Education environment: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists Heartland Institute idiots Peter Gleick
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 27: Because The Water Hyacinths…Had Clogged The River
The Washington Post weighs in on “Denialgate.” Pearl-clutching:
Legislation to fight global warming has disappeared from Washington’s policy agenda, but the battle over climate science continues to escalate.
The latest skirmish culminated in the admission Monday night by Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and author, that he assumed a fake identity to obtain documents that would expose the inner workings of a climate skeptic group.
“My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved,” Gleick wrote in a post on his Huffington Post blog.
Gleick’s admission “is the latest in an escalating spiral of polarizing warfare between self-described ‘Climate Hawks’ and so-called Climate Deniers,” which leaves the majority of scientists and the public “caught in the crossfire,” American University professor Matthew C. Nisbet, who studies the issues, wrote in a blog entry.
What Gleick deserves is pretty far removed from what he’s gonna get. Sent February 21:
Heartland Institute’s claim of victimhood in the wake of the release of its confidential documents is absurd. They are heavily funded by some of the most powerful corporations in the world, with an agenda built around the wholesale propagation of falsehoods in the public sphere. When a single individual (the justifiably infuriated climatologist Peter Gleick) carries out a specifically-targeted sting operation (a “retail” falsehood, if you will) that exposes a massive infrastructure of mendacity, he deserves the thanks of the nation, not a fusillade of obloquy.
Given that climate change deniers routinely distort the truth in grotesque and massively harmful ways, why should Gleick’s fib give us the vapors? Heartland’s “educational” programs undercut the Jeffersonian ideal of a “well-informed citizenry.” Gleick’s actions, conversely, reflect a deep and abiding patriotism that our third President, a man whose love of scientific truth matched his love of country, would surely recognize and applaud.
Warren Senders
Education environment: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots media irresponsibility Peter Gleick
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 26: Won’t Somebody Please Have Pity?
The Kansas City Star reprints the LA Times editorial on Climate Denial In The Classroom.
Fortunately, if we’re about to enter a battle over classroom instruction on climate change, it won’t go on for decades, because the impacts of global warming are already patently obvious. Seven of the 10 warmest years since global record-keeping began in 1880 have occurred in the 21st century. Despite an intense campaign to discredit his work, Pennsylvania State University professor Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, which shows that temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century soared to their highest level in 1,000 years, has been validated repeatedly. Last year set a record for the most climate-related disasters in the United States costing more than $1 billion in damage each – drought-fueled wildfires in Texas, Hurricane Irene, and Mississippi River flooding were among the 14 cases.
These are facts, not philosophical or religious dogma. Another fact: Sophisticated climate models show that things are going to get a lot worse. It’s bad enough that we’re gambling our children’s futures by doing so little to fight this problem; let’s not ask their teachers to lie to them about it too.
Now that Peter Gleick has emerged as the whistleblower in the Heartland case, let’s watch the poor bastard get pilloried, shall we? Sent February 21:
When the Heartland Institute claims the mantle of victimhood in the “denialgate” scandal, they are continuing a pattern of cynical manipulation of the media and public opinion. There is no doubt that Heartland’s role in muddying the debate on climate change is a crucial one; the organization has been active in promoting conservative causes across the policy spectrum, and has long done so through the dissemination of half-truths, strategic omissions, and (when necessary) outright lying. Their faux-outrage at finally being caught with their mendacious pants down as laughable as their attempts to undercut necessary action on climate change are deplorable.
Dr. Peter Gleick’s act of courage in blowing the whistle on these heavily-funded hoodlums will, of course, not go unpunished. We can anticipate hearing the morality of his actions debated endlessly in the media, while Heartland Institute’s mendacity and duplicity are ignored and minimized. While the world grows steadily hotter.
Warren Senders
Education environment: assholes denialists Heartland Institute
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 25: These People Make Me Want To Bring Back Public Shaming
It’s good to read these words in the Los Angeles Times:
The culture wars have been fought in the classroom for decades, waged over such issues as school prayer, the teaching of evolution and whether the Pledge of Allegiance should include the phrase “under God.” But the conflict usually pits backers of religious instruction against secularists. The latest skirmish, by contrast, is centered on a scientific issue that has nothing to do with religious teaching: climate change.
Leaked documents from the Heartland Institute in Chicago, one of many nonprofits that spread disinformation about climate science in hopes of stalling government action to combat global warming, reveal that the organization is working on a curriculum for public schools that casts doubt on the work of climatologists worldwide. Heartland officials say one of the documents was a fake, but the curriculum plans were reportedly discussed in more than one. According to the New York Times, the curriculum would claim, among other things, that “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy.”
That is a lie so big that, to quote from “Mein Kampf,” it would be hard for most people to believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” On one side of the “controversy” are credentialed climatologists around the globe who publish in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals and agree that the planet is warming and that humans are to blame; on the other are fossil-fuel-industry-funded “experts” who tend to have little background in climatology and who publish non-peer-reviewed papers in junk magazines disputing established truths. These are quickly debunked, but not before their findings have been reported by conservative blogs and news outlets, which somehow never get around to mentioning it when these studies are proved to be badly flawed.
Heartland is a repository of, essentially, species traitors. Sent February 20:
The likely consequences of global climate change go far beyond inconvenience or annoyance. In fact, the probability of unprecedented disaster is so great that one wonders what’s happening in the minds of denialists like the ones at the Heartland Institute.
Are they caught in a loop of wishful thinking, where the reassuring words of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists outweigh the hundreds of other scientific associations which acknowledge the magnitude of the emergency? Are they end-of-times Armageddonists, anticipating a rich harvest of souls from a planetary cataclysm they’re actively enabling? Are they secret disaster capitalists, seeking ways to profit from a climate emergency that will disrupt billions of lives and cause untold misery over the coming centuries?
While resolving these speculations may be impossible, there is one question with a clear and definite answer. Should the Heartland Institute’s climate-change curricula find a place in America’s schools? No, no, no.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialism Heartland Institute idiots
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 23: Phlogiston!
The New Jersey Star-Ledger goes further on the Heartland papers:
The nation’s leading skeptics of climate change science were dealt a blow this week when hundreds of private internal documents — detailing donors, spending and the group’s anti-science strategy — were leaked to the public.
The documents betrayed the inner workings of the Heartland Institute, the most vocal of U.S. climate change “deniers” who, despite decades of scientific data proving that the Earth’s climate is warming, promote skepticism and doubt.
The leak is the smoking gun that climate scientists have been waiting for — and should be a warning to anyone who buys into the idea that “global warming is just a theory.”
You’re being played.
The Heartland Institute’s key strategy has been to create doubt in the American public by saying that climate change is a controversial, unproven theory.
Fuckers. Sent February 18:
“Teach the controversy” sounds like an excellent idea, doesn’t it? To understand scientific methodology, we should examine areas where scientists disagree; rigorously examining competing theories is surely the best way for students to learn how actual science works…the argument is an alluring one, and the climate-change denialists at the Heartland Institute are betting that America’s school systems will be seduced.
But sometimes there is no controversy to teach. Nobody’s pressuring schools to teach both geocentric and heliocentric cosmologies, and the medieval theory of “humours” has no place in medical training (for which we can all be grateful).
There is no scientific disagreement on the basic facts of planetary climate change: it’s happening, it’s a serious problem, and humans have a huge role in causing it. The Heartland Institute’s cynical strategy is to create an artificial controversy, thereby safeguarding the profit margins of their corporate sponsors for a few more years.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists epistemology Heartland Institute
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 22: More Ultra-Hard Sapir-Whorfianism
More on Heartland Institute, this time from the Boston Globe:
Because Heartland was not specific about what was fake and what was real, The Associated Press attempted to verify independently key parts of separate budget and fundraising documents that were leaked. The federal consultant working on the classroom curriculum, the former TV weatherman, a Chicago elected official who campaigns against hidden local debt and two corporate donors all confirmed to the AP that the sections in the document that pertained to them were accurate. No one the AP contacted said the budget or fundraising documents mentioning them were incorrect.
David Wojick, a Virginia-based federal database contractor, said in an email that the document was accurate about his project to put curriculum materials in schools that promote climate skepticism.
“My goal is to help them teach one of the greatest scientific debates in history,” Wojick said. “This means teaching both sides of the science, more science, not less.”
Googling “david wojik” +epistemologist gets you the self-description in the first sentence of my letter. I am proud of the final sentence in the second graf. Sent February 17:
The Heartland Institute’s point man for climate-change denial in public-school curricula is David Wojik, who has described himself as a “philosopher, engineer and logician.” Note the absence of any training in climate science! Wojik’s doctoral work focused on the history and philosophy of science — surely worthy areas of study, but ones which he’s well paid to misapply in distorting the nature of research on global warming.
While all but a statistically insignificant minority of climatologists agree on the human causes of climate change, many details are yet unresolved: which are the primary forcing agents? How do different feedback loops interact? By highlighting areas of disagreement while ignoring a worldwide scientific consensus, Wojik and his sponsors wrap greed-driven denialism in a cloak of spurious intellectual rectitude.
While Wojik’s employers are no doubt pleased with his work, the laws of chemistry and physics are unaffected by even the glibbest epistemological sophistry.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots Karl Rove reality-based community Republicans
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 21: Post-Modernist Science Education: Applying the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis To Atmospheric Chemistry.
More on the Heartland Institute leak, from the New York Times:
Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science is planning a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, the latest indication that climate change is becoming a part of the nation’s culture wars.
Related in OpinionThe documents, from a nonprofit organization in Chicago called the Heartland Institute, outline plans to promote a curriculum that would cast doubt on the scientific finding that fossil fuel emissions endanger the long-term welfare of the planet. “Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” one document said.
While the documents offer a rare glimpse of the internal thinking motivating the campaign against climate science, defenders of science education were preparing for battle even before the leak. Efforts to undermine climate-science instruction are beginning to spread across the country, they said, and they fear a long fight similar to that over the teaching of evolution in public schools.
You know what? I’m sick of people saying “alarmist” like it’s an insult. The news is pretty fucking alarming, all the damn time. If you’re not alarmed (hell, if you’re not absolutely terrified) you’re just not paying attention. Sorry to harsh your mellow, but that’s what’s happening.
Anyway, I like the phrase “nihilistic political solipsism.” Sent February 16:
In the helter-skelter 24-hour news cycle that shapes American politics, the words of officials from the previous administration might as well be written in hieroglyphics; the first decade of our century is already ancient history. But the recent leak of documents from the Heartland Institute describing their plans to foster climate-change denial in our nation’s classrooms call to mind Karl Rove’s comments to journalist Ron Suskind. Expressing contempt for the “reality-based community,” Rove went on to say, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”
But this is a dangerous game. Old-style Soviet historical revisionism is only effective when the facts are all in the past; the Heartland Institute is attempting to revise the future by applying their nihilistic political solipsism to actual real-world problems requiring reality-based solutions. The physics and chemistry of the greenhouse effect won’t be fooled by banners and photo ops.
Warren Senders
Education environment: assholes denialists epistemology idiots media irresponsibility scientific consensus scientific method
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 20: That’s Not Epistemology, That’s Fouling The Wellspring Of Knowledge
The Christian Science Monitor notes the rare rays of sunlight that recently penetrated into the inner recesses of the climate-denial machinery:
Leaked documents from the free-market conservative organization The Heartland Institute reveal a plan to create school educational materials that contradict the established science on climate change.
The documents, leaked by an anonymous donor and released on DeSmogBlog, include the organization’s 2012 fundraising plan. It lists Heartland Institute donors, from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation (established by Koch Industries billionaire Charles G. Koch), to Philip Morris parent company Altria, to software giant Microsoft and pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.
The climate change education project is funded so far by an anonymous donor who has given $13 million to the Institute over the past five years. Proposed by policy analyst David Wojick, who holds a doctorate in epistemology and has worked for coal and electricity generation companies, the project would create education “modules” written to meet curriculum guidelines for every grade level.
A doctorate in epistemology, huh? That’s like a guy with a doctorate in epidemiology who spends his off-hours shitting in the water supply. Glad this got a bit of sunlight. I’ve been writing to the CSM for years and they haven’t published me yet. Here goes nuttin’! Sent Feb 15:
Between evangelical rejections of Darwinian evolution and petroleum-funded rejections of climatology, it’s amazing that any biology, physics or chemistry gets taught at all anymore. The exposure of the Heartland Institute’s massive investment in fostering climate-change denial in our schools pulls the covers off the continuing conservative effort to undermine our country’s system of science education. David Wojick, Heartland’s paid mouthpiece, has a degree in epistemology, the branch of philosophy which addresses the nature of knowledge. He may not know any climate science, but he’s a virtuoso at clouding the distinction between true and false. Coupled with a complaisant media establishment that has abdicated its responsibility to the Jeffersonian ideal of a “well-educated citizenry,” climate-change denialists have relegated an overwhelming scientific consensus to irrelevancy in the minds of much of the American public. This would be immaterial if the issue did not concern a civilizational threat of unprecedented magnitude and urgency.
Warren Senders
Education environment: economics recycling sustainability trash waste dumping
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Teach Your Children Well
My friend Hema J_____ sent me this article she wrote on the ways her family is gradually reducing the amount of waste generated by their household. It’s a great example of the cumulative effect of many small changes in behavior. I asked her if I could reprint it here and she graciously agreed.
Daily Acts Toward A Waste-Free Life.
Early in 2011 a friend passed me an article from Sunset magazine. The article, titled “Zero-waste family in Marin”, described how this family managed to live a pretty normal life with no waste.
The article immediately made a deep impression on me. It reminded me of my childhood in South India. Growing up in the 1980s in the small city of Trichy, I never saw my family throw anything away. Our neighbors were no different — there simply was no garbage service! “Zero-waste” was just a part of the lifestyle there, at that time. Of course things have changed there now. Back then, we always carried our own bags and baskets to the grocer. We even bought cooking oil in our own steel containers. Milk was measured in liters and delivered at our doorstep, as was butter. We bought grains (paddy and wheat) in huge jute sacks, took them to the mill and brought home the flour. Meals were always made at home. So were snacks, yogurt and sun-dried goods.
Inspired by the zero-waste family in Marin, I started looking closely at my own everyday life putting garbage that I produce into perspective. It helped a great deal to watch the documentary “No Impact Man.” What ensued was a series of small changes towards reducing garbage that have added up over time, with the result that we have put out our municipal trash can only twice in the last twelve months, and the recycling can only a few more times. I will now take you on a short tour around our household, and talk about the changes we have integrated into our everyday lives.
To begin with a little background is in order. We are a family of four: my husband, a boy (8), a girl (5 ½) and me. We live in a duplex condo in California, in a pretty typical American suburb built in the early 1990s.
Grocery Shopping.
Let’s begin with the bags. We have a few bags of bags in our car trunk that we carry for grocery shopping. This includes the transparent plastic bags too. Since we always reuse our bags, we hardly have the need to use new ones provided at the store. Some stores even offer a small discount for bringing one’s own bags! It was such a pleasure to discover the bulk bins at our local stores. We buy most of the organic staples that we need — including yeast, fig bars, vanilla extract, soba noodles and pasta — from the bulk bins now. We found that a lot of times it is cheaper to buy organic items from the bulk section. My kids were of course delighted to see ginger cookies, sesame sticks and raspberry bars there. “Mom! Organic snacks in the bulk bins! No chemicals and no plastic! Can we buy these?” A few months into this mode of shopping, we realized that all that we needed was located in the periphery of the stores. By avoiding the center aisles we were reducing the plastic we were throwing away and also probably buying healthier at the same time.
The bulk bins brought to our notice other grains that we have now introduced into our diet. Our breakfasts now include millet, corn meal and steel-cut oats. And I shouldn’t forget to mention the fresh ground peanut butter that my kids simply love. We take our own (empty) glass jar, get it weighed initially (tare weight) and refill our jar. Some local stores have a wide range of items in their bulk bins.
We buy our eggs directly from local farms or friends that have chicken coops or the farmers’ markets. We return our empty egg cartons to the farmers. We learned about the energy-intensive recycling process involved with the plastic milk containers; we were not entirely happy about the details of it. So we switched to milk which comes in glass containers; we pay a deposit of $1.50 at the time of purchase and that is credited when we return the container. We buy cheese only if we can find a vendor (at the Farmers’ market) who is willing to sell a small unwrapped wedge. This necessarily means going without cheese most of the time. Considering the energy involved in the production and sales of cheese, we have decided to include it only occasionally in our meals as a special treat. The ideal situation would be to become vegan (we have always been vegetarians), then we won’t have to worry about these details.
Kitchen.
We have a green waste receptacle next to the sink where all our vegetable and fruit scraps go. There is no trash can under the sink now. Instead I have reclaimed this space for much needed storage for small appliances like the blender and the jars, the sandwich/waffle maker etc. I noticed that even after making changes to the way we grocery-shopped, our main source of plastic was the bread that came in plastic bags. One option was to switch to breads available in paper bags. Instead, I decided to take up the daunting task of baking, something I had never really done before. I decided to get help and enlisted a friend to be my baking teacher. She walked me through a great recipe for a delicious whole wheat loaf. Every week or so, I faithfully follow her recipe make three loaves at a time. The kids love to get involved and the whole process has evolved into a greatly enjoyable culinary ritual.
To maximize the use of the oven, I also make granola or baked pasta on the same day. We also make our own yogurt (just add live culture into warm milk), jams during summer and various kinds of simple dips and sauces like hummus and apple sauce.
Refrigerator/Freezer.
We have a relatively small energy-efficient refrigerator/freezer where we store dairy, veggies, fruit and leftovers. Having just enough space to store meant that we could never over-stock and also ensured that leftovers waiting to be eaten caught our eyes and are not wasted.
Pantry.
We have a bag of bags where we put back the grocery bags after transferring everything from the store into their respective containers. This bag is moved to the car once it has enough bags.
Kids’ Corner.
We use only one-sided paper from the mail and from my husband’s office for arts. The kids have a small basket under their table to discard used paper; when it overflows they take it to the recycling bin in the garage. They have similar baskets in their rooms for recycling paper. The kids mostly use pencils, color pencils, crayons, chalk pastels and water color for their art work. We don’t buy markers, sharpies, etc.
Office/Mail.
We mostly receive electronic statements and pay our bills online. We signed up at various places to stop junk mail from flooding our mailbox. There is a recycling bin under the table in our home office. We decided not to own a printer just to avoid the unnecessary printing that the convenience offered. We use scrap paper to write down driving directions off the Internet.
Dining Area.
At the table, we have a small pile of cloth napkins, for use during meals and also to wipe off spills that are frequent with kids around.Clothing.
Thanks to a friend with slightly older children, we almost never buy new clothes or shoes for our kids. We have established a nice network to circulate these hand-me-downs and everybody that participates benefits from it. We buy under garments new and the rest is all from local thrift stores. This includes my clothes too. It took me a while to get comfortable with shopping at the thrift stores; it is looked down upon in India. Now I enjoy the benefits it offers – less expenses, supporting our local economy, reducing garbage, etc.
Cosmetics.
I have some stick-on bindis (decorative jewels for the forehead) from India and one lipstick (which I have hardly used). I use a rechargeable electric razor. It has lasted many years. Some local stores sell shampoo, soap, detergent etc. in bulk. We take our own containers and get them refilled. I read about people using baking soda as a deodorant and liked that option.
Laundry.
We buy laundry detergent powder that comes in cardboard boxes; recycling plastic detergent containers needs more energy. We don’t use the dryer most of the year; we either sun-dry or air-dry (drying the clothes in the garage out of the sun, especially during the rains) our laundry. We plan our laundry days based on the weather forecast, during the rainy season. This keeps our PG&E bill in the $20’s during summer and around $50 during winter.
Sanitary Needs.
A friend surprised me when she said she could count the number of instances she had used a commercial feminine sanitary product. She said that she had always used good quality cloth. I was guilty of the fact that after moving to the U.S., I had conveniently forgotten the norms in India and had transitioned seamlessly to the disposable-ways of living that is prevalent here. I switched back to cloth and found it to be very easy and natural. Recently I heard from a friend about the Diva cup. It certainly is an equally good, sustainable and comfortable alternative.
Parties and Gifts.
I have a set of about 2 dozen plastic plates and silverware just for party needs. We share this party set with local friends. We invite a small group of friends and families to the birthdays of our children. We serve homemade food and snacks or local fruit and veggies. We have inconvenienced some of our friends by asking them not to bring any gift, so we now request them to bring in any used book, toy or game that their child has outgrown. That works very well. The best birthday gift so far has been the farm-fresh eggs from my friend’s backyard!! Our birthday gifts to my kids’ friends have been books, homemade desserts, homemade jam, handmade crafts and gift cards to local stores.
Eating-out.
We choose places that have reusable china and silverware. Also we have one or two of our small containers handy (in the car) just in case we have leftovers.
Car.
We have a steel water bottle and a coffee mug in the car along with the bags of bags in the trunk. We have a couple of spoons and forks that have come in handy many times.
Purse.
My kids asked me if I could carry two little spoons for tasting the samples at the grocery stores. There couldn’t have been anything better to ask! It was quite rewarding to observe that they have taken the zero-waste lifestyle seriously.
House Cleaning.
We use a rag or sponge to clean the kitchen counter thereby easily eliminating our need for paper towels. We have laminated floor downstairs which are swept with a broom and the dirt is put back into the garden or compost. We mop the floor with a mop that uses a cloth pad. Our bedrooms are carpeted which are vacuumed once in a while. We do throw away the bags. We have separate rags to clean the bathroom floors.
Trash Cans.
We do have a trash can in the garage and toilet for emergency reasons and also for the convenience of our guests. We discard our old toothbrushes, empty toothpaste tubes (only some brands have recyclable tubes) and vacuum cleaner bags.
Recycling.
It was a shock for us to realize that recycling was only marginally better than dumping something into the landfill. The Internet has all the details, if you are interested. Basically, we realized that recycling is a good beginning but clearly not sustainable and does not come close to reducing waste.
Now, you may think this is a lot of hard work. Well, it actually isn’t. It is a different way of perceiving and planning so we can simply reduce our impact on this beautiful Earth. I shop once a week at a local grocery. During the summer, we buy our produce from the Farmers’ market, so we go to the store once every 10 days to 2 weeks. I cook once a day for a maximum of 30 minutes; there are days when we eat out too.
Our family life is fun-filled. We enjoy a wide variety of activities with the children – including gardening, cooking, vocal music, instrumental music, arts & crafts, board games. Our almost-waste-free philosophy doesn’t stop us from having fun, not one bit.
By treading gently and serving as the role models, we hope our children may take it up too. By involving the next generation we hope to preserve the nature of this only Planet we have. Also, every once in a while some of the following thoughts and questions arise in my mind and they help me stay on track:
• My mom and grandma certainly raised their kids in a more eco-friendly way than me. When I have conflicts in my mind — whether to do something in a certain way — I look up to their ways and that helps me choose the right course, which always takes the environment into consideration.
• If I spend a little bit of extra time shopping, planning and organizing, I can save Mother Earth thousands of years that she will need to decompose the waste I would have produced otherwise.
• When something seems very convenient or very cheap for an unknown reason, I stop to think “Who is actually paying the price here?” That helps me not fall into the trap.
• Years ago, I was disturbed to read a news article that said the U.S. shipped garbage to poor, developing countries. Since I am from one, it bothered me deeply. I have seen both the worlds – America that ships garbage and Indian slums that sit on mounds of garbage. America certainly “looks” clean. The garbage does go away from our houses. But where is “away”?
Education environment Politics: conspiracy theory denialists idiots Richard Hofstadter
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 13: Get A Brain! Morans!
Aw, jeez. These idiots again? Check it out. The NYT:
Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.
They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.
“Down the road, this data will be used against you,” warned one speaker at a recent Roanoke County, Va., Board of Supervisors meeting who turned out with dozens of people opposed to the county’s paying $1,200 in dues to a nonprofit that consults on sustainability issues.
Oy. What can you do with this kind of dreck? Sent February 7:
In the minds of Tea-Partiers, everything is evidence of a conspiracy. If enough people are riding bicycles that municipal governments incorporate bike lanes in street planning, that’s not simple good sense — it’s a conspiracy. If research suggests that informing people about their energy consumption decreases waste, that’s a conspiracy, too. If the accumulated evidence supporting the existence (and threat) of global climate change outweighs that compiled by deniers by a twenty-thousand-to-one ratio, that’s just proof that the scientists are in on it.
Richard Hofstadter’s analysis of the “paranoid style” in American politics — “…heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” — has never seemed so accurate. Imagine the benefit to our country if these suspicious zealots could stop obsessing about a Socialist New World Order concealed in an innocuous UN memorandum about environmental responsibility, and instead turned their energy towards making a more cooperative, just, and sustainable society.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Hansen reality-based community sapir-whorf hypothesis scientific consensus scientific method
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 9: There Is No Word For That In Our Language
John Monahan writes a nice piece in Modern Times Magazine (AZ) addressing climate change denial, with specific reference to the WSJ flap. The whole piece is well worth your attention.
Feb. 3, 2012 — What a crazy seven days it has been for the climate change debate. Scientists from both sides of the issue took to the Wall Street Journal late last week and early this week to opine on the merits of the issue and what should be done about it.
But that’s just putting it nicely. What really happened is one side said the other was wrong — knowingly in an attempt to hide the truth — in pursuit of riches.
To say it even more bluntly, each said the other was the ‘real’ greedy liar.
The most important bit is the part where he quotes James Hansen, who is, as usual, right:
“Public doubt about the science is not an accident. People profiting from business-as-usual fossil fuel use are waging a campaign to discredit the science. Their campaign is effective because the profiteers have learned how to manipulate democracies for their advantage,” Hansen said. “The scientific method requires objective analysis of all data, stating evidence pro and con, before reaching conclusions. This works well, indeed is necessary, for achieving success in science. But science is now pitted in public debate against the talk-show method, which consists of selective citation of anecdotal bits that support a predetermined position.”
Simply, Hansen is saying corporations are using the scientific method to bolster an argument that has little merit only because it serves their bottom line. He also places blame upon the mainstream media, calling their need for “balance” a means to validate bad science and support corporate positions.
“Today most media, even publicly-supported media, are pressured to balance every climate story with opinions of contrarians, climate change deniers, as if they had equal scientific credibility. Media are dependent on advertising revenue of the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases are owned by people with an interest in continuing business as usual. Fossil fuel profiteers can readily find a few percent of the scientific community to serve as mouthpieces — all scientists practice skepticism, and it is not hard to find some who are out of their area of expertise, who may enjoy being in the public eye, and who are limited in scientific insight and analytic ability,” Hansen wrote.
They have a 500-word limit; I took about 225 to try and tie all these phenomena together. Sent Feb 3:
Climate-change denial is part of a larger problem, one exemplified by the anonymous Bush official who told journalist Ron Suskind, “We’re an empire; we create our own reality,” and ridiculed those who lived in the “reality-based community.” Conservative politicians and electoral strategists appear to believe in a post-modern universe where measurable reality is just another kind of fiction. Examples of this are easy to spot.
The anti-evolution politicians whose claim that “science is just another religion” serves as a rationale for their attempts to introduce creationism into public school science curricula; the runup to the war in Iraq, in which facts were manipulated and cherry-picked to support President Bush’s martial agenda; the legislators in some Southern states who seek to have any mention of slavery simply removed from history books — the list goes on and on.
Climate change denial is by far the most damaging of these delusions. Human science has discovered and illuminated the laws of physics and chemistry, but that doesn’t mean that the “we make our own reality” crowd can apply wishful thinking to the greenhouse effect. Given enough time, American culture could recover from forced creationism, historical revisionism, and clueless warmongering — but if we fail to recognize the imperative need to address climate change, we’re not going to have the chance.
Warren Senders