environment: corporate irresponsibility denialists Department of the Interior Water
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Year 2, Month 5, Day 5: And Not A Drop To Think
The Colorado Independent also writes about the Interior Department report on water shortages:
The report, which responds to requirements under the SECURE Water Act of 2009, shows several increased risks to western United States water resources during the 21st century. Specific projections include:
· a temperature increase of 5-7 degrees Fahrenheit;
· a precipitation increase over the northwestern and north-central portions of the western United States and a decrease over the southwestern and south-central areas;
· a decrease for almost all of the April 1st snowpack, a standard benchmark measurement used to project river basin runoff; and
· an 8 to 20 percent decrease in average annual stream flow in several river basins, including the Colorado, the Rio Grande, and the San Joaquin.
Sent April 26:
The coming decades of intensifying climate change are going to wreak a singular sort of havoc on the American West. With a history of complex water disputes going back to the first settlers in the area, Colorado’s future shortages will make those of previous centuries pale in comparison. Climate scientists have sounded the alarm for years; Secretary Salazar’s report is only the latest in a long line of studies and investigations, all pointing to more or less the same conclusion: climate change is real, it’s caused by humans, it’s happening everywhere — and it’s going to cause us all a world of hurt. Meanwhile, the national discussion of this grave danger has been grossly distorted by professional denialists, whose paymasters in the fossil fuel industry are loath to relinquish even a tiny fraction of their immense profits. Sadly, “enlightened self-interest” is as rare today as water will be in 2040.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots Water
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 5, Day 4: You Can Get It If You Dry
The Salt Lake Tribune notes a recently released report from the Department of the Interior, predicting that Utah is going to lose lots of its already meager water resources in the coming century, as climate change gets rolling in earnest:
The Colorado River Basin likely will lose about 9 percent of its annual runoff by mid-century because of a warming climate, further squeezing Utah and its neighbors in a region that already expects to struggle getting water to its growing population, according to a U.S. Interior Department report released Monday.
Bureau of Reclamation scientists calculated likely regional temperature and precipitation models based on a range of possible carbon dioxide emissions, then used the mean of the results to predict an 8.5 percent reduction in water supply. The report actually predicts a 2.1 percent increase in precipitation for the Upper Colorado Basin — of which Utah is a part — but temperatures 5 to 7 degrees warmer than today’s are expected bring more rain than snow, and enough more evaporation to sap the supply.
I used this as the hook for a pretty standard mocking-the-denialists letter. I’m tired and it’s late — and the dimbulbs commenting on this article provide an easy target. That’s my excuse. What’s yours? Sent April 25:
It’s easy to predict reactions to the Interior Department report showing Utah getting hit by water shortages from intensifying climate change. First, conspiracy theorists, who believe the world’s climatologists are part of a sinister cabal attempting to establish a Socialist New World Order featuring lightbulb police and compulsory re-education camps for SUV drivers. Next? The voices proclaiming anthropogenic global warming a fraud, promulgated by liberals and environmentalists in order to raise taxes, followed closely by those claiming “the science isn’t settled,” that “Earth’s climate has always been changing,” or that future water shortages are impossible — because it’s raining.
America’s true greatness once lay in our ability to confront difficulty head-on, turning it into opportunity. By shutting their eyes to the scary truth of climate change, the denialist voices are betraying our country’s heritage of innovation, resourcefulness and creativity — a heritage we’ll surely need in the thirsty decades ahead.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists Massachusetts media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 24: I Don’t Know Much About Science, But I Know What I Like
The local MetroWest Newspaper describes the recent study showing that people in Massachusetts are convinced that climate change is happening…but are somewhat unclear on how bad it is or, you know, who dunnit.
And they quote a scientist, an environmentalist, and a tea partier:
“I don’t know what I believe, because I’m not a scientist,” Greater Boston Tea Party head Christen Varley of Holliston said.
Varley, who grows some of her food and recycles, cited an earlier email controversy at a research center and mistakes in some reports. If the government tries to make changes, she said, it should do so with incentives, not regulations and mandates.
Sent April 14:
When Christen Varley, the spokeswoman from the Greater Boston Tea Party, says, “I don’t know what I believe, because I’m not a scientist,” it sounds very much like an endorsement of scientific expertise — always a good stance to take on a question of science! I assume that , if she were a scientist, she’d know what she believed about climate change — because scientists make it their business to know the facts. I’m not a scientist either, but I know enough about science to follow the issue, and I would like to assure Ms. Varley that there is no longer any scientific dispute either on the magnitude of the climate crisis, or the fact that it’s caused by human activity. That many Americans don’t recognize the problem’s urgency or severity is a demonstration of the influence of corporate power on our news media. It’s also a terrible shame.
Warren Senders
environment humor Politics: assholes denialists EPA fun with analogies idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 22: Move Over, Earthlings! The Planet {!Z@p&rd*p*!} Needs Lebensraum.
Chronic morosity and worriage is not generally compatible with prosidic goofiness. But today I made an exception for this LTE to the Reno News & Review, which ran a short piece about the pod people on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
This one was mailed a while back but somehow failed to make it onto the schedule for posting. Mailed March 17:
It reads like the plot of a late-night “B” movie: aliens take over the bodies of American politicians and start passing laws undermining America’s support for science. If the current crop of GOP legislators were actually extras in a “Plan 9 From Outer Space” knockoff, we’d be able to sit back and munch popcorn while making jokes at their expense. Given the potential for crippling impacts on American agriculture, infrastructure and public health from runaway climate change, it’s astonishing that the Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee won’t even admit the problem exists, let alone take steps to address it. These cynical opportunists really do walk, talk and legislate like enemies of our species, making a compelling case for the “alien enemy” hypothesis. Unfortunately, these invaders from the Tea-party Nebula are entirely real, and their anti-science agenda is endangering both our global reputation and our national future.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists United Nations
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 19: Endarkened Self-Interest…?
The Daily Nation (Kenya) runs an editorial calling on the developed world to actually do something about climate change, rather than continually playing political and rhetorical games without following through on anything.
Poor nations are demanding that developed countries agree to a legally binding greenhouse gas reduction commitment under an updated protocol.
They want the speeding up of an earlier deal reached in December, which included a Green Climate Fund to aid poor nations and to limit a rise in average world temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius.
Now some rich nations seem to have turned against such an agreement because China and the US are not part of it.
The US, the world’s biggest polluter, has never signed the Kyoto Protocol.
This standoff is most likely to continue during the climate conference in Durban, South Africa, at the end of the year, with little hope that a binding agreement will be signed.
The frequency and magnitude of climate driven disasters will intensify and can hit any part of the world.
It is time leading economies took decisive action for the long-term interest of the world.
Good luck, guys. You’ll need it. Sent April 10:
The economic and sociopolitical consequences of climate change over the next few decades are going to be severe, no matter what agreements are reached in the upcoming Durban conference. But it is emphatically the case not only that the world’s wealthiest nations are also its greatest contributors to the greenhouse effect — but that they’ve shown a grotesque unwillingness to consider any actions that might actually have a measurable impact on the planet’s future. In the United States, political progress on climate change has been effectively stalled by a group of anti-science, anti-reality demagogues whose electoral success is due to the deep pockets of their Big Oil puppetmasters. Fixated on short-term profit margins, fossil fuel industries don’t care about the future of humanity as long as they can continue to sell their products. This is, of course, the exact opposite of “enlightened self-interest.” It’s unfortunate that we can’t burn irony.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists scientific consensus United Nations
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 18: What A Wonderful World
The San Jose Mercury News runs an AP article on the halting, lurching progress of the world’s governments towards some sort of actual, you know, meaningful agreement on climate change:
World stumbles toward climate summit
By DENIS D. GRAY Associated PressBANGKOK—Nineteen years after the world started to take climate change seriously, delegates from around the globe spent five days talking about what they will talk about at a year-end conference in South Africa. They agreed to talk about their opposing viewpoints.
Delegates from 173 nations did agree that delays in averting global warming merely fast-forward the risk of plunging the world into “catastrophe.” The delegate from Bolivia noted that the international effort, which began with a 1992 U.N. convention, has so far amounted to “throwing water on a forest fire.”
This paper has an anomalous 125-word limit. Sent April 9:
It’s profoundly discouraging. Because the fossil fuel industries regard the threat to their profit margins as more urgent than the threats to human civilization posed by the greenhouse effect, they have successfully used their enormous resources to fund denialism, to sponsor politicians who will propagate a “don’t worry, be happy, keep burning oil” message, and to discredit actual scientific experts on the subject. “Stumbling” is an apt verb; our nation has been rendered almost unconscious by the toxic emissions of Big Oil and Big Coal. As they recover from our century-long carbon bonfire, our descendants will too busy struggling to survive on a newly hostile planet to do more than curse our memories. But curse us they will, unless we find the resolve to act.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Inhofe Senate Republicans
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 16: Easy Target….
The Tulsa World writes about James Inhofe’s attempt to end the EPA.
Sent April 7:
James Inhofe’s ignorance of science would be hilarious if he were not in a position of significant influence. This self-proclaimed “enemy of the environment” long ago sold his political power to the highest bidder: the big oil industries who have the most to lose from any sort of meaningful climate change legislation. He and his acolytes are hostile to any information that does not fit their preconceptions. Our political process was originally intended to deal with actual verifiable reality, including the consequences of our actions and of our inaction. Political grandstanding unconnected from facts is a prescription for disaster. In reflexively obeying their corporate paymasters, Mr. Inhofe and other members of the GOP undermine their own party’s credibility; their cavalier dismissal of the entire climate science community is grossly irresponsible. With all due respect to the Senator’s fervently held beliefs, waiting for the Rapture cannot substitute for actual fact-based policy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots James Inhofe Lindsey Graham Senate Republicans
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 15: Soon They’ll Write Legislation By Stirring Bird Entrails With A Stick.
The LA Times reports an extremely welcome piece of news:
WASHINGTON–The Obama administration and its Senate allies beat back a months-long effort by Congressional Republicans to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases, the heat-trapping emissions most scientists believe is the main contributor to global climate change.
The votes were the culmination of efforts in both chambers of Congress over the last few months to cut back on the EPA’s regulatory powers.
The efforts focus on limiting EPA’s program to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles and more recently, stationary sources like power plants and oil refineries, the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
I’ll take what I can get, these days. Sent in a state of extreme exhaustion on April 6:
Most of this country’s citizens recognize that clean air, clean water and resilient regional ecosystems are important and essential components of our national well-being. Sadly, this appears lost on scientifically ignorant GOP legislators whose eagerness to undercut any and all environmental programs seems almost gleefully nihilistic. At a time when the incontrovertible facts of global climate change are accepted by the overwhelming majority of the world’s experts in climate science, Senator Inhofe’s opposition to meaningful action on the reduction of greenhouse emissions is petulant, not principled. Meanwhile, erstwhile climate action advocate Lindsey Graham renounced his principles when he faced the electoral consequences of the tea-party’s anti-reality stance. While the defeat of Republican efforts to gut the Environmental Protection Agency is good news for all Americans, the fact that our politics is massively populated by people who reject scientific evidence when it’s ideologically inconvenient bodes ill for our future.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 14: The Science Of Suspended Disbelief
T-Paw thinks there’s still some diversity of opinion on climate change, says the Iowa Independent, which is heavily festooned with tea-party advertisements. I doubt this will get printed. Sent April 5:
Tim Pawlenty’s got it right. The science on climate change is indeed divided. Let’s look more closely at this division of opinion among climate scientists — the people who’ve studied the subject in greatest depth. A whopping three percent of climatologists disagree with the rest of their profession about the human causes of climate change. Ninety-seven to three. In fairness to Governor Pawlenty, it’s likely that his only acquaintance with climate science is at the hands of Republican political consultants, who’ve determined through rigorous statistical analysis (there’s some science, right there!) that accepting the overwhelming expert consensus on anthropogenic global warming equates to an instant and overwhelming electoral loss at the hands of tea-partiers. The future of our country and our civilization be damned; what’s important to Mr. Pawlenty and the rest of the Republican Flat-Earth society is to continue enabling the profit margins of their corporate masters.
Warren Senders
environment: climate science corporate irresponsibility denialists scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 12: Listen To The Expert. Please?
Climate scientist Ray Johnson writes a regular column for the Plattsburgh (NY) Press-Republican. This month he reviews the facts of AGW and makes the case yet again that the clever apes are the guilty parties:
When scientists measure the different isotopes of carbon in the atmosphere today, they find that the relative amount of carbon-14 compared to carbon-12 is decreasing. Since fossil fuels have been buried in the earth for millions of years, all of the carbon-14 isotope has decayed. Thus when these fuels are combusted they release the stable form of carbon (carbon-12) into the air. These emissions dilute the levels of carbon-14 normally present, which tells us that the increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming from human activities.
Climate science and science in general, is not like a house of cards and is not based on a single line of evidence. There are many, many lines of evidence and data that collectively point to a single, consistent answer: namely, that rising carbon dioxide levels from fossil fuel burning is the main driver behind global warming.
The data continue to come in. The graph here of “Arctic Sea Ice Extent” is current through March 22, 2011. Sea ice extent normally reaches its maximum in the period from Feb. 18 to March 31. This year the maximum extent, so far, was reached on March 7 and at 5,650,000 square miles is 463,000 square miles below the 1979-2000 average. This reduction in ice extent equates to an area larger than the states of California and Texas combined. That is a lot less ice.
Sent April 4:
In a country with fully functioning news media, Ray Johnson’s column on climate science would be old news. The facts about anthropogenic global warming have been known and widely accepted in the scientific community for years; Arctic ice melt caused by the greenhouse effect was discussed in the pages of a 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics! America’s problem is not that the facts are unavailable; it’s that in order to avoid surrendering one penny of their quarterly profit margins, the fossil fuel industry is willing to spend remarkable sums of money to sow confusion and delay meaningful action. As a result, remarkable and bizarre theories abound. Occam’s Razor exposes these paranoid visions; is it more likely that thousands of climate scientists all over the world are conspiring to promote Al Gore’s “New World Order” — or that the world’s most powerful economic actors don’t want to give up their enormous profits?
Warren Senders