environment: computer models deforestation denialists scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 8: And We Shiver When The (Hot) Winds Blow
The Seattle Times runs an AP story detailing a new study co-authored by Richard Waring, a tree expert. Climate change is going to destroy the habitat of the lodgepole pine, one of the most important trees in the Pacific Northwest:
Scientists have developed a computer model that predicts the lodgepole pine – one of the most common trees at high elevations in the Cascades and Rockies – will be largely driven out of the Northwest by 2080 due to the warming climate.
A more extensive version of the same article can be found at greenwichtime.com. Sent February 28:
The “skeptics” who continue to obfuscate and deny the ominous realities of global climate change will respond predictably to the just-published study showing the decimation of Lodgepole pine habitat within the coming century due to increasing temperatures. Some will claim that computer models cannot be trusted, some will simply say, “Who cares about trees?”, and some will claim it’s part of a widespread conspiracy to imprison SUV drivers on behalf of a New World Order. A scientifically literate reader could respond as follows: 1 – we trust computer models all the time throughout our civilization, 2 – those trees form important habitat for thousands of animal and plant species and have played important roles in human history as well, and, 3 – aside from being a paranoid delusion, such a worldwide cabal of research scientists is exponentially more improbable than the idea that human greenhouse emissions are drastically affecting our atmosphere, our climate and our lives.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists media irresponsibility scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 7: Is Dis A System?
The Oakland Daily Tribune (that’s Oakland, Michigan, not Oakland, California) runs an article heavily featuring climate denialist Christopher Kobus, who makes a statement that is so wacko I cannot believe he believes it:
He believes the debate boils down to funding.
“(Advocates of global warming) are well-funded and have deep connections with the media,” he said.
“So-called skeptics (of global warming) are neither well-funded nor organized via advocacy organizations. It is a one-way debate.”
A little research on Kobus suggests that he was taken in by the “Climategate” non-scandal and has continued to base his belief system on this series of unfortunate events.
Sent February 27:
Professor Chris Kobus’ claim that climate change “skeptics” are poorly funded does not stand even a cursory examination. The few climatologists who dismiss the overwhelming scientific consensus on Earth’s climatic transformation are almost without exception supported by petroleum-funded “think tanks” and “institutes.” Conversely, many climate scientists face extraordinary obstacles, including smear campaigns, hate mail, death threats and legal harassment in addition to the ongoing struggles for funding that are part of every scientist’s daily work. Professor Kobus states that “climate-change advocates” have “deep connections with the media.” Which media? Surely not our TV, radio or newspapers, which inevitably “balance” every genuinely alarmed expert with an oil-industry spokesman. Meanwhile, there’s snow in California, golfball-sized hailstones in the Midwest, and freak rainstorms in Australia — an increase in freak weather events which climatologists have predicted for decades as a consequence of the greenhouse effect. Denying a problem won’t make it go away.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: false equivalency media irresponsibility scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 1: We Need More Like This
The Aurora Sentinel (Aurora, CO) addresses the problem directly, in a very well-done and strongly-worded editorial.
How much more proof is needed to persuade skeptics that humans are warming the planet to dangerously high temperatures?
Scientists released not one, but two reports on Wednesday showing definitively that human-caused temperature hikes in Earth’s atmosphere are producing increasingly harsh, wet storms across the globe.
The studies should counter arguments by skeptics that climate change is a “victimless crime,” said Myles Allen of the University of Oxford, one of two authors of a study associating flooding and climate change in Britain. “Extreme weather is what actually hurts people.”
Can’t wait to see the comments in a couple of days…
Sent 2/21:
Your editorial hits the nail squarely on the head. The current inability of our major media outlets to address global warming without false equivalency would be hilarious if it were not tragic. By equating the expertise of thousands of climatologists with a few paid shills from the oil companies, the true nature of the climate crisis is disguised, and millions of people are lulled into a false sense of security. Add to that the constant stream of virulent anti-environment rhetoric from right-wing talk radio and you have a recipe for disaster — since we can’t deal with the problem without recognizing its existence. Not only is America the planet’s largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, its media pollute the public discourse with some of the most egregious and irresponsible mendacity the world has ever seen. And don’t even get me started on Republican politicians, who are appallingly ready to sacrifice the long-term future of their constituents on the altar of short-term political exigencies of the most cynical and willfully ignorant sort.
Warren Senders
environment: flooding methane permafrost scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 27: Some Days These Letters Are No Damned Fun At All
I’ve never written to the National Geographic before. Strange, since that magazine was an important part of my childhood and the general growth of my environmental awareness. They ran an article on the Zwiers study which triggered this letter. In addition, I mention the NSIDC report on melting permafrost, which you should not read if you want a good night’s sleep; this is about as bad a piece of news as we’ve had in quite a while, which is really saying something.
Mailed Feb. 18:
The Zwiers study confirms the link between global warming and extreme weather events worldwide, but this is unlikely to change many minds among the climate-change deniers, who are now so ideologically wedded to their position that no amount of evidence will suffice. Especially in light of the recent reports from the National Ice and Snow Data Center indicating rapid and irreversible melting of a majority of the Earth’s permafrost (with consequent release of massive amounts of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere), such a failure of understanding is a tragedy. The next centuries will witness unimaginable disruption of ecosystems, agriculture, and infrastructure; to deny reality at this moment is to lose our last chance of mitigating some of the damage before it overwhelms us. Once, our nation honored scientific achievement and inquiry. Now, it seems, we enshrine delusion and magical thinking, to the detriment of the lives of future generations.
Warren Senders
environment: computer modeling denialists scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 26: SunSpots..
The Sun (UK) reports on the Oxford studies establishing a definite link between England’s severe flooding and climate change.
Sent February 17:
The results of the Oxford studies are unsurprising to those who’ve been paying attention to the threat of global warming; climatologists have predicted almost exactly these results for several decades, with greater and greater precision as their computer modeling tools became more sophisticated and the data they were analysing became more extensive and precise. And yet it is precisely the nature of the research tool that now has climate-change denialists sputtering and fuming. “Why,” they ask, “should we trust computer models of something as complicated as the earth’s climate?” At first blush, the question seems valid, but there are many reasons for using these tools — the first being, simply, that if we wait until the Earth itself displays incontrovertible evidence, it will be far too late to do anything about the problem. The second reason is that we trust these same technologies in countless other areas of our lives; apparently computer modeling is invalid only when it will negatively impact the profit margins of the world’s biggest oil companies.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: denialists ignorance scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 23: Teach Your Children Well…
The San Francisco Chronicle describes the work of the Alliance for Climate Education, as they do workshops and assemblies for high-school students. It’s all a part of welcoming them to the reality-based community, you know, which is why the Republicans are so agin it.
The 200 engrossed students at Oakland Unity High School kept their eyes glued to the projector screen and hardly uttered a sound during the 45-minute presentation – the most striking exception coming at the part of the special school assembly that featured cow farts.
It turns out bovine flatulence contributes to greenhouse gases. That was just one of several topics covered in the assembly, which was offered by the Alliance for Climate Education, an Oakland nonprofit that is trying to educate students about climate change one school at a time.
Since fall 2009, Alliance for Climate Education has visited 1,100 high schools in the United States, putting on assemblies for nearly 700,000 teens.
This was sent on Valentine’s Day, with Love to the Alliance For Climate Education!
Despite the frenzied conspiracy theorizing of denialists obsessing over an imaginary Socialist New World Order, climate change is a very real and significant danger — not just to Americans, but to all the world’s people. A secondary danger is that the anti-science veriphobes in the Republican party will succeed in convincing the American public that this threat (one perhaps greater than anything humans have yet faced) isn’t real. In 2004, an anonymous Bush administration official told Ron Suskind that “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” By opposing any meaningful climate policy, the GOP is attempting to create its own reality — based not on verifiable facts, but on superstition, hubris and ignorance. Unfortunately for us all, even the most powerful empire cannot defeat the laws of physics. Which is why the work of the Alliance for Climate Education is so essential.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 13: I Lit Out From Reno, I Was Trailed By Twenty Hounds…
In the Reno Gazette-Journal, a columnist named Cory Farley discusses the inability of denialists to look a fact in the face.
It’s a good piece, and therefore makes not an iota of impact on the commentariat. Sheesh.
While Cory Farley does a good job of skewering the mindset of climate-change deniers, it’s probably not going to change any minds. At this point, the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is so overwhelming that no further proof is needed for anyone who’s actually paying attention; on the other hand, the evidence against it is so fragmented, internally contradictory, and riddled with conflicts of interest that acceptance requires a huge suspension of critical thinking. How many times must a right-wing talking point be debunked before it stops appearing? For example, one favorite line is “scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970s. Now they’re predicting warming. Therefore scientists can’t be trusted.” Actually, scientific opinion on climate forty years ago was totally different from today’s. A few scientists published articles speculating on possible consequences of atmospheric changes; a few of them raised the possibility of cooling (including one paper suggesting cooling trends over the next twenty-thousand years). The popular press exaggerated the importance of these papers, and now it’s denialist gospel that “everybody” predicted an ice age. No; not “everybody,” not even a majority of climatologists — and certainly nothing like today’s overwhelming consensus. But facts no longer matter to deniers. Alas.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialism idiots scientific consensus Storms
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 9: Auntie Em?
The Kansas City Star takes on the big storms & crazy weather by acknowledging that, as the headline puts it, “Some scientists believe extreme weather events becoming the norm.” The comments on this article are what prompted the closing sentences in my letter (mailed 2/2/11):
The phrase “some scientists” is misleading; it’s just about impossible for the scientific consensus on human causes of global warming to get any stronger. Barring a few petroleum-funded contrarians, the overwhelming majority of climate specialists agree: anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are warming the atmosphere, and the results are going to bring us a world of hurt in the coming decades. The current crop of freak weather events all over the world is just a preview of coming attractions; for decades climatologists have been predicting a worldwide increase in anomalous weather as a consequence of the greenhouse effect. Now their predictions are coming true from Queensland to Kansas as hundreds of millions of lives are disrupted by severe storms, flooding, snow, and drought. But climate-change deniers cannot admit they’ve been misled; their ideologically-driven rejection of global warming’s factuality is not susceptible to actual evidence, no matter how much of it piles up on their doorsteps.
Warren Senders
environment: Australia denialists scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 1: Hangover Edition
Adam Morton gives a good summary of the past ten years’ worth of climate change in The Age (Australia). I figured I’d get a jump on the deniers with this letter…
Listening to the increasingly vociferous voices of those who deny the validity and relevance of climate science, one wonders: do these people live on the same planet we do? The planet climatologists are studying is buffeted by increasingly severe weather, uprooting people from their lands, crippling agricultural systems, and tearing holes in the fabric of life. On the alternate planet where global warming deniers live, it’s always the right temperature; crops aren’t wilting; floods aren’t wiping out villages; glaciers aren’t melting. On the planet we live in, we’re headed for a significant temperature increase in a time span so short it doesn’t even qualify as a geological instant. On the planet of the deniers, that’ll be fine, because when dinosaurs were alive, the atmosphere was a lot hotter than it is now. Our species is inadequately prepared for such an abrupt climatic shift — on this Earth, anyway.
Warren Senders
environment: Arctic ice melt scientific consensus
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Month 12, Day 17: The Idea Of North
This is a first for me; I have never written a letter to Nunatsiaq Online before. They ran an article about a conference in Ottowa where a whole bunch of Arctic climate specialists got up and said, more or less, “AAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!”
Nunatsiaq is pretty far North:
A is me. B is Iqaluit, Nunatsiaq. Google:
We could not calculate directions between 300 High St, Medford, MA 02155 and Iqaluit, NU X0A 0H0, Canada.
I asked Travelocity to find me fares between Boston and Iqaluit:
We apologize. Your last request could not be processed. Thank you for your patience.
While Jakarta & Sydney are certainly more distant, this is definitely the remotest place I’ve written to:
The thing to keep in mind when reading about climatologists’ reactions to changes in Arctic temperatures and weather conditions is that scientific terminology was developed specifically to minimize emotional responses. While the popular conception of scientists is based on this style of communication, it’s a mistake to think that these experts don’t care deeply about what they study. The participants in the Ottowa conference obviously love the Arctic, and their use of words like “unusual” and “dramatic” when discussing current conditions should set our alarm bells ringing. Those are strong words for scientists, the sort an epidemiologist might employ to describe an outbreak of bubonic plague; the sort a zoologist might utter when faced with a living, breathing Sasquatch. If Arctic specialists are sounding perturbed, it means the evidence of catastrophic system failure is overwhelming. We (all of us, everywhere on the planet) ignore their observations at our peril.
Warren Senders