environment Politics: assholes Barack Obama denialists idiots nuclear power timidity
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 11: Tearing My Hair.
The April 2 issue of the Boston Globe has a column by Derrick Jackson noting the seeming inability of our president to actually, you know, do or say something that might have an effect on the climate change front:
PRESIDENT OBAMA seems increasingly drained of the juice needed to power up a modern vision on energy. Completely absent from his address this week at Georgetown University was his promise as a candidate to go after windfall profits of oil companies and reinvest the money into wind, solar, and biofuels. Instead, he promised to expedite new shallow and deepwater oil drilling permits, even as top environmentalists say many questions remain after the BP spill disaster.
More than ever, he is wedded to pursuing “clean coal’’ and nuclear power. Meanwhile, radiation from the Japan nuclear disaster was measured thousands of times above safety levels in seawater and groundwater near the plant and in soil 25 miles away, at levels double those found in areas declared inhabitable around Chernobyl.
Most important, there continues to be no direct message to the American people that we are living in an unsustainable fantasy, consuming a quarter of the world’s energy. There was no hint of things that would instantly make Americans rethink consumption, such as a gas tax. For the moment, the road-blocking Republicans are winning the day with an ethos symbolized by Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, a potential presidential candidate. Last week Barbour told Iowa Republicans, “We need more oil. We need more gas. We need more coal. We need more nuclear. We need more American energy.”
Jackson is one of the best columnists writing today; I’m very glad he’s at the Globe. This was sent April 2, and has been published:
The timidity of the Obama administration when it comes to the transformation of America’s energy economy is profoundly disturbing. The facts of climate change are firmly established, with only a few petroleum-funded contrarians on the fringes of a global scientific consensus. The economics of renewable energy look more attractive every day, as are the geopolitical ramifications of getting more of our national energy requirements from within our own borders. The long-term costs of fossil fuels are harder and harder to hide, as we confront the health effects and environmental impacts of our profligate burning of oil and coal. Why, then, is the President so leery of taking a strong stand? The pusillanimity of the present administration only makes sense when viewed diagnostically: the extent to which our politics is paralyzed on this issue is a measure of the disproportionate influence of big oil and big coal in our nation’s governance.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 10: Ignorance Is Very Expensive
The just-released Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study confirms what we all know:
Preliminary results from a controversial study of global temperature data confirm the overall warming trend long reported by government scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom, the study’s director told a House panel today.
The warming trend detected by scientists involved in the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study — a rise of 0.7 degree Celsius since 1957 — “is very similar” to the findings of independent analyses by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.K. Hadley Centre, study Chairman Richard Muller said.
“The world temperature data has sufficient integrity to be used to determine temperature trends,” said Muller, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Published by the New York Times. One hopes they’ll get on board and stop equivocating about climate change.
This letter took a long time to write for a “Republicans are idiots” motif. The idea’s shape was tricky, and I’m still not 100% satisfied. Nevertheless, this went to the NYT on April 1:
While the Berkeley study is another piece of evidence added to an overwhelming consensus on climate change, it’s probably too much to ask Congress’ denialists to pay attention. These same politicians have a long history of ignoring evidence first, and saying “who could have known?” later. Who could have known the levees would break, that there weren’t any WMDs, that management was cutting corners on the Deepwater Horizon? The increasing flow of scientific reports confirming the serious reality of global climate change should make it a little harder for Republican legislators to plead ignorance of the climate threat; perhaps in future decades their apologists will try and excuse their malfeasance by asking, who could have known it was a bad idea to so politicize scientific evidence that expert witnesses became props in a cynical theater of ignorance, and policy was crafted in utter disregard of facts? Who could have known?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 9: Maybe They’re Just Waiting For The Rapture?
It’s March 31 as I write this; it’s supposed to snow heavily tomorrow, which is crazy. Boston weather is like that anyway, and as we enter the new Anthropocene Epoch it’s going to get more and more so.
There was an excellent article in the Miami Herald giving a good slam to climate change denialism. It’s well worth a read:
Recently, I went to Capitol Hill with members of Generation Hot (and the Sierra Club, our country’s largest grass-roots environmental organization) to confront the politicians whose denials and delay have done so much to land Generation Hot in this predicament. We wanted to know why my daughter and the other 2 billion members of Generation Hot have to suffer because Republicans in Congress refuse to accept what virtually every major scientific organization in the world, including our own National Academy of Sciences, has said: Man-made climate change is happening now and extremely dangerous.
Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who has famously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” told our group that “the science is mixed” and his scientists know better than ours. Frank Maisano, a public-relations consultant for big energy companies, told us that “the science doesn’t matter”; what matters is what’s politically feasible.
“The science does matter,” Caroline Selle, a member of our group who works for the Energy Action Coalition, responded in a blog the following day. Selle added: “We face a climate catastrophe that will define our generation and the future of our country, and the solutions to this crisis will create jobs and improve public health. So why aren’t we acting? Unfortunately, the answer is simple: Capitol Hill is swarming with ‘climate cranks’ – politicians willing to trade our future for their own political gain.”
I’m very tired, sore and cranky today. Sent on March 31:
“Generation Hot” is a compelling phrase, and I’m indebted to Mark Hertsgaard for adding it to my lexicon. It is a sad commentary on the state of public discourse in America that the gravest threat our species has faced in millennia is treated as fodder for political grandstanding rather than informed discussion. The online comments on any article about climate change reveals the degree of emotional investment felt by climate denialists, who feel compelled to reject scientific expertise in favor of vague, implausible conspiracy theories (look out! Al Gore’s gonna take away your SUV!). In the 1950s and 60s, America’s positive attitude toward science led us to unimaginable heights of achievement; in the past few decades, ideological rejection of reality-based thinking has made us a nation of scientific illiterates — and led us to the brink of climatic disaster. “Generation Hot” will rightly curse us for our ignorance and irresponsibility.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 3: Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds
The Centre Daily Times, based in the improbably named State College, PA, runs a column by Amitabh Pal, noting that for several decades the US has been pretty much useless when it comes to meaningful governmental action on climate change. Not that this is a big surprise or anything.
There aren’t a lot of comments but most are of the “you-libs-are-gonna-get-what’s-coming-to-you-algore-is-fat-you’ll-get-my-SUV-when-you-pry-my-cold-dead-hands-off-it” variety.
Sent March 26:
Future generations will look back on this time with incredulity. As they contend with unpredictable weather patterns that render large-scale agriculture increasingly ineffective, our descendants won’t understand why — when we knew for decades what was going to happen to the Earth’s climate — we failed to stop our species’ profligate ways. As rising sea waters force them to relocate further inland, they’ll wonder: since Arctic ice melt as a consequence of the greenhouse effect was predicted in 1953, why did it take us well over half a century…to do nothing? From the next century, this era will seem utterly bizarre; how could the world’s most powerful economic actors decide it was in their best interest to ignore climatic reality and fund massive misinformation campaigns? How could ordinary citizens be so deceived that they ignored the evidence while it accumulated in front of their eyes? Future generations will surely ask these questions — when they’re not cursing us for our lassitude, apathy, and willful ignorance.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists heroes idiots
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 1: How To Handle A Fool
John Abraham is one of my heroes. He’s a climate scientist who’s actually taking the battle to the denialists, one at a time. Most recently, he skewered a neoconservative radio host named Jason Lewis who wrote a collection of the usual bullshit for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
I thought I’d get his back on this one. Sent March 23:
It is refreshing to read what an actual scientist has to say about Jason Lewis’ denialist shibboleths. John Abraham has devoted significant time and attention to the debunking that is essential for the discussion of climate and energy policy to move forward, but in one area he’s avoided the exact truth. Perhaps his gracious euphemisms indicate that he’s just too polite to describe Mr. Lewis with scientific accuracy. I’m not. Jason Lewis is a well-paid professional liar, provided with irrelevant and confusing talking points by his paymasters in the fossil fuel industries. Lewis and the rest of his denialist brethren fail to recognize that if climate change is as big a threat as scientists say it is, then there is no longer any room in responsible debate for misdirection and mendacity. Who should we trust? Scientific experts with decades of experience — or vocational misinformers with good radio voices?
Warren Senders
environment: coastlines denialists idiots New Jersey rising sea levels
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 29: Maybe If Springsteen Said It, They’d Pay Attention
The Asbury Park Press (NJ) discusses the conclusions of a local scientist who states that New Jersey’s coast is in danger from global warming:
LONG BEACH TOWNSHIP — While the economy may be the most immediate issue, climate change is on our doorstep, said Melanie Reding, education coordinator for the Jacques Cousteau Coastal Education Center in Little Egg Harbor.
Reding spoke Saturday about sea level rise and what warming oceans mean for New Jersey’s coast, to an audience at the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences.
“New Jersey has a real issue,” Reding said. “Sixty percent of our population lives within the coastal region. We have low elevation and high population.”
The comments are a wellspring of stupid, with a few sensible voices bobbing up to the top of the froth.
Sent March 20:
When scientists announce that sea levels will rise dramatically by the end of the century, most of us just tune out; that’s a problem for our grandchildren, not for us. But this way of thinking is dramatically challenged by the facts of climate change. We’re in the early stages of a slow-motion catastrophe; if we care about our descendants (or indeed any future generations of humans) we must learn to think beyond the next season of “American Idol” — and into a future where our children and their children in turn will face the consequences of our generation’s oblivious wastefulness. And yet there are many people for whom the denialist shibboleths incessantly promulgated by our anti-science media form an essential supply of talking points. Scratch the surface of any climate-change “skeptic” and you’ll find something far more familiar: someone unwilling to accept responsibility or admit that change is necessary.
Warren Senders
environment: agriculture denialists food maple syrup
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 26: Luckily We’ll Have GMO HFCS Instead.
The Danbury, CT News-Times runs a piece by Robert Miller on the future of maple syrup in a climatically reconfigured New England:
It’s not that there will no longer be maple syrup. It’s just that it won’t be made here. It will have to be shipped south for Connecticut pancakes.
(snip)
it’s not as if the maples in the state will move en masse and quickly.(snip)
But if we do lose them, it will matter.
The native Americans in New England were making maple sugar before the Europeans arrived.
People have been walking in the winter woods, tasting the sweetness they have to offer, for a very long time.
Sent on March 25:
It’s saddening to think of New England’s maples slowly giving way to other species, and of the small farmers whose trees produce syrup for the region’s pancakes and waffles — and who’ll be shutting down their operations. Seen in isolation, this is a minor historical blip: there’s nothing unusual about a local food becoming harder to find. But the culinary consequences of climate change are hardly limited to America’s Northeastern states. The extreme weather conditions of anthropogenic global warming will have a huge agricultural effect. Considering the vulnerabilities of our staple crops is a sobering experience: a single day’s anomalous high temperatures can devastate corn harvests; monsoon failures can wreak havoc on rice production; wheat is likewise extremely vulnerable — hardly a single product of human agriculture won’t be adversely impacted. Climate change denialists need to wake up and smell the coffee — before that’s gone, too.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists EPA idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 25: Rush Would Like That.
The San Francisco Chronicle documents the insanity in the House of Representatives. Like the BP oil spill, Republican denialism and stupidity makes letter-writing easy. I wish it were a lot harder. Don’t you?
Sent March 16:
If only the stakes weren’t so high, we could enjoy the spectacle of the Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee steadfastly denying politically troublesome reality. Forget about adopting a meaningful energy and emissions policy; these worthies not only won’t admit that climate change might present a problem to our country’s agriculture, infrastructure and public health, they’re unwilling to go on record as acknowledging that it even exists. For anyone who’s been following the scientific evidence over the past several decades, the human causes of global warming are undeniable. Unlike the urban legend of Alabama legislators declaring pi equal to three, today’s anti-science Republicans are all too real, and their readiness to ignore evidence and expertise when formulating policy is an embarrassment to America’s reputation, and a source of grave danger to our future as a nation. What will the GOP try to nullify next? Gravity?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes blue dog democrats denialists EPA idiots quislings shame traitors to the planet
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 24: Subtract The Second “M”
It must be really hard to be a progressive in Utah. The Salt Lake Tribune runs a story: one of the Utah Democrats in the House inserted an amendment that acknowledges the existence of climate change, but stops short of noting that it’s caused by humans. And the guy is proud of himself:
Matheson’s language, which doesn’t require any action, simply says that there’s established science that climate change is occurring and that Congress needs to have a policy to address it.
Matheson, whose congressional website says that climate change is human-caused, says with such a partisan divide he was attempting to find common ground.
“My goal was to show there is some basis where this committee can agree on something,” Matheson said later. “The only amendment approved all day was mine. My amendment reached consensus that everyone agrees there is a problem. I think that was a positive step.”
Additionally, Matheson argued that his amendment doesn’t say human activity didn’t cause climate change.
And another one of his idiotic Blue Dog pals came up with this reeker:
Rep. Mike Ross, a fellow Blue Dog Democrat from Arkansas further changed Matheson’s language to say that Congress could only address climate change in a way that doesn’t “adversely affect the American economy, energy supplies and employment.”
Both of these guys then voted with the Republicans in favor of limiting the EPA’s regulatory authority.
Sent March 15:
Rep. Matheson’s self-congratulatory tone with regard to his amendment on climate change is baffling — for anyone who’s actually following the science. At this point, the worldwide climatological consensus is absolutely overwhelming; while Matheson’s own website states that climate change is caused by human activity, his unwillingness to stand up for this belief suggests that he values legislative consensus more than factuality. Acknowledging the existence of climate change without addressing its causes is like describing reckless driving without mentioning the guy behind the wheel. Given the effects of increased extreme weather on America’s agriculture and infrastructure, Rep. Mike Ross’ statement that attempts to deal with climatic transformations must not “adversely affect the economy” is even more absurd. Climate change is what’s going to adversely affect our economy; preparing for it is (or should be) simple common sense. When floodwaters are rising, only an idiot complains that sandbags are too expensive.
Warren Senders
This one got published, and is attracting some comments.
environment Politics: assholes CIA denialists idiots Navy Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 21: Rep. Upton? It’s David Koch For You, On Line Seven.
The Boston Globe runs an AP piece on a recent study that defines the task of the Navy in coping with a post-global-warming planet:
WASHINGTON—The Navy and Coast Guard need to prepare for more missions in the Arctic, and plan for potential damage to bases from rising sea levels, as global warming increases, the National Research Council said Thursday.
“Naval forces need to monitor more closely and start preparing now for projected challenges climate change will present in the future,” Frank L. Bowman, a retired Navy admiral who was co-chairman of the committee that wrote the report, said in a statement.
The new analysis noted that ocean sea lanes could be regularly open across the Arctic by 2030 as rising temperatures continue to melt the sea ice. It said the Navy needs to increase its cold-weather training and operations programs so it will be able to protect U.S. interests in the region.
Sent to the Boston Globe (my hometown paper!) on March 12:
As evidenced by their recent travesty of a hearing on the future of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is immune to scientific evidence on the critical issue of climate change. Apparently they are also unaffected by the opinions of experts from the CIA experts, which last year began including global warming and its epiphenomena in its analyses of potential political trouble-spots. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that the GOP will also discount the National Research Council’s advice to the Navy on preparation for a drastically hotter world. In fact, there’s only one source of authority that could transform their reflexive hostility to science. If international oil corporations changed their positions to favor reality-based climate policies, a Republican turnaround would follow as the night the day. Until that day comes, sadly, we can expect more of the same: denial and delusion.
Warren Senders