environment Politics: clueless denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 7: The Door Is Open
The Worcester Telegram (MA) has a columnist named Bill Fortier. Sigh:
They say that as the climate warms, the weather will become more extreme, or, in today’s world of instant communication, perhaps we just see it more often. Although it does seem that when we were kids we never saw summer-like, mid-winter thunderstorms like we’ve had the past three winters.
While that is worrisome, I’m sure I’m not alone in saying there is something good to be said about our changing weather.
To wit, it was most enjoyable to go all winter without putting on layers of winter clothes and clunky boots.
And it was great to hear the spring peepers March 13, the first time I have ever heard them before St. Patrick’s Day.
We spent last week in Washington, D.C., where the cherry blossoms reached their peak March 20, the third earliest date ever.
We wore shorts all week, had dinner outside twice and walked on King Street in Alexandria, Va., eating ice cream like we would on a July night. If the climate is changing, bring it on.
George W. Bush said that, too, inviting attacks on our soldiers. Idiots. Sent March 31:
Bill Fortier asserts that people who know “way, way more” than he does cannot state with certainty whether the greenhouse gases we release affect the climate. Actually, they can, and do. Science is silent on whether the accelerating greenhouse effect is responsible for a specific incidence of extreme weather, simply because that’s not how science works — but there is no doubt whatsoever that extra atmospheric methane and CO2 are having radically destabilizing effects.
Meanwhile, Mr. Fortier wonders what’s wrong with a warmer winter. Rhapsodizing over his ability to wear shorts on a March day, he writes, “If the climate is changing, bring it on.” Maybe he should talk to New England’s fruit farmers, whose trees are blooming too early, or ask foresters what happens when there aren’t enough freezing temperatures to destroy the larvae of insect pests.
Bring it on, huh? Climate change is coming, invited or not.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Big Oil idiots Senate Republicans sustainability
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 5: My God! It’s Actually A Cookbook!
The Boston Globe, reporting on the readiness of our state’s Junior senator to do the bidding of his paymasters:
Senator Scott Brown joined with Senate Republicans on Thursday to foil President Obama’s plan to strip $24 billion in tax subsidies from the country’s largest oil companies, a stance that Democrats immediately focused on as an issue in the Massachusetts Senate race.
In voting against the bill, Brown contended the measure did not address the most pressing problem.
“I do not support this bill in its current form because it will do nothing to reduce prices at the pump,’’ Brown said.
Which, in a nutshell, is why you (and I) should be donating to Elizabeth Warren. Brown is an idiot. And he’s a Republican.
But I repeat myself.
Sent March 30:
In following the rest of his Republican colleagues in voting to sustain subsidies to oil companies, Scott Brown defies both common sense and the principles of Massachusetts residents. Ignoring the scientific consensus on climate change, our junior senator advocates for continuing our current levels of fossil fuel consumption — loading the climatic dice for a costly and dangerous future of extreme weather.
While Senator Brown’s rejection of environmentally ethical fiscal policy may be antithetical to our state’s values, his vote helps us clarify who he really represents. Unlike Bay State voters, Scott Brown’s big oil constituents get four billion dollars in subsidies and tax breaks every year. That’s seven thousand dollars a minute — a powerful political motivator!
At a time when America should be transforming its energy economy into a model of sustainability, Senator Brown and the GOP offer regressive policies that are both environmentally unsound and fiscally irresponsible.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots IPCC scientific method
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 4: They’ll Pry My Light Bulbs Out Of My Cold Dead Sockets…Or Something
The Boston Globe covers the IPCC report:
Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts, and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday. The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe – from Mumbai to Miami – is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges, and droughts.
More of the same. Sent March 29:
The latest IPCC report forecasting greatly increased risks of extreme weather disasters caused by global climate change is sure to surprise no one.
The people who’ve been paying attention to the ongoing war on the environment are already gloomily aware that things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better, given that it’s going to take the planet’s climate centuries or millennia to recover from the past century’s profligate carbon-burning spree.
And the people who believe in a giant secret cabal planning to raise our taxes and outlaw incandescent bulbs are already fully convinced that the IPCC is in on the conspiracy.
Given that science has an impressive record of steadily-more-accurate predictions and a built-in self-correction system — unlike political conservatives, who have been consistently wrong about pretty much everything — perhaps it’s time for our politicians and media to pay attention to the IPCC’s report.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots IPCC scientific method
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 3: But They’re So Un-Serious
The Laredo Morning Times runs an AP article by Seth Borenstein on the most recent IPCC report, headlined “Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters”. Heh:
WASHINGTON — Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists said in a new report issued Wednesday.
The greatest threat from extreme weather is to highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe — from Mumbai to Miami — is immune. The document, by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists, forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.
The 594-page report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations, has generally focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming. This report by the panel is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes, which lately have been costing on average about $80 billion a year in damage.
Watch the denialists rise up in outraged hordes to smite algore! Sent March 28:
It’s certainly possible that the climatologists in the IPCC have it wrong in their predictions of extreme weather and heavy storms. Scientific errors have happened in the past; they’ll happen again. But let’s make a few comparisons.
Science has a built-in error-correction mechanism. When scientific results are published, people everywhere around the planet try to reproduce the experiments, searching for errors or misinterpretations. Scientific method has become the most potent truth-finding tool in humanity’s arsenal, steadily enhancing its predictive accuracy; the storms of today were forecast by climate scientists decades ago.
By contrast, those vehemently disputing the IPCC’s findings have time and time again been proven wrong. They were proven wrong about Iraqi WMDs, proven wrong about tax cuts on the richest 1 percent — and they’ll eventually be proven wrong on climate change, too.
Perhaps it’s time to pay more attention to the people who’ve been proven right.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: media irresponsibility timescale
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 2: Relax And Float Downstream / It Is Not Dying…
The Christian Science Monitor runs a Reuters story on a recent study in Nature Climate Change, confirming that yes, we dunnit:
London
Extreme weather events over the past decade have increased and were “very likely” caused by manmade global warming, a study in the journal Nature Climate Change said on Sunday.
Scientists at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Research used physics, statistical analysis and computer simulations to link extreme rainfall and heat waves to global warming. The link between warming and storms was less clear.
“It is very likely that several of the unprecedented extremes of the past decade would not have occurred without anthropogenic global warming,” said the study.
The past decade was probably the warmest globally for at least a millennium. Last year was the eleventh hottest on record, the World Meteorological Organisation said on Friday.
This is essentially a recycling of my usual irresponsible-media letter, with the addition of the mayfly/sequoia analogy. Maybe the CSM will finally publish me. Sent March 27:
Given the disconnect between the “if it bleeds, it leads” style of news reporting and the careful and deliberate style of scientific communication, it’s amazing that our media pays any attention whatever to issues of climate change.
After all, the transformation of the Earth’s climate takes place in long arcs of time: decades, centuries, millennia — while the longest span our media can competently address is the two-year gap between elections. It’s like asking mayflies to comment on sequoias.
What those climate scientists are telling us, in their careful and deliberate way, is that we’re already in a whole lot of trouble — and if we don’t act rapidly, it’s going to get immeasurably worse. While there’s no doubt that sensible energy and environmental policies are essential, it’s also incumbent on our news media to pay more, and better, attention to the gravest existential threat our species has yet faced.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes creationists denialists idiots morons
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Year 3, Month 4, Day 1: Do You Know Where Your Fools Are? I Do.
Three actual scientists are heard in the pages of the Tennesseean, arguing against the newly introduced legislation that would require all kinds of silly-ass nonsense to be taught equivalently in science classes:
Almost 90 years ago, Tennessee became a national laughingstock with the Scopes trial of 1925, when a young teacher was prosecuted for violating a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. With the passage of two bills, House Bill 368 and Senate Bill 893, the Tennessee legislature is doing the unbelievable: attempting to roll the clock back to 1925 by attempting to insert religious beliefs in the teaching of science.
These bills, if enacted, would encourage teachers to present the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of “controversial” topics such as “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” As such, the bills are misleading, unnecessary, likely to provoke unnecessary and divisive legal proceedings, and likely to have adverse economic consequences for the state.
It is misleading to describe these topics as scientifically controversial. What is taught about evolution, the origin of life, and climate change in the public school science curriculum is — as with all scientific topics — based on the settled consensus of the scientific community. While there is no doubt social controversy about these topics, the actual science is solid.
This one was a bit long, but they had a 250-word limit, so I let myself go a bit. Maybe there’ll be another paper with the same article tomorrow, and I can cut things down. Sent March 26:
The difference between social and scientific controversy is simple: the former is based on opinion, the latter on facts. Since opinions change with each successive generation, we can safely say our species will keep generating new social controversies for millennia to come.
Science, on the other hand, builds knowledge incrementally through a process of rigorous testing and analysis. A scientific controversy is created either by a new fact that doesn’t fit the accepted consensus understanding (as J.B.S. Haldane famously said when asked what could falsify evolutionary theory, “Fossil rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian”), or by a new theory that offers a more robust explanation for the facts that already exist.
Neither of these criteria are met by the arguments of climate change denialists. Their cries of “teach the controversy” are disingenuous; shall we teach the medieval theory of humours, phlogiston, or the “luminiferous aether”? These were all controversial in their time, and all have been disproved and relegated to the scrap heap of history.
Rather, the individuals fighting genuine education on climate change do it for simple and selfish reasons: they don’t wish to be inconvenienced. The corporations funding elaborate misinformation campaigns about global warming do it because they don’t wish to surrender their profit margins.
The scientific consensus is unambiguous: if we continue our profligate consumption of fossil fuels our CO2 emissions will trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, with consequences including rising sea levels, droughts, and extreme weather. Unless we change our ways, our descendants will indeed inherit the wind.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 30: Give You Everything I’ve Got For A Little Peace Of Mind…
In the Savannah Morning News, Barbara Kelly speaks to our condition:
2010 was the wettest year on record, and tied with 2005 as the hottest year since records have been kept. We have more extreme weather, and more freak weather as a result of climate change.
According to Amy Goodman (the host of democracynow.org), as she spoke from the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Durban, Africa, recently, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are the only two countries who voted against the Green Climate Fund. This is especially strange because this fund was proposed by Hillary Clinton in 2010. My guess is that it is pretty obvious that such a proposal would never be able to make it through the current Congress. The corporate control by oil and gas would never let that happen.
Very busy today, so I just ground out a generic media-sucks-short-attention-spans-will-kill-us-all type letter and sent it off — March 24:
While the first amendment of the constitution guarantees freedom of speech, our present state of media-driven inattention and ignorance is surely not what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote of a “well-informed citizenry.” The helter-skelter 24-hour news cycle virtually guarantees inadequate coverage of any issues requiring analysis or prior background; if it can’t be summarized in a sound bite, you won’t find it on network news.
Nowhere is this more potentially damaging than in the profoundly troubling area of global heating. The multi-decade lag between human action and climatic reaction means that quick fixes are unavailable — but enduring fixes are too slow to merit prime-time slots.
At a time when we desperately need wisdom, our national discussion is dominated by foolish bluster. By framing environmental policy in purely political terms, our media abdicates its responsibility to the long-term health and prosperity of our nation and the world.Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 29: A Bitter Cup
The Logan Herald-Journal (UT) notes a slight change in people’s thinking:
The public debate over global climate change in Cache Valley could be shifting.
Local institutions are clearing up confusion by adopting clear positions on the topic, even making them easily accessible for the public to see. A recent move by Utah State University’s Department of Geology, for instance, shows how global and local organizations are taking a formal stance on the issue. A link on the department’s homepage takes viewers to an official position on global warming.
“There were a lot of inquiries from students, particularly in the large, introductory classes,” says Dave Liddell, geology department head. “The faculty thought it would be useful to highlight our position on the topic.”
Liddell says he and his team of academics strongly support the scientific consensus that climate change is happening.
“The Department of Geology supports the Geological Society of America position paper on Global Warming,” the site reads. “We agree that the Earth’s climate is indeed changing and the changes are due, at least in part, to human activities. This is a critical environmental challenge that will require active study and long-term planning and mitigation.”
The department is not alone in its decision to air its position. The Bridgerland Audubon Society board shared its view. It says rapid physical changes will affect biological systems that will compromise habitat and disrupt wildlife populations that cannot adapt fast enough.
Sent March 23:
While it’s encouraging that institutions are working to “clarify their positions” on climate change, the fact remains that in a halfway sane world, such a concept would be recognized as an absurdity. One might as well require institutions to “clarify” their positions on the three Laws of Thermodynamics. But because our national cup of crazy is more full than empty, the factuality of global warming is now the basis of a “controversy.”
How did that happen?
The world’s climate scientists overwhelmingly agree on the basic facts: the greenhouse effect exists; it is exacerbated by human CO2 emissions; the impact of this on Earthly life and human civilization is going to be significant. The so-called “controversy” is the production of people and organizations heavily in the thrall of big oil and coal companies which anticipate reduced profits should our country move to an energy economy based on sustainability.
At a time when we should be working both to prepare for the problems of the climate crisis and to mitigate its worst effects, time wasted is a luxury we can no longer afford.
Warren Senders
atheism environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 28: Inhofe Is INHERENTLY Unconstitutional
The Bradenton Herald (FL) runs the same piece on Inhofe to which I responded yesterday.
The real hoax is the claim that a scientific debate exists about the reality of climate change. It is promoted by organizations that benefit from our current energy choices and groups that are opposed to any regulation whatsoever, even the most sensible safeguards that help protect our children’s health.
The hoaxers claim climate scientists are “in it for the money,” a ludicrous proposition as pointed out by Jon Koomey. Dr. Koomey used his expertise in mathematical modeling to study the economic impacts of climate change for two decades at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. If Koomey and his colleagues were in it for the money they would have taken their analytic expertise to Wall Street long ago, where their salaries would have been five to 10 times what they can make working for the government.
The hyped rhetoric around this issue is an attempt to convince Americans that accepting the scientific evidence will require taking actions inimical to our shared values of liberty, freedom, community and entrepreneurship.
But one need look no further than the studies of America’s military and intelligence officials who understand how disruptive human-caused climate change could be to our nation’s interests both at home and abroad (in 2009 the CIA established a Center on Climate Change and National Security). Putting our head in the sand about climate change is a sure way to undermine American liberty, economic prosperity and national security. Of all the alterative paths before us to address this problem, doing nothing to reduce the threat of serious climate change is a dangerous and expensive option.
There’s a climate change hoax all right, but it is Sen. Inhofe and his science-denying associates who are trying to do the fooling. We are all going to pay a price if we don’t call-out their campaign of misinformation and get down to the real work before us. The question now is what will be the cost of inaction to our health and our pocketbooks? The longer the hoaxers can prevent serious action, the higher the price we will all pay.
The guy is a disgrace to idiots everywhere. Sent March 22 (80 degrees outside):
Oklahoma senator James Inhofe is egregiously ignorant about basic science. His approach to climate change is equal parts stout denial and hippie-punching; apparently mocking environmentalists and rejecting the existence of the burgeoning crisis is enough to make the problem go away. Inhofe recently stated (on MSNBC) that he used to accept the conclusions of climatologists until he figured out how much it would cost to address the problem, demonstrating that the power of wishful thinking trumps reality every time — in the U.S. Senate, anyway.
Anywhere else? Ignoring your cardiologist’s warning doesn’t mean an automatic heart attack, and driving drunk doesn’t always mean a crash — but your insurance company and the arresting officer know: reality wins.
Mr. Inhofe’s thinking is so steeped in the apocalyptic wishful thinking of Biblical end-times theology that his involvement in climate policy should probably be forbidden under the Establishment clause of the Constitution.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 27: More Like This, Please
The Kansas City Star offers a platform to some scientists who have a few words about James Inhofe:
We are scientists who agree with critics such as Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., that there is a climate change “hoax” being perpetrated on the American people.
We just don’t agree on what the hoax is and who is being fooled.
Sen. Inhofe and his associates want us to believe that the science of climate change is the contrived “hoax.” Their claims cannot withstand even the most cursory scrutiny. Does this “hoax” date back to 1896, when Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius presented his findings that human activities releasing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could change Earth’s climate? Did it start when scientists Charles Keeling and Roger Revelle demonstrated in the 1950s that a large part of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of coal, oil and gas was remaining in the atmosphere because the oceans couldn’t absorb it fast enough? Did an evil cabal of “warmists” trick a science advisory panel into warning President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 of the dangers of adding greenhouses gases to the atmosphere?
In 2009, the National Academies of Science of the world’s major industrialized nations (including China, India and Brazil) issued an unprecedented joint statement on the reality of climate change and the need for immediate action. Do those who claim climate change is a hoax expect us to believe this was a put on by an international bunch of con men with doctoral degrees? The U.S. Evangelical Environmental Network tells us that global warming is one of the major challenges of our time, and Pope Benedict XVI has called for coordinated global action to address dangers of climate change – have they too joined the conspiracy?
Of course not.
Always fun to mock one of the biggest idiots in American politics, which is really saying a lot, these days. Sent March 21:
Senator Inhofe recently admitted on national television that he once accepted the scientific consensus on global warming — until he learned how much it would cost to deal with it, at which point he became the go-to guy for climate denial. The idea that ignoring a costly problem will make it disappear is bizarre, to say the least, but entirely typical of much twenty-first-century American politics. The Oklahoma senator has certainly made it pay; he’s handsomely funded by extractive industries apprehensive over the prospect of shrinking profit margins in a sustainable-energy economy.
Mr. Inhofe’s recipe for environmental and energy politics? Equal parts of big oil’s obscene greed and the apocalyptic imaginings of dominionist Christian sects, liberally flavored with hippie-punching and wacky conspiracy theories.
Although addressing climate change now will save trillions of dollars in the future, the Senator’s position has hardened. Don’t burden him with facts; his mind’s made up.
Warren Senders