environment: assholes denialists idiots Occam's Razor
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 31: A Taxonomy of Stupid
In the Missourian, David Rosman takes on the people who hold up recent heavy snowfalls as proof that climate change is nonexistent. It’s a good piece, and triggered a somewhat longer response than usual. As far as I could make out, the paper has no length limits on LTEs, so I’m up around 200 or so. This was a fun piece to write.
Climate change deniers have many fascinating ways to avoid confronting reality. A few hew to a form of Biblical literalism in which humans can’t possibly affect our global environment because — well, because God won’t allow it. Others make the argument from personal incredulity: “global warming isn’t happening because I don’t understand how it works.” A closely related approach is the argument from apparent contradiction: if it’s snowing in your neighborhood, then global warming is disproved. While the latter two arguments may be consistent intellectual stances, ignorance, as Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” once said, is not a point of view. And then there are the truly convoluted theories — avaricious scientists forming a worldwide conspiracy headed by Al Gore (or, as Limbaugh’s minions prefer, “algore”) in which every bike path, public transport system and solar panel is a step on the road to a Socialist New World Order. Next up? Compulsory Carbon Footprint Re-Education Camps for SUV drivers!
These notions fail Occam’s Razor, of course. The simpler explanation is the correct one: industrial civilizations burn a lot of carbon, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, and it’s warming the planet. A lot.
But since doing something about it would require adjusting our habits and reducing the profit margins of big oil companies, it’s easier to stay ignorant.
Our descendants won’t have that luxury.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots money in politics Oil Addiction petroleum
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 30: I’ve Got To Learn To Dance If It Takes Me All Night And Day
USA Today ran an article on Carol Browner’s departure, and the diminished hopes for meaningful climate legislation from the WH. The comments, predictably, are dumb, dumb, dumb.
The departure of Carol Browner from the Obama administration is an unfortunate testimonial to the power of moneyed interests in our nation’s governance. Because changes in energy policy would be bad for the balance sheets of the world’s most profitable industry, politicians bankrolled by big oil and big coal made sure that even the 111th Congress’ relatively weak climate change legislation had no chance of passing. Lost in the fiscal and political maneuvering are the simple facts that our current petroleum dependence is unsustainable, and our planet’s atmosphere is warming faster than even the most pessimistic climate scientists predicted; catastrophic changes are on the horizon if we fail to act. Carol Browner’s mandate was to help us bring that action to pass; her failure is our failure, and the administration’s loss is a loss for all of us — and a victory for mendacity and cupidity in America’s politics.
Warren Senders
Politics: assholes idiots scientific literacy
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Look Who’s Running The Country!
Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA) on Bill Maher’s show:
environment: denialism idiots IPCC NOAA
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 25: We’re Telling You So
The Idaho Mountain Press joins the ranks of global warming alarmists with an article noting that things are getting hotter and it’s going to start hurting us, like, really soon. And the comments on this article are extraordinarily stupid, which prompted this response:
The pattern of online comments responding to articles discussing the very real threat of climate change is predictable. First there are the reflexive deniers — those whose talking points come directly from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. They can be recognized by their reliance on uninformed mockery (ridiculing Al Gore, for example). Then come the conspiracy theorists who would have us believe that all the world’s scientists are attempting to seize our assets, criminalize SUV ownership, and usher in a new socialist world order — a notion especially ludicrous to anyone who’s ever actually known a scientist. Close behind them are the “Climategate” afficionadi, who cling to the notion that a multiply-debunked non-scandal somehow invalidates decades of measurement and analysis. And when a voice of reason points out that the wealthy and powerful petroleum industry is far more likely to distort unwelcome data than climate scientists, he or she is treated to a stream of insults and derision. Meanwhile, the world grows ever hotter.
Warren Senders
environment: denialism idiots NIMBY
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 23: The P.O.E. Principle
Based on his other writing, I’m going to assume that William Collins’ piece on climate change (which I found in the Youngstown News (OH), but which was originally published at OtherWords) is in fact written from a scientifically informed position. But the second half reads like…well, go check it out yourself.
Anyway, my letter:
William Collins’ analysis of the climate change issue is a remarkable feat. In the first half of his piece, he explicitly states that the warming atmosphere is a “truly alarming” problem, but his conclusion reads like a skillful parody of conservative thinking. Even assuming that Collins’ final paragraphs don’t represent his core beliefs, they deserve a careful response — because a statement like “we’re not about to inconvenience ourselves over some half-baked fad that says we’re damaging the world’s atmosphere” is representative of much current conventional opinion on the subject. The failure of our media to convey the magnitude of the climate crisis is perhaps the single most damaging consequence of the false-equivalence stenography that we’ve come to call “journalism,” just as the inability of our political system to address the very real possibility of a climate-triggered civilizational collapse is arguably the nadir of the American democratic experiment. Mr. Collins says, snarkily, “In 50 years, we’ll know what we should have done today.” Given that scientists (and politicians) have known about the greenhouse effect and its consequences for Arctic ice (to name just one affected area) since the early 1950s, that statement is a superb summary of a thoughtful position on climate change — from 1960. Our fifty years are already up. Over the next fifty, we’re going to discover that a world racked by water wars, droughts, wildfires and severe political instability (often in nuclear-armed nations) is not something Americans can ignore.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Ken Cuccinelli Michael Mann University of Virginia
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 21: There’s IDIOTS and Then There’s *I*D*I*O*T*S*
C-Ville Weekly, a local paper in Charlottesville, has more on the Cuccinelli/Mann/UVA harassment story.
Since May, Cuccinelli has sought Mann’s documents as part of an investigation into whether Mann violated Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA). UVA hired outside counsel to fight Cuccinelli’s demands, and the case is still before the courts, though UVA won an initial legal victory.
The legal bills for the initial defense cost UVA more than $350,000, paid for through private donations. In a separate request, ATI and Marshall also seek release of documents regarding the funding UVA used to fight Cuccinelli’s demands. The University responded that it has no documents that aren’t protected by attorney-client privilege, according to Horner.
The entire mess stems from so-called Climate-gate, the controversy regarding the contents of a pilfered server from Britain’s East Anglia University published online in late 2009. Global warming skeptics pounced on exposed e-mail chains between climate scientists, pointing to language like “trick” and “manipulation” as evidence of deliberately doctored data. Investigations in the U.S. and abroad have so far cleared scientists involved of wrongdoing.
The only good thing about this whole megillah is that it makes letter-writing easy.
Attorney General Cuccinelli’s continued harassment of Dr. Michael Mann is a monumental waste of taxpayer dollars and an embarrassment to the state of Virginia. Multiply exonerated of any wrong-doing or scientific malpractice by separate independent investigations, Mann has been singled out in an attempt to make the practice of climate science (and perhaps, finally, any and all science) impossible. The cost in Mann’s time and resources required to defend himself against state-sanctioned stalking is ultimately deducted from his scientific work; even in a less critical area of research this would be a shame, but given the magnitude of the problems Mann is investigating, Cuccinelli’s vendetta is particularly ill-considered. The Attorney General is patently unable to comprehend scientific method and practice, and his “climate zombie” stance is clearly designed to ingratiate himself with those voters who are offended by anything they can’t understand — a bloc that is, unfortunately, growing.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots Ken Cuccinelli Michael Mann
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 20: There Are Idiots, And Then There Are IDIOTS.
A couple of Democratic state senators from Virginia are trying to get VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to abandon his insane vendetta against climatologist Michael Mann, reports the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Good luck on that one; “Cooch” is about as amenable to sweet reason as Captain Ahab.
It is glaringly obvious that Ken Cuccinelli is ill-equipped to perform an analysis of scientific research; his investigative zeal would be better served in a search for genuine criminality than in a perseverative attempt to harass a climate scientist whose work has been vindicated repeatedly. After multiple investigations into Mann’s work and practices failed to yield any inculpatory evidence, Cuccinelli’s near-obsessive pursuit should have ceased. Given that the processes underlying climate change have been confirmed over and over again by multiple teams of independent researchers, and that Mann’s work has likewise been confirmed repeatedly, it’s time for the Attorney General to call it quits. That won’t happen, of course, since Mr. Cuccinelli isn’t motivated by concerns of rationality or logic; he is a “climate zombie,” ideologically wedded to the idea that global warming doesn’t exist, cannot exist, and will not exist. The state of Virginia deserves better.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 15: You Bet Jurassic!
USA Today notes that last year tied 2005 as the warmest year the planet has ever experienced since we began keeping records. I thought I’d use it as a hook to scold some of the deniers, and bring the car-crash analogy out for another run.
Yes, 2010 was Earth’s warmest year in recorded history. As the slow-motion disaster of climate change unfolds, that record won’t stand for long. Along with many who deny it’s happening at all, there are those who claim that humans will thrive on a warmer earth. After all, they say, the planet was a lot warmer during the time of the dinosaurs! Left out is the fact that it took millions of years to build up high levels of atmospheric CO2 back in the Pleistocene — while human industrial civilization is accomplishing the same feat in a century or less. A million years gives life time to adapt; on a geological time-scale, a hundred years is shatteringly abrupt — like hitting a cement wall at ninety miles an hour. Unfortunately, the climate-change deniers in the House of Representatives are going to make sure we’re not wearing our seat belts.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots ignorance Texas
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 13: I’m Gonna Build A Big Fence Around Texas
The Dallas Morning News has a piece on Texas’ ongoing struggle to block the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job.
In attempting to block the regulatory initiatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, Texas is leading the way. Perhaps the rest of America will eventually follow — but to where? On the one hand, the state’s attempt to limit the EPA’s authority will make it easier for major polluters to continue their ongoing destruction of the planetary environment; increasing greenhouse emissions will soon bring Earth to levels of CO2 last seen hundreds of millions of years ago. On the other hand, the level of scientific ignorance used to justify anti-EPA lawsuits demonstrates that in at least some quarters, prehistoric ways of thinking already dominate. Unable or unwilling to grasp the relevance and reality of climatological data, the conservative groups attempting to stop the EPA’s work are leading Texas backward — all the way to the Carboniferous Period.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists EPA idiots
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 3: Fred Upton Is An Idiot. Who?
The Boston Globe notes that new EPA regs go into effect today, and lets us know that the Republicans are outraged! Outraged! Outraged!
It’s instructive to keep count of the number of times GOP legislators use the phrase “power grab” when referring to a perfectly legitimate use of governmental authority on the part of the Obama administration. Fred Upton’s use of this meaningless rhetorical trope, however, may have more severe repercussions. The new and more stringent EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions that have just gone into effect are one of our final lines of defense against the steadily building threat of global warming; if the conservative nay-sayers have their way, our national policy on this issue will consist entirely of denial. When Upton says he’s “not convinced” greenhouse gases need controlling, the question arises: what would convince him? I suspect that scientific facts and figures will never persuade the Michigan representative; the only figures that will influence Mr. Upton and his colleagues are those to the right of the dollar sign.
Warren Senders