environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 9, Day 2: Mirror, Mirror On The Wall
The August 29 Houston Chronicle reprints Paul Krugman’s shrill analysis of Republican epistemic closure:
Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the GOP – namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.
To see what Huntsman means, consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the GOP nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.
Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” – an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”
Unbelievable (facepalm). Sent August 29:
Rick Perry evokes a terrifying form of nostalgia for those of us who remember another science-hostile Texan politician who occupied the White House not too long ago. His assertion that climate scientists “manipulate data” to keep “dollars rolling into their projects” may be a grotesque misinterpretation of how science works and how scientific consensus is established, but it is a perfect example of what psychologists call “projection.” Since manipulating data is how conservative politicians maintain a steady flow of cash for their own interests, he assumes that scientists are equally venal and mendacious. While there are unscrupulous climate scientists, they turn out to be the ones on the fossil fuel industry’s payroll.
In attributing his own motives to members of the scientific community, the Governor insults countless dedicated researchers who are still trying to warn an increasingly oblivious citizenry of grave and imminent dangers. Shame, shame, shame.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: droughts extreme weather idiots Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 29: The Tip Of A Rapidly Melting Iceberg
The August 25 Hartford Courant runs a piece by Robert Thorson, addressing the reality of drought conditions in the United States as a consequence of climate change:
No part of New England (according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climatic data center) is experiencing drought. In contrast, 61 percent of the southeastern United States is experiencing moderate drought or worse, with Georgia taking the strongest hit. Things are much drier in the Southern Plains between Louisiana, south Texas, Arizona and Colorado. There, 84 percent of the land is experiencing at least moderate drought, with 47 percent experiencing exceptional drought.
Climate records are falling by the wayside: more than 6,100 records for warmer-than-usual nights, and 2,740 for hotter-than-usual days. Centered over west-central Texas is the largest footprint ever recorded for “exceptional” drought, based on the U.S. Drought Monitor. Texas is the launching pad for a presidential hopeful who denies that climate is being changed by human influence, and who seems to have forgotten that having a tea party requires water to make the tea.
I’m going to try and work the tar sands issue into as many of these letters as I can. Sent August 26 — I’m back from India and back at this grimly necessary work.
Increasingly frequent and severe droughts are only a part of the multiple vulnerabilities we and our descendants will have to cope with as climate change escalates. There’ll be heavier rains, too, since storms and extreme weather are part of the long-term forecast for humanity’s carbon-enhanced future. The conservatives’ simplistic caricature of “global warming” is a strawman; the work of climate scientists has predicted for decades that a runaway greenhouse effect won’t simply make the planet uniformly hotter, but will trigger innumerable local and regional effects, potentially disrupting and destroying ecologies, infrastructure and agriculture. While it’s too late to avoid many of the consequences of our civilization’s century-long oil and coal binge, we can still mitigate the severity of the coming storms if we rapidly reduce and eventually eliminate fossil fuels from our energy economy. Conversely, projects like the exploitation of Canadian tar sands are a decisive step in the wrong direction; if the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, droughts will be the least of our worries. It’s time to get serious about the reality of climate change.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama diesel fuel efficiency mileage trucks
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 28: We Suck! And We’re Big And Stupid! Yay, Us!
Last letter for a couple of weeks, from my side. As far as the public face of Running Gamak is concerned, letters will appear every day as usual. When this one shows up, I will have returned from India and will be recuperating from jet lag.
The August 10 LA Times runs an article on the Obama administration’s new mileage standards for heavy vehicles:
President Obama announced the first fuel-efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for long-haul rigs, work trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles Tuesday, the second mileage pact with manufacturers in less than a month.The regulations call for reductions on fuel consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions by 2018 of 9% to 23%, depending on the type of vehicle. Trucks and other heavy vehicles make up only 4% of the domestic vehicle fleet, but given the distance they travel, the time they spend idling and their low fuel efficiency, they end up consuming about 20% of all vehicle fuel, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The announcement comes less than two weeks after Obama and the country’s automakers unveiled new fuel economy rules for passenger vehicles that would boost fleet-wide average gas mileage to 54.5 mpg by 2025, from about 27.8 mpg now.
(snip)
At a time when nearly all major corporate lobbying groups and the Republican Party insist that the administration’s environmental regulations destroy jobs, the automakers, the United Auto Workers union and truck and large engine manufacturers are collaborating on rules they say could create jobs. Most environmental groups also praised the new truck standards.
I get to quote Spiro Agnew in my first paragraph! Ha ha ha ha ha. Sent August 10:
It is laughably predictable: whenever a new environmental regulation is announced, the same conservative choruses shout that any attempts to behave responsibly toward our planet are inherently “job-killing.” It would be laughable if these nattering nabobs of negativism were holding hand-lettered signs on street corners; knowing they’re in partial control of our government is profoundly disturbing.
Leave aside the “green” issues for a moment, and concentrate on the Republicans’ underlying message. They’re saying American manufacturers can’t meet high standards, and American workers won’t take pride in making high-quality products. They’re saying that America can’t be bothered to take responsibility for itself in the world community, or to plan for the future.
Their version of American exceptionalism is based on sloppiness, laziness, distractability, hubris and indifference to the rest of the world. Call me an idealist, but these hardly strike me as good candidates for our country’s core values.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama James Hansen Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 27: Please Don’t Let This Happen.
I’m writing this on August 9 — two days before I leave for India, and one day before I stop writing climate letters until I get back.
And this letter will see the light of the intertubes on August 27 — two days after I get back. I’m cool…and looking forward to my vacation!
This is about the potentially disastrous Tar Sands Pipeline project, which absolutely MUST NOT be allowed to happen.
Faxed to POTUS at 1 AM, August 10; mailed in an actual envelope with a stamp later that same day.
Dear President Obama,
In a sane universe, the notion of opening the Canadian tar sands to exploitation would never have arisen. The consequences of bringing this extraordinarily dirty form of energy into circulation would be catastrophic for North America and for our planet.
It would also, of course, pretty much doom any chance you would have to be remembered as an environmentally-conscious president. All the other advances you and your administration have made thus far would be nullified by the grotesque effects of the tar sands.
Tar sands will make impede our progress to a sustainable on many levels. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the greenhouse emissions from the tar sands oil is almost twice that of the average crude refined here in the USA. The yearly emissions from the Keystone XL project would be “roughly equivalent to annual CO2 emissions of seven coal-fired plants.”
It’s not just that tar sands oil is dirty at the point of extraction. The Keystone project necessitates significant deforestation, with an enormous loss of carbon sequestration function from the destroyed forests. Pipelines are highly vulnerable; leaks can have devastating effects on local ecosystems.
Climatologist James Hansen has warned us in very direct terms that putting the tar sands’ carbon into the atmosphere would be an irreversible tipping point to a runaway greenhouse effect. President Obama, your legacy should not include pulling this trigger on the planet. Please stop the tar sands pipeline.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes computer models denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific method
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 26: King Canute Redux
The August 7 Sacramento Bee (CA) describes the importance of computer modeling in the future of climate science, and notes that a certain group of political types don’t like the idea:
Better computers should help with the difficult climate problem of clouds, which interfere with energy flow between the Earth and the sun in two ways, Kinter said. They reflect some of the sun’s energy back to space, a cooling effect, but also absorb and send back some energy the Earth emits, a warming effect.
Computers also are used to simulate how particles known as aerosols scatter or absorb heat in different ways, and how they interact with clouds.
Thousands of scientists around the world are working on better climate models. Kinter and his group focus on how predictable extreme events such as floods, droughts and heat waves will be as the climate changes.
(snip)
“Almost overnight, the question changed to ‘What is the impact of this climate change on our human and natural systems?’ ” said Lawrence Buja, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “We need to (present) as convincing a case as we can.”
But in the latest sign of distrust for computer models, House Republicans put a provision in a foreign aid bill to eliminate U.S. funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Naturally. Psychopaths, all of ’em. Sent August 8:
Has there ever been a major political party in America that has been so loud and proud about not being based in reality? It’s not just computer models that Republicans distrust, it’s any and all forms of verifiable information and research, as witness the anti-factual bias of Fox News, the GOP’s house media organ.
The climate crisis is real, growing and extremely urgent. The long-term consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect are far more significant globally than any other so-called “security” issue (an assessment with which Army and CIA analysts concur). Yet conservatives continue claiming the problem doesn’t exist. Of course, once the evidence finally overwhelms them, they’ll start yelling that “free-market solutions” (along with tax breaks for the very wealthy) are the only way out. My question: why would anyone want advice from people so hubristic they claim to be exempt from the laws of physics and chemistry?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: biodiversity media irresponsibility prairies scientific method
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 25: Cockroaches and Grasses?
More on the “Prairie grasses will do okay” story, this time from the August 7 Colorodoan, and featuring the researcher in charge describing his methodology. It’s pretty interesting:
CHEYENNE — On the plains west of here Thursday, plant physiologist Jack Morgan inspected some grasses growing on a plot surrounded by a hollow hoop beneath an array of small heaters suspended from metal rods.
“Can you hear the hissing sound?” he said. “That’s the sound of the CO2 being emitted. It does it at a controlled rate, and we measure it in the middle of that ring.”
What Morgan, a rangeland scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Fort Collins, really is measuring is how rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere as a result of climate change might alter how grasses and weeds grow in the western Great Plains – critical information for ranchers and cattle owners who could see their businesses reshaped by climate change.
There are, alas, negative consequences to positive consequences. Hence this letter, sent August 7:
Jack Morgan and his research team are offering something rare: a positive side-effect of climate change. While their findings of plant resilience are very welcome, it’s important to keep a sense of the larger picture. Increased drought resistance is crucial on a climatically altered planet, because there’ll be more droughts — along with more extreme weather of all sorts. The prognosis for Earth’s environment over the next millennia is pretty grim; extreme losses of biodiversity are probably inevitable, even if prairie grasses do better than expected.
Powerful forces in our media and politics have been actively denying the scientific basis of climate change predictions for many years. As the evidence keeps mounting, we’ll start hearing a “global warming is good for us” message instead, in which studies like Dr. Morgan’s will be misapplied to advocate against meaningful action on climate and energy issues. This must not be allowed to happen.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans stupidity
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 23: He’s Naturally Stupid.
More fun with Tim Pawlenty’s remarks, this time courtesy of the August 5 LA Times:
Tim Pawlenty said in an interview this week that the science of global warming remains unclear and that Earth’s shifting climate is more likely due to natural causes.
The interview with the Miami Herald marked the most recent example of Pawlenty’s evolution on the issue. Once an advocate of cap-and-trade policies to reduce carbon admissions, the former Minnesota governor has since recanted his support for such proposals.
As the GOP presidential candidate told the Herald’s Marc Caputo:, “Like most of the major candidates on the Republican side to varying degrees, everybody studied it, looked at it. We did the same. But I concluded, in the end some years ago, that it was a bad idea. . . . We never actually implemented it. I concluded ultimately it was a bad idea. It would be harmful to the economy. The science was I think based on unreliable conclusions.”
Expanding on the Breslin idea from yesterday. Sent August 6:
So Tim Pawlenty thinks climate change is due to “natural causes,” eh? Sure, I’ll go along with that. As long as Mr. Pawlenty agrees that lung cancer and emphysema are “natural” responses to tobacco smoking, that heart disease is a “natural” response to obesity, and that brain damage is a “natural” consequence of traumatic head injuries.
Climate change is the atmosphere’s predictable and “natural” response to massive atmospheric releases of greenhouse gases, courtesy of the world’s industrialized civilizations. To pretend otherwise is to be deliberately ignorant of basic physics and chemistry, which may be fine for a FOX-fed tea-party zealot, but should instantly disqualify any aspirant to the nation’s highest office.
Mr. Pawlenty’s readiness to pander to the most extreme examples of anti-science zealotry in his party’s base are, of course, an opportunistic response to the exigencies of twenty-first century Republican electoral politics. I guess that’s “natural,” too.
Warren Senders
environment humor Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 22: shut up he explained.
In the Not-News-To-Anyone-Who’s-Been-Paying-Attention category, the August 4 Minnesota Star-Tribune reports that (unlike none of the other Republican presidential aspirants) Tim Pawlenty is a gutless, opportunistic, sociopath:
Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s position on climate change has now shifted from “one of the most important issues of our time” to questioning whether humans have had any effect on climate change at all.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Miami Herald, Pawlenty said that “the weight of the evidence is that most of it, maybe all of it, is because of natural causes. But to the extent there is some element of human behavior causing some of it — that’s what the scientific debate is about.”
It wasn’t too long ago that Pawlenty took a much more muscular approach to climate change. Shortly into his second term as governor, the Minnesota Republican made a big push for clean energy.
When he was named chair of the National Governors Association, Pawlenty had the theme of “Securing a Clean Energy Future.” He touted Minnesota legislation that set an ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent by 2015 and 80 percent by 2050. In 2007 he said he wanted the Upper Midwest to become “the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy.”
On the other hand, he gave me the opportunity to cite, in its entirety, one of the funniest sentences ever written in English. Sent August 5:
It’s not just greenhouse emissions that are bringing on an unstable climate. Republican politicians and the Tea Party adherents to whom they are pandering are emitting steadily increasing quantities of ignorance. While we must give these anti-science, anti-environment zealots credit for absolutely right in their own minds, the facts suggest that they’re absolutely wrong everywhere else. Tim Pawlenty’s suggestion that climate change is triggered by “natural causes” reminds me of Jimmy Breslin’s Mafia-themed comic novel, “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” in which “Raymond the Wolf passed away in his sleep one night from natural causes; his heart stopped beating when the three men who slipped into his bedroom stuck knives in it.” Yes, Mr. Pawlenty, global warming is a totally natural response to an anthropogenic overdose of CO2. But I doubt that’s what The Governor Who Couldn’t Talk Straight meant; I think he’s been breathing too many tea fumes.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility fee and dividend media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 21: In The Country Of The Crazy And Stupid…
In August 4th’s Quincy Patriot-Ledger (MA), D.R. Tucker discusses the eminently sensible fee-and-dividend approach to taxing carbon emissions:
In mid-June, more than 80 members of the Citizens Climate Lobby met with House and Senate members to seek support for a market-based, revenue-neutral solution. Under their proposal, known as “fee and dividend,” a gradually increasing fee would be charged on coal, oil and natural gas at the point of origin or import.
The fee would be set initially at $15 per ton of carbon dioxide in the fuel.
Proceeds would be distributed as dividend checks to the public directly.
This fee will increase the cost of fossil fuels, but the dividend checks will reduce the impact on working families.
The state economy will reap benefits from increased investment in energy conservation and establishment of new companies developing renewable alternatives to fossil fuels. This proposal will create local jobs in energy conservation and renewable energy.
This revenue-neutral approach to addressing climate change is politically neutral, easing progressives’ concerns about the manipulation of emissions trading in cap-and-trade and assuaging conservatives’ fears about increasing the federal government’s role.
It’s the right action to take, a move that will pay dividends simultaneously to the consumer, the state economy and the environment.
“Eminently sensible” = doomed. Sent August 4:
Mr. Tucker’s prescription for an economically and environmentally sane climate policy is exactly correct. Unfortunately, as events over the past decade have demonstrated time and time again, sanity appears undervalued by our representatives in politics. If a fee-and-dividend approach to carbon emissions is to have a chance of succeeding, our print and broadcast media must do their job. The “balanced” model, with every scientifically informed expert countered by a paid shill from the petroleum industry, is both an intellectual and an environmental disaster. By convincing a plurality of Americans that the science “isn’t settled,” this approach has drastically degraded the quality of the discussion, bringing progress on environmental issues to an absolute standstill. The Jeffersonian ideal of a “well-informed citizenry” is crucial for a functioning democracy; when reporting on a threat as significant as climate change, our media must abandon irresponsible “false equivalency,” and rededicate itself to reporting scientific truth.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Durban Conference Kyoto United Nations
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Year 2, Month 8, Day 20: Nothing To See Here. Move Along, Folks.
The August 3 Chicago Tribune reports on low expectations for the upcoming Durban conference:
WELLINGTON, Aug 2 (Reuters) – Major climate talks in South Africa at year-end will be unlikely to strike agreement on a new pact, but will be important in determining the shape of
long-term efforts to tackle climate change, a senior U.N. climate official said on Tuesday.The future of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing U.N. plan which obliges about 40 industrialised nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2012, is widely seen as under threat. Japan, Canada and Russia have said they will not extend it, while the United States never signed up to it.
La de da de da de da de da….
Sent August 3:
How low our hopes have fallen! The international community is still meeting in Durban to address the complexities of climate change — and while nobody expects anything to actually, you know, happen, the good news is that representatives of the world’s nations will all be there mouthing platitudes at one another. Given that the overwhelming consensus of the scientists who actually know what’s going on with the planet’s climate is that runaway climate change poses a civilizational threat to our species, this diplomatic dithering is a pathetic substitute for the concerted worldwide action that is necessary. Eventually, of course, we’ll learn that they’ve agreed to a template for developing a process to organize a protocol for establishing a framework for beginning negotiations on the elements that need to be included in a new emissions treaty to replace the Kyoto Agreement. And that will be our good news for the day.
Warren Senders