some of the questions Keywood raised in a recent presentation at a gathering of geophysicists.
“Understanding changes in the occurrence and magnitude of fires will be an important challenge for which there needs to be a clear focus on the tools and methodologies available to scientists to predict fire occurrence in a changing climate,” Keywood said.
She said the link between long-term climate change and short-term variability in fire activity is complex, with multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks.
Smoking is bad for your health. Sent July 9:
The key phrase in your report on wildfires and climate change can be found in the fifth paragraph: “the link between long-term climate change and short-term variability in fire activity is complex, with multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks.” Both parts of this sentence deserve careful attention. Climate denialists universally fail to understand that complicated phenomena are connected in complicated ways; their simplistic “analysis” reaches its most sophisticated level with “global warming can’t be real, because it’s cold outside.” And those same denialists have never been able to grasp the idea of “feedbacks,” loops of causation in which the symptoms of a problem exacerbate the problem itself (what happens when you and your partner mix up the dual controls on an electric blanket?). When a scientist uses a phrase like “multiple and potentially unknown feedbacks,” she’s giving us a very strongly worded warning: this problem has the potential to get much worse in ways we cannot yet imagine. Welcome to the future!
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 7, Day 24: Ditto, Ditto, Ditto…
A guy named Ken Midkiff writes a good piece on our likely future in the July 8 issue of the Columbia Tribune (MO):
There are, to be sure, a few skeptics and deniers — mostly those who rely on faux news for “information.” There was never any doubt that that more greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere would cause the planet to become warmer. But the skeptics and deniers have determined it is futile to argue that the planetary temperature is not rising — every measurement demonstrates that it is. The arguments now are about human responsibility and which areas will be affected and how.
As to the first argument, the global-warming skeptics and deniers are quite literally willing to gamble on everyone’s life. If human activities are responsible for raising the level of greenhouse gases and no contrary action is taken, the gamble fails. That is not a risk that should be taken.
At what level of certainty is a seat belt to be fastened? Even if we are just contributing to (not totally causing) global warming, we need to find non-polluting ways of doing things.
I didn’t even bother reading the comments; I just sent the following:
Ken Midkiff’s realistic assessment of the country’s next few decades is sure to demonstrate one of contemporary life’s few certainties: any published article dealing straightforwardly with the facts of climate change will attract vituperation from people who consider Rush Limbaugh a trustworthy source of information. As the scientific evidence piles up higher and higher, the climate denialists are going into overdrive. Their feverish reiterations of “hoax” and their derisive references to “algore” (Rush’s nickname for one of the few politicians to fully grasp the magnitude of the crisis) show their desperation. A sane society would properly relegate these hyperparanoid conspiracy theorists to the margins. Alas, in contemporary American culture, outright rejection of science is a virtual prerequisite for success in either politics or the media — which means that we can no longer expect our laws and opinions to bear any relationship to reality. It would be hilarious if our lives weren’t at stake.
Warren Senders