environment Politics: denialists idiots island nations rising seas scientific consensus
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 20: Contending In Vain
The Sydney Morning Herald notes that island nations have more than rising seas to worry about:
The delegation of parliamentarians from four tropical Pacific Islands nations braved the Canberra cold last week, and that wasn’t the only climate shock they suffered.
They watched the impressive intellectual exchange of question time in the House of Representatives on Wednesday and then moved on. But almost as soon as they left, Parliament started to debate a motion on whether the science of man-made climate change was real. This came as a bit of a jolt to the legislator visiting from Kiribati, a country of about 100,000 people on 33 small, low-lying islands strung along 5000 kilometres of the equator.
“Climate change is real in our places,” Rimeta Beniamina, a government MP and vice-chairman of his parliament’s climate change committee, told me, expressing surprise at what was going on in the chamber a few metres away.
“A few years ago it was not taken very seriously. But now quite a few villages are experiencing hardship. Beaches are eroding, houses are falling down, crops are damaged and livelihoods are destroyed.
Advertisement“The intrusion of salt water is very evident. The sea level may be rising millimetres a year, but it is still rising. The strong winds and rising tides are the worst part. Once the salt water enters the land, that’s it. Trees are falling along the coast, crops dying, pigs and chickens are affected.”
Finding the link for sending letters to the SMH was a nightmare all its own. June 5:
For Kiribati, the tiny Pacific island which now faces submergence beneath ominously rising seas, and whose entire carbon footprint is probably not much larger than that of a single wealthy Western consumer, rejecting the overwhelming evidence of global warming is an impossible absurdity. It is telling that nowhere but in the developed world do we find the institutionalized denial of climate science; nowhere but among the nations whose profligate greenhouse emissions triggered the problem in the first place.
Climate denialism is heavily underwritten by corporations with enormous economic interests built on a fossil-fuel-based economy. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into the coffers of a complaisant media and political establishment to perpetuate the myth that the science of climate change “isn’t settled.” For the world’s island nations, to suggest that the reality of climate change is still an unanswered question is to add gross insult to profound injury.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists greed Ken Cuccinelli Michael Mann
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 17: Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down
The Roanoke News takes on Ken Cuccinelli in a must-read column by Dan Casey:
The question of the day is, did Cuccinelli learn his law school lessons about fraud? His tenure as attorney general leaves you wondering. Let’s consider two prominent fraud cases Cuccinelli has been mixed up in.
The first concerns former University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann, who’s now at Penn State. While he was at UVa, Mann published a paper that revealed the “hockey stick graph,” a chart that showed steeply rising temperatures on Earth in the past 100 years.
(snip)
During its probe, the attorney general’s office demanded UVa turn over many documents, including emails between Mann and 39 other climate scientists around the world that went back more than a decade. Nearly two years later, the Virginia Supreme Court shot down the fishing expedition, and the investigation ended.
(snip)
The second case involves an alleged Florida con man who, under the fake identity “Bobby Thompson,” created and ran the U.S. Navy Veterans Association scam. Via telemarketing, the group raked in as much as $100 million nationwide; it reported taking in more than $2.6 million from Virginians in 2009 alone.
That year, Virginia suspended fundraising by the U.S. Navy Vets because it had failed to comply with charity paperwork reporting requirements. Rather than submit the paperwork, Thompson made $67,500 in campaign contributions to Virginia lawmakers.
Of that, $55,500 went in three separate contributions to then-state senator Cuccinelli, who was running for attorney general. Cuccinelli personally telephoned Thompson in August 2009 and requested the third contribution. That one was for $50,000.
Go read the whole thing. June 2:
Understanding Ken Cuccinelli’s crusade against climatologist Michael Mann requires us to look beyond the Attorney General’s contemptible defense of a garden-variety swindlers. Since politicians and lawyers often have a great affinity for con men, it’s hardly surprising that Cuccinelli wound up in “Bobby Thompson’s” corner.
Mann, on the other hand, is a scientist who has spent his professional life in a search, not for riches, but for robust historical evidence about the ongoing changes in Earth’s climate. Because his findings and analyses were problematic for the corporate forces who’ve bankrolled climate-change denial in America for decades, his work had to be discredited at all costs — hence the usefulness of an ideologically-propelled Attorney General.
Cuccinelli’s vindictiveness has historical parallels. For example, take the 19th-century discoverer of antisepsis: Ignaz Semmelweiss died at 47 after his life-saving findings were denounced by medical professionals who resented being told to wash their hands. Climatologists like Michael Mann are planetary doctors; rejecting their findings will translate into unimaginable losses of life and property in the coming decades — losses which will redden the hands of anti-science zealots like Cuccinelli, and be remembered throughout human history as a tragedy triggered by greed and ignorance.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 16: I Ain’t Got Nobody That I Can Depend On
The Tampa Bay Times runs a remarkable document:
Editor’s note: A Yale University student from Miami and a fellow classmate have won the inaugural writing competition sponsored by the Energy & Enterprise Initiative founded by former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Their winning essay, written in the form of a letter to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is in print for the first time here.
Dear Senator Rubio,
To many young conservatives like us, it seems that our politics has ridden roughshod all over our ideals. For no issue is this truer than climate change. We are counting on leaders like you to show the country that conservatives have responsible, pro-growth solutions to pressing challenges that young people care about. There is a generation of fiscally conservative Millennials who neither wish to inherit crushing debt nor an abused environment. You are one of the few conservative leaders capable of leading on this issue.
By leading on prudent climate solutions, we can defend and strengthen the free-market system that has produced so much prosperity for America and the world. We can reinvigorate the principle of personal responsibility that our communities require to thrive. And we can bolster America’s energy security.
Conservatives have rightly opposed many of the climate change proposals offered by the Left. But standing against bad policy does not require hiding from good science. We can’t govern responsibly by belittling America’s National Academy of Sciences (and all the other science academies on the planet). We can only govern responsibly by confronting the reality that we will be forced to spend big money dealing with the effects of climate change — money that won’t be invested in our communities, our schools, or our private enterprises.
Aren’t they just adorable? June 1:
In their hypothetical letter to Senator Rubio, Rafael Fernandez and Taylor Gregoire-Wright blithely assume that conservatives can address climate change responsibly and intelligently. Their naivete is touching; Rubio is, after all, the senator who couldn’t bring himself to publicly acknowledge what science tells us about the age of the universe for fear of offending the Young-Earth creationists in his constituency.
Yes, once upon a time there were pro-business Republican politicians who recognized that intelligently conceived public policy required, well…intelligence. But that was long ago. In its aggressively faux-populist anti-intellectualism, today’s GOP rejects anything that smacks of reason, logic, or expertise.
As long as the Republican party’s held hostage by the proudly ignorant, responsible solutions to even trivial problems are unlikely to emerge — and the climate crisis is anything but trivial. In their laudable advocacy of reality-based solutions to a genuine emergency, Fernandez and Gregoire-Wright sound suspiciously like (gasp!) liberals.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: allergies corporate irresponsibility denialists hay fever public health
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 15: Today Is The Tomorrow You Worried About Yesterday
USA Today tells us (again!) about allergies:
MELROSE PARK, Ill. — From the roof of the Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in the Chicago suburbs, an 83-year-old retired doctor finds troubling evidence of why so many people are sneezing and itching their eyes.
Joseph Leija counts the pollen and mold spores that collect on slides inside an air-sucking machine atop the six-story building. “There’s been an increase, no doubt about it,” he says of the 5 a.m. weekday counts that he’s been doing as a volunteer for 24 years.
“My allergies are much worse than they used to be,” says Amanda Carwyle, a mom of three who lives 95 miles south in Pontiac, Ill. “I used to be able to take a Benadryl or Claritin and be fine.” Now, despite three medications and allergy shots that make her feel a bit like a zombie, she says her eyes are watery and her head stuffy. “I’m so miserable.”
Good health! May 31:
All the self-styled “fiscal conservatives” who loudly assert that addressing global climate change would cost too much need to start paying attention to the externalities which accompany the rapidly intensifying greenhouse effect. Repairing infrastructure, revamping agriculture, cleaning up after the tornadoes and hurricanes — all these take money, and lots of it.
Now we can add another item to the list: the cumulative cost in human time and productivity due to worsening allergies. Any hay fever sufferer will agree that there’s nothing funny about the affliction, and when the number of hours lost to runny noses, streaming eyes, and asthmatic attacks are toted up, the sum should be cause for alarm, even to those politicians who’ve built their careers on attacking climate science’s conclusions.
While antihistamine manufacturers can look forward to record-breaking profits, the public health consequences of continuing to ignore the climate crisis are nothing to sneeze at.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 9: Billiard Balls
The Philadelphia Inquirer runs an op-ed on climate change. Illustrated, presciently, with this picture: 
.
Nice.
With a new study showing 97 percent of scientific papers on climate change since 1991 agree that fossil fuels are largely responsible, the doubters need to stand aside so public-policy initiatives to protect the Earth can proceed.
There is as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now as there was in the Pliocene Age, three million years ago, when oceans were 70 feet higher and temperatures warmer. Carbon dioxide levels are 41 percent higher now than during the Industrial Revolution – and climbing.
The doubters, though, have done a lot of damage. By insisting climate change isn’t occurring, or not caused by human use of fossil fuels and industrialization, they have reduced investments in alternative energy and slowed the progress of policies such as demanding higher vehicle gas mileage and imposing stronger emission standards on coal plants.
Their ranting has so muddied the water that less than half of the American public knows that most scientists agree that fossil fuels cause climate change, according to a Pew Research study. They have spewed so much misinformation that politicians, including President Obama, appear afraid to call them out.
So….I did the best I could with it:
The illustration accompanying Sunday’s editorial on climate change is curiously and ironically appropriate. The mastodon — a prehistoric version of the elephant — could be a fine symbol for the regressive and anti-science Republican party which has done so much to hinder our national ability to respond to a clear and rapidly growing threat. With an all-encompassing disregard for the intellectual advances made during the past several hundred years, today’s GOP is nostalgic, not for the Leave-It-To-Beaver Eisenhower decades, but for the Dark Ages.
This would be hilarious if it were in a movie, but as a recipe for governance, it’s a terrible mess. When legislators who deny cosmology, biology, climatology and physics can influence our public policies on matters of scientific fact, it’s potentially disastrous, as our current inability to address the accelerating greenhouse effect makes clear. Will inaction on climate change consign us, with the mastodon, to extinction?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists heroes idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 7: I Knew That Would Happen!
Meet Paul Coyne, a congressional candidate in California. He’s a Republican, hence an ignorant asshole. The Ventura County Reporter:
Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara/Ventura, co-sponsored a House resolution suggesting there may be a link between prostitution and climate change, and Paul Coyne, Jr., a 2014 candidate for Capps’ congressional seat, has pounced on her for making such a claim.
“This is over the edge and a little out of touch with reality and the needs of our district right now,” said Coyne. “People are searching for jobs, looking for their next meal. There are higher priorities than this.”
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, introduced the resolution that says climate change can cause drought and reduced agricultural output, which can be harmful for women who have limited socioeconomic resources and “may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy and poor reproductive health.”
Because weather patterns are changing, chances for regional conflict increase with climate change, the resolution says. This could lead to a refugee and migration crisis, which also links to prostitution.
Bet you didn’t see that coming. May 24:
One of the commonest phrases heard from conservative politicians is “nobody anticipated.” “Nobody” anticipated the crumbling levees in New Orleans during Katrina, the disastrous consequences of the Iraq invasion, the environmental impacts of oil spills, the widespread infrastructural failures that happen when the funding for public works is pulled, or the horrors of 9/11 (the August 6 PDB notwithstanding). And “nobody” is anticipating the thousands of large and small repercussions of global climate change, such as invasive insect pests, resurgent tropical diseases, agricultural collapses — and profound consequences for women around the world who are struggling in poverty.
“Nobody,” that is, except environmentalists, scientists, and the occasional politician like Lois Capps, who recognizes that an important and essential function of effective government is to analyze and consider the possible repercussions of our laws and policies. By mocking Representative Capps, Paul Coyne shows himself ignorant of the deeper responsibilities of public service.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists heroes Republican obstructionism Storms
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 4: Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah.
The New York Daily News, on Sheldon Whitehouse and Oklahoma:
A Democratic Senator who came under fire for linking turbulent weather in Oklahoma to Republican politicians who don’t believe in climate change has apologized for the ill-timed remarks.
Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse on Wednesday said he wasn’t aware that deadly tornadoes were hitting Oklahoma at the same time he made his statement, in which he criticized Republicans who take issue with climate change but still seek out federal relief funds after natural disasters.
“Tragically and unbeknownst to the senator at the time, a series of tornadoes were hitting Oklahoma at the same moment he gave his remarks,” a Whitehouse spokesman told FoxNews.com
“Senator Whitehouse regrets the timing of his speech and offers his thoughts and prayers to the victims of yesterday’s storms and their families, and he stands ready to work with the senators from Oklahoma to assist them and their constituents in this time of need,” the spokesman added.
As you value your sanity, avoid the comment thread on this article. May 23:
Sheldon Whitehouse’s weekly speeches frequently note the impact of extreme weather events on different states in the US. While his apology for the timing of a recent address is gracious and welcome, he’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Oklahoma’s own Senators, by contrast, are a different story. Tom Coburn’s “fiscal conservatism” is a kind of derangement in which spurious principles are misapplied to the detriment of his own constituents — while James Inhofe’s career is based on denying basic science when it conflicts with his ideological prejudices and the desires of his paymasters in the fossil-fuel industry.
Storms are caused by heat; a hotter world feeds more storms. Insurance companies are already observing a steady rise in storm-caused property damage, which is going to cost them real money, which is why, unlike Mr. Inhofe and his denialist colleagues in Congress, they’re taking the problem seriously. Like Senator Whitehouse.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists extreme weather Republican obstructionism Storms tornadoes
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 3: The Music Goes Round And Round
Lee Sandlin, in USA Today, on the OK Tornadoes:
The truth is that tornadoes like this are rare but not unheard-of. They have been part of the reality of life in the American heartland for centuries. So why do people have the idea that there is something so horribly sinister about this newest one?
Partly, of course, it’s the sheer overwhelming violence and terror of the tornado itself, transmitted in real-time and viewed over and over again by millions of people on news websites and the Internet. This naturally has the effect of dulling the memory of previous catastrophes.
There is also the current tendency of the news media to treat every meteorological event in apocalyptic terms. But now there is also our growing urgency about climate change. In much of the online discussion about what happened in Moore, we can hear the repeated fear that there’s something unnatural going on with the weather, that this one event — and if not this one, then surely the next — will be the tipping point for global disaster.
Among meteorologists there is a widespread consensus that climate change is real, but very little concern about what one specific tornado may or may not prove about it. In the first decade of this century, there were only three EF-5 tornadoes anywhere in North America; nobody knows why. In 2011 alone there were six.
What should concern us is what a tornado like the one in Moore says about the heedless way we occupy the American landscape. The heartland is being enormously overbuilt. Tornadoes are going to be more frequent occurrences in densely inhabited areas because there are going to be fewer empty places for them to touch down.
Whatever happens to the larger climate, events like Moore are increasingly going to be the norm.
Much of this letter was cribbed from information in Greg Laden’s blog. May 22:
Science can’t say definitively that climate change was responsible for a specific tornado, or any other example of extreme weather, but it can confirm that the accelerating greenhouse effect is clearly linked to an overall increase in storminess.
Tornadoes are so variable in distribution and strength that they’re poor indicators — but storms in general result from unevenly distributed heat in tropical areas (like the Gulf of Mexico) which moves Northward via air and water currents. A hotter world means more food for storms; although it’s impossible to say what particular types of storms will increase, we can see a steady rise in storm-caused property damage. Unlike the reality-detached denialists in Congress, insurance companies use real numbers, and stand to lose real money, which is why they’re making plans to address the problem. Isn’t it time America’s lawmakers started taking the threat of climate change with the seriousness it deserves?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Keystone XL stupidity
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 1: Do It To Me One More Time
I’m soooooo tired of these assholes. WaPo:
Climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed thoughtfully and objectively. Unfortunately, claims that distort the facts hinder the legitimate evaluation of policy options. The rhetoric has driven some policymakers toward costly regulations and policies that will harm hardworking American families and do little to decrease global carbon emissions. The Obama administration’s decision to delay, and possibly deny, the Keystone XL pipeline is a prime example.
The State Department has found that the pipeline will have minimal impact on the surrounding environment and no significant effect on the climate. Recent expert testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology confirms this finding. In fact, even if the pipeline is approved and is used at maximum capacity, the resulting increase in carbon dioxide emissions would be a mere 12 one-thousandths of 1 percent (0.0012 percent). There is scant scientific or environmental justification for refusing to approve the pipeline, a project that the State Department has also found would generate more than 40,000 U.S. jobs.
Buffoon. Ignoramus. Weasel-minded smeghead. And those are his good points. May 20:
Let’s ignore the predictable irony of a Republican lawmaker decrying “overheated rhetoric” on climate change; that’s a cheap shot at Rep. Lamar Smith’s disingenuous defense of the Keystone XL project. Instead let’s just point out the State Department study extolling the pipeline was written by a TransCanada contractor, and its key assertion that the pipeline wouldn’t significantly increase greenhouse emissions was, according to analysts at “Scientific American,” predicated on the assumption that the tar sands oil would be extracted anyway, pipeline or no
Did I say disingenuous? More like mendacious. Rep. Smith also claims that the KXL project would create 40,000 jobs, an assertion that’s simply false — unless he’s thinking of the thousands of cleanup specialists, public-health experts, class action lawyers, insurance adjusters, water purification experts, oncologists, and funeral directors whose employment security will be guaranteed for decades to come if this disaster-in-the-making finds its way across American soil.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 31: A Miasmatic Cloud Of Purple Stink
The San Diego Union-Times notes that their city’s residents are looking around them, and not liking what they see:
More than four out of five San Diegans are concerned about climate change, according to a newly released poll commissioned by a coalition of local universities and policy groups.
The telephone survey of 1,211 residents found that 84 percent of respondents believe climate change is happening, but that more than half think it’s not caused by human activities. About 72 percent believe climate change will affect them personally, while 58 percent believe their actions can make a difference in curtailing its effects.
Climate Education Partners, which commissioned the polling, includes the University of San Diego, California State University San Marcos, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the San Diego Foundation.
The survey of randomly selected residents cut across ethnic, economic and political lines, with 30 percent of participants answering in Spanish, said Michel Boudrias, lead scientist for Climate Education Partners and chairman of the University of San Diego’s department of marine science and environmental studies.
The Times-Union has a 125-word limit, most anomalously. May 19:
As atmospheric CO2 creeps ominously past the 400 ppm level, the day-to-day signs of global climate change are everywhere. Droughts, extreme storms, unpredictable temperature swings, longer and more intense fire seasons — name a place on Earth, and there are indicators that catastrophic climate shifts are under way.
With one shameful exception.
In the air-conditioned offices of fossil-fuel CEOs (along with the politicians and media figures they employ), there’s nothing to worry about. Insulated by billions of dollars from the terrifying realities of a climatically transformed planet, these malefactors of great wealth wield grossly disproportionate influence over our national and regional politics — an influence which they are using to block any responsible policy initiatives on climate change and the necessary transformations of our energy economy.