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 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
environment Politics: assholes EPA idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 20: A Little Knowledge May Be A Dangerous Thing, But It’s Better Than A Lot Of Republicans On A House Subcommittee
As of March 11, the dingalings in the House have voted to defang the EPA. The Times:
WASHINGTON — A House subcommittee voted on Thursday to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gases, chipping away at a central pillar of the Obama administration’s evolving climate and energy strategy.
The sharply partisan vote was preordained by the Republican takeover of the House. Republicans and their industry allies accuse the administration of levying taxes on traditional energy sources through costly environmental regulations, threatening the economic recovery and driving jobs overseas.
Many Republicans also argue that global warming is an unproven theory and that no action is needed to combat it, and they are backed by lobbies representing manufacturers; small businesses; agriculture; and the chemical, coal and oil industries; all of which have a big financial stake in hamstringing the E.P.A.
Bitter. Bitter and mordant. That’s me.
Sent March 11:
It is a sad irony: as polar icecaps melt faster and faster, as freak weather events seem daily less freakish and more the norm, our House of Representatives escalates its own fight against “climate change.” Note the quotation marks — this is not a battle against a concept rather than a genuine enemy. Rather than develop strategies to ensure that our nation is prepared to cope with the compounding crises triggered by the runaway greenhouse effect, Republican legislators are developing strategies to ensure that we are protected from the dangers of climatological expertise. Just as George W. Bush’s post-9/11 advice was to “go shopping,” our petroleum-controlled congress wants us all to keep buying, driving, and consuming, securely confident that all those heat waves, anomalous storms and rising sea levels are unrelated to our warming atmosphere. Scientific ignorance is a short-lived bliss; our eventual national awakening will be ugly and painful.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 19: Just Because You’re Deluded And Stupid, That Doesn’t Make You Right
The San-Diego Union Tribune runs an article discussing the connections between global warming and all the wacky weather everyone’s been, um, enjoying recently. Reading the comments prompted this letter, sent March 10:
Increased concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide are certainly linked to the crazy weather everywhere around the globe. And while it’s scientifically impossible to attribute a single weather event to a single cause, the facts have been in for a long time: by contributing ever more to the greenhouse effect, we are “loading the dice” to make extreme weather ever more likely. Global climate change is also linked to another kind of crazy: the increasingly complex mental contortions of denialists attempting to negate mountains of corroborative evidence and an overwhelming worldwide scientific consensus. The online comments to any article on global warming offer glimpses of a bizarro world where President Obama wants to outlaw SUVs, Al Gore heads an international cabal of climatologists, scientific expertise is rejected when it doesn’t fit ideological preconceptions, and the world’s petroleum industries act from altruistic motives, untinged by any trace of greed or avarice.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots truth-telling
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 17: Truth Is A Drug
A regional paper in Florida, the Biscayne Times, runs a fabulous editorial by a guy named Jim W. Harper:
The Sun Orbits Our Flat Earth
Written By Jim W. Harper
OH, AND “CLIMATE CHANGE” IS JUST LEFT-WING PROPAGANDA
Wake up, Sen. Marco Rubio. And Gov. Rick Scott, too. You got elected after pretending that climate change doesn’t exist, but that fairy-tale position can’t last. What’s next? Are you going to deny that smoking causes cancer?
The majority of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives likewise wobble in skepticism about climate change. At least Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen got it right in 2009 when she stated that “global warming is real and man-made.”
If you won’t listen to her, ask any elementary school child, because they have ears to hear the truth. They can probably tell you these facts:
Last year was the warmest and wettest year on record.
Last decade was the hottest on record.
Last century the planet warmed by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
Got it? The earth has been getting measurably warmer since modern record-keeping began in 1880. Global warming is a fact. Don’t waste the nation’s time and money debating ideas that have been settled.
And that’s just the beginning. He sounds completely DFH, and genuinely outraged. I figured I’d get his back on this one.
Sent March 8:
Jim Harper’s op-ed is a refreshing dose of truth-telling. Future generations will look back with incredulity on the complacency of our current crop of politicians; rather than recognize what is certainly the gravest threat humanity has faced in recorded history, they’ve abdicated their responsibilities as leaders. Actually, imagining future generations looking back on this era now requires a faith in our species’ survival potential that is no longer automatic. We of the carbon-burning countries are moving the entire planet toward conditions that human beings have never before experienced. Some profess confidence that we can adapt to a radically transformed climate. Sure, given enough time, and a climate that changed gradually over many millennia. Instead, our radical energy consumption has us headed for the geological equivalent of a sudden and catastrophic impact — a planetary car crash, as it were. And the climate-change deniers in our political and media systems are making sure that none of us will be wearing our seat belts.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots Renewable Energy Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 10: An Insult to Clowns Everywhere
The Christian Science Monitor runs a pretty good article pointing out that the Republicans’ economic alarmism about environmental regulation is utter bullshit.
Sent March 2:
Given the gross fiscal irresponsibility of the current crop of Republican legislators, it should be utterly laughable to hear them pontificating that action on global climate change is somehow going to be a “job-killer.” Remember, these people recklessly squandered a massive budget surplus on tax breaks for the very wealthy and a completely unnecessary war — they couldn’t be less concerned about middle-class jobs. Their opposition to environmental regulation has nothing to do with any economic concerns; it is, rather, a long-standing political phenomenon known as “hippie-punching.” A favorite Republican activity, it’s also common among Democrats seeking to establish their conservative bona fides. In this case, however, those hippie liberals have a point. The scientific evidence is crystal-clear: if we don’t regulate greenhouse gases, we (all six billion of us) are going to face a world significantly less hospitable to our species. Republican obstructionists are playing a very dangerous game.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists false equivalency idiots Koch Brothers RGGI
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 5: We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Evidence!
The Nashua Telegraph (New Hampshire) discusses the move in that state to stop participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. They’ve got climate zombies in the state house and misleading robo-calls from the Koch Brothers. What could possibly go wrong?
Americans for Prosperity, an conservative group with financial support from the oil industry, made automated robocalls over the long holiday weekend, attacking RGGI as guaranteeing further increases in electricity bills.
Studies had concluded that RGGI has added 6.5 cents per month to an average consumer’s bill.
Rep. Sandra Keans, D-Rochester, attacked AFP’s calls as “sleazy” and deliberately false.
“I have never seen such a cowardly perpetration pulled on the citizens of New Hampshire,” Keans said.
AFP Executive Director Corey Lewandowski defended the group’s lobbying against RGGI.
“Constituents should be able to call their elected officials to register a concern. Nobody forces people to run for office if they don’t want to hear from those who elected them,” Lewandowski said. “We’re delighted by the strong House vote for consumers.”
Rep. Beatriz Pastor, D-Lyme, said that even if there were questions about climate change science, it’s wise for the state to take preventive measures like RGGI.
“Noah got intelligence (that) a natural disaster was about to occur,” Pastor said of the Bibilical account. “He could have looked out the window and said ‘it doesn’t look like it is going to rain’.”
But Deputy Majority Leader Shawn Jasper of Hudson disagreed.
“Neither man nor cow is responsible for global warming,” he added.
Mr. Jasper seemed like an excellent hook upon which to hang a letter. Sent February 25:
Representative Shawn Jasper is an excellent example of an increasingly prevalent species of Homo Politicus: the “climate zombie,” a politician whose denial of the facts of global climate change is so ideologically rooted that no amount of factually-based argument will change his mind. Our nation used to regard scientists with respect; after all, they were responsible most of our major technological advances and noteworthy achievements (the Apollo program, anyone?). There should be nothing unusual about the idea that when you need expertise in a particular area, you ask experts and take their advice very seriously. But in the world of today’s Republican party, scientists are only to be listened to when their opinions are ideologically convenient. Representative Jasper’s pronouncement that “neither man nor cow is responsible for global warming” has no factual foundation, as author Kevin Landrigan could have ascertained with a few minutes’ worth of research. The fact that this “climate zombie” has been given an unrefuted last word in a supposedly objective article about the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is an unfortunate dereliction of journalistic responsibility.
Warren Senders