atheism environment Politics: population sustainability
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 11: This Dusty Old Dust Is A Gettin’ My Home
The San Francisco Chronicle makes some obvious associations which are usually ignored, presumably because everybody loves kids:
California has 157 endangered or threatened species, looming water shortages, eight of the 10 most air-polluted cities in the country and 725 metric tons of trash washing up on its coast each year.
California also has 38 million people, up 10 percent in the last decade, including 10 million immigrants. They own 32 million registered vehicles and 14 million houses. By 2050, projections show 51 million people living in the state, more than twice as many as in 1980.
In the public arena, almost no one connects these plainly visible dots.
For various reasons, linking the world’s rapid population growth to its deepening environmental crisis, including climate change, is politically taboo. In the United States, Europe and Japan, there has been public hand-wringing over falling birthrates and government policies to encourage child-bearing.
But those declining birthrates mask explosive growth elsewhere in the world.
In less than a lifetime, the world population has tripled, to 7.1 billion, and continues to climb by more than 1.5 million people a week.
A consensus statement issued in May by scientists at Stanford University and signed by more than 1,000 scientists warned that “Earth is reaching a tipping point.”
An array of events under way – including what scientists have identified as the sixth mass extinction in the earth’s 540 million-year history – suggest that human activity already exceeds earth’s capacity.
It’s been nice. September 4:
It’s possible that our species’ fate was sealed the moment we discovered agriculture. The increased quantities and enhanced predictability of our food supply encouraged our numbers to grow — and after twelve thousand years or so (an eyeblink in geological time) we’ve gone far beyond the planet’s carrying capacity.
But this doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story. The futurist visionary Buckminster Fuller coined the term to measure our ability to influence our environment through the expenditure of energy. One “energy slave” equals 250 days per year of an adult male’s physical labor — and thanks to mechanized agriculture, manufacturing, and infrastructure, we who live in the industrialized world now command thousands of them with the flick of a finger. There may be seven billion human bodies on Earth, but the transformations we force on the planet demand that our energy slaves be included in the census — a thousandfold increase.
With a population numbered in the trillions, it’s no wonder that we are now coming face to face with what biologists coyly call an “evolutionary bottleneck.”
Warren Senders
environment Politics: 350 activism heroes
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 10: That’s The Song Of Songs
More on the Energy Exodus heroes, from Cape Cod Online:
HYANNIS – Dr. Turner Bledsoe, 79, said walking 70 miles over the past six days hurt.
“Every step was painful,” said the Hingham resident.
But, he added, “It’s the most important hike of my life.”
Bledsoe was the oldest member of a core group of around 50 hikers who participated in the Energy Exodus, walking from the Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset and arriving in Hyannis Monday.
“The idea of the Energy Exodus march was to show a departure from fossil fuel addiction,” explained Varshini Prakash, a student organizer and staff member of the Better Future Project, a nonprofit supporting grass roots efforts to address climate change.
The march began at the Brayton Point Power Station, which is described on the station’s Website as, “one of New England’s largest fossil-fueled generating facilities.
FSM bless them, every one. No kidding. September 3:
It was two hundred and thirty-eight years ago that a few courageous patriots responded to a midnight call and became an indelible part of our nation’s history. The Minutemen of Middlesex also make a convincing argument as to why it’s a good idea to heed early-warning systems. The world’s climatologists are the Paul Reveres of today, and they’ve been sounding the alarm for far longer than most of us know, in the face of a lazy media and a political establishment that has been co-opted when it hasn’t simply been purchased outright.
Today’s Minutemen, of course, are the ones who recognize the gravity of the crisis and the need for action. People like those in Energy Exodus, who joined a 70-mile walk in the hopes of spurring a genuine response to a genuine emergency.
When America’s eyes are fixed on pop stars and the vacuous talking heads of television news, environmental activists strive towards a world where our consumption of energy no longer endangers humanity’s future. These brave men and women are the true patriots of the age.
Warren Senders
atheism environment: denialists epistemology history of science
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 9: The Fool Hath Said In His Heart…
The Baxter Bulletin (AR) features a columnist named Tina Dupuy, who takes on the science-accepting science-rejecters:
We believe as a culture — as a community — that if science, in the form of medical care, can improve and prolong life then we’re required to enable it to do so. People of faith can concede God gave us medicine and we can all forgo the horrors of life before penicillin and aspirin. Zero controversy.
See, the Schaibles and hundreds of parents like them think pneumonia and other illnesses stem from a lack of faith, a life of sin. They’re bacteria deniers. As a constitutional government we don’t care what they believe until they’re culpable in a child’s death (in this case two deaths). Our government believes in science over biblical diagnosis.
So it is therefore not a stretch, not in any way contentious or unreasonable, to simply accept climate change as a reality for one simple reason: It’s science, and we believe in science.
There are two types of climate change deniers: Those who take a faith-based exemption citing God’s divine plan, and those on energy company payrolls.
Good article, but she doesn’t go far enough. Time for some epistemological updating. September 3:
While political and social conservatives have no problem, as Tiny Dupuy points out, with using the products of scientific thinking for their own convenience and enjoyment, this acceptance does not automatically translate into an informed understanding of science itself. The late Arthur C. Clarke famously remarked that, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and therein lies the key: creationists and their political fellow-travelers are magical thinkers, relying on updated and digitized superstitions to make a confused and contentious world once again orderly and safe. From this perspective, the conservative rejection of climate change, evolution, or other inconvenient facts is no more paradoxical than adherents of one religion denying the claims of another.
Scientific method, by contrast, privileges the search for truth, letting the chips fall where they may. No magic required, only rigorous examination of data and a readiness to admit error in the face of fresh evidence — both of which are impossible for magical thinkers.
In prehistoric times, these modes of thought would have little consequence outside an individual’s own sphere of influence. Now, alas, scientific illiteracy may well be the deciding factor for our species’ future on a climatically-transformed planet.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 8: They’d Only Ask Me About You
The San-Antonio Express News takes on Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, who is, mirabile dictu, an idiot:
The newest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, leaked to media last week, is frightening and conclusive.
The panel of several hundred scientists, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, says the odds are at least 95 percent that humans are the principal cause of climate change. The panel predicts an increase of 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century and warns that a rise of that magnitude would cause “extreme heat waves, difficulty growing food and massive changes in plant and animal life, probably including a wave of extinction,” according to the New York Times.
Yet U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, claims the science is uncertain about how much of the warming is caused by humans.
As a result, he has urged U.S. policy-makers to take a skeptical view of “overheated” rhetoric about climate change. He’s called for relaxing, not strengthening, regulations on carbon emissions from power plants. And he’s urged moving forward with the Keystone XL Pipeline, even though on a daily basis it would carry 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil — one of the world’s dirtiest fuels, which, according to the Congressional Research Service, generates at least 14 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oils do.
Sheesh. September 2:
Would you trust a heart surgeon who believed in the medieval theory of “humours”? Would you fly in a plane with a pilot who didn’t understand aerodynamics? Would you eat in a restaurant whose cook didn’t “believe” in sanitation? Then why would you want a Congressional Committee on Science and Technology to be chaired by someone who rejects the methodology and conclusions of contemporary science?
Lamar Smith is an excellent demonstration of what happens when scientific illiteracy is perceived as a cultural virtue. Five decades ago, America launched the space program in response to a perceived threat from the Soviet Union. We lionized scientists, increased funding for math and science education, and recognized the crucial role scientific understanding plays in our society. And we reached the Moon.
Now we face a far more profound threat than Soviet domination of outer space. The climate crisis is all but certain to bring massive destruction and loss of life on a global scale over the coming decades. Rep. Smith thinks the science is “uncertain,” but an inability to understand climatology is hardly a valid argument. Is it just coincidence that his corporate paymasters would find their astronomical profits reduced if Congress took responsible action to address the threat?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots oceanic acidification oceanic warming Republicans
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 7: Thought We Said Goodbye Last Night
More on oceanic acidification, this time from the Sacramento Bee:
Making a living from the ocean is not for the faint of heart. It’s comparable to farming the soil, in that weather, disease and market conditions can make or break your bottom line. Food production, whether farming on land or in water, is dependent upon a number of factors all working in sync to produce a healthy, resilient crop. If just one factor is off, it can ruin your whole harvest.
A recently recognized threat to ocean health has the potential to do more than just inflict a bad year on shellfish producers. Ocean acidification could put us out of business permanently. Caused by activities that generate pollution from factories, cars and power plants, ocean acidification is physically changing the chemistry in the ocean. The ocean is a tremendous sponge for pollution, soaking up about 30 percent of what we put in the atmosphere. As those emissions are absorbed, it makes seawater more acidic with dire consequences to marine life, dissolving the shells of oysters, mussels and clams, and confusing behavior of fish, like salmon.
This is the “we’re all in it together” letter. Sept. 2:
Oceanic heating and acidification (two consequences of the accelerating greenhouse effect) make catastrophic declines a certainty for California’s shellfish industry. And it’s not just the West coast of the USA, but everywhere humans make their living from the sea, for the climate crisis knows no national boundaries.
Since billions of people (between a quarter and a third of Earth’s population) depend on the ocean for food, this is a humanitarian emergency. Include the likely effects of climate change on agriculture, and the gathering storm clouds are too big to ignore.
Unless, of course, you’re in a position to do something about it, like the many politicians whose myopic climate-change denialism ensures a failure to act in time to avert disaster. It’s never a good idea to bet on ignorance; when our species’ future is at stake, it’s a catastrophe in the making.
Warren Senders
atheism environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots religion
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 6: Be Sure To Hide The Roaches
The Christian Post runs an Op-Ed by two evangelical climate scientists, desperately trying to shake off the Limbaugh-stink:
Rush Limbaugh doesn’t think we exist. In other words that evangelical scientists cannot subscribe to the evidence of global warming.
Specifically, during a recent segment on his radio show Limbaugh stated, “If you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming.”
Talk radio personalities often make hyperbolic statements. It is what their listeners expect and want to hear. But in this instance, Rush’s uninformed rhetoric is demeaning to Christians who care deeply about what humans are doing to God’s Creation and ignorant of the consequences that future generations will face if we don’t respond quickly to the challenge of climate change.
We are both atmospheric scientists who study climate change, having earned advanced degrees in our respective fields and having devoted our lives to increasing knowledge through scientific research. We know climate change is real, that most of it is human-caused, and that it is a threat to future generations that must be addressed by the global community. We are also evangelical Christians who believe that God created the world in which we live.
Good luck with that. Sept. 1:
It’s reassuring that some evangelicals acknowledge the existence of the burgeoning climate crisis, and recognize the urgency of action. On this issue, the nature of one’s faith is a trivial factor in comparison with the magnitude of the emergency.
That said, it is not enough for Katharine Hayhoe and Thomas Ackerman just to rebuke talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh’s assertion that Christianity is incompatible with accepting the evidence of climate science. The evangelical community must recognize the role it has played in supporting those institutions of denial which stand in the way of action. The Republican party owes its current power to evangelicals who were cynically and callously manipulated by politicians far more concerned with their own fortunes and those of their corporate paymasters than with the lives of their constituents. Now these same lawmakers are obstructing meaningful legislation on climate issues, thereby increasing the probability of a catastrophic temperature increase over the coming century — a secular Armaggedon wholly explainable by the laws of physics and chemistry.
And regardless of your faith, that’s not Good News.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility oceanic acidification oceans
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 5: Drown In My Own Tears
The Washington Post addresses the IPCC report on oceanic acidification:
The world’s oceans are turning acidic at what’s likely the fastest pace in 300 million years. Scientists tend to think this is a troubling development. But just how worried should we be, exactly?
It’s a question marine experts have been racing to get a handle on in recent years. Here’s what they do know: As humans keep burning fossil fuels, the oceans are absorbing more and more carbon-dioxide. That staves off (some) global warming, but it also makes the seas more acidic — acidity levels have risen 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution.
There’s reason for alarm here: Studies have found that acidifying seawater can chew away at coral reefs and kill oysters by making it harder to form protective shells. The process can also interfere with the food supply for key species like Alaska’s salmon.
But it’s not fully clear what this all adds up to. What happens if the oceans keep acidifying and water temperatures keep rising as a result of global warming? Are those stresses going to wipe out coral reefs and fisheries around the globe, costing us trillions (as one paper suggested)? Or is there a chance that some ecosystems might remain surprisingly resilient?
Same message, so they get another version of the Cousteau letter. Aug. 31:
Walter Cronkite may have been the most universally trusted figure on television during the 1960s, but there was another who ran a close second. How many of us were introduced to the profound and protean beauty of the world’s oceans by the late Jacques Cousteau? One wonders that that tough old Frenchman would say and do if he had the opportunity to hear the IPCC’s grim discussion of intensifying oceanic acidification.
My guess: he’d start speaking truth (probably laced with unprintable Gallicisms) to the world’s industrialized nations, telling them in no uncertain terms that the time is long past to demonstrate genuine civic responsibility in dealing with their accelerating carbon emissions.
This eloquent and dedicated explorer long ago told us that “the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” Our political leaders and those who captain the engines of our economy can no longer afford to ignore these words.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists EPA Gina McCarthy idiots Republicans
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 4: Unlike The Rest Of You Squares
Gina McCarthy went to Alaska, and the Anchorage Daily News was on the case:
“The climate is changing and we need to adapt to that change and make sure communities are prepared,” she said.
A trip to Iowa two weeks ago highlighted the issues, she said.
“There was no question in discussions with both farmers and ranchers the climate change impacts we’re seeing right now are severe,” she said. “We’re having drought and floods in the same state at the same time.”
McCarthy’s path to the EPA’s top job was rocky. Senate Republicans held up her nomination for more than four months before she was confirmed July 18. They used Obama’s choice of McCarthy to highlight complaints about the agency’s environmental regulations and the president’s agenda. McCarthy was previously head of the EPA’s air pollution office.
Alaska’s senators were divided over her confirmation. Democratic Sen. Mark Begich voted for McCarthy, while Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski opposed her, although she did not support a filibuster attempt. Murkowski, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate energy committee, did not return a message Monday about the new EPA leader.
“Sen. Murkowski agrees that climate change should be addressed, but remains concerned about the administration circumventing Congress to impose costly and unpopular regulations,” her spokesman, Robert Dillon, said in an email.
Sigh. August 31:
So Senator Lisa Murkowski thinks “climate change should be addressed,” but is unhappy that President Obama is “circumventing Congress to impose costly and unpopular regulations.” In other words, she’d be happy to confront a profound threat to our civilization, as long as she’s not actually required to do anything. That’s an easy game, but a deeply cynical one. If Sen. Murkowski isn’t just mouthing platitudes, perhaps she could work to persuade her colleagues in the halls of government to stop denying basic science in the service of short-term political gamesmanship.
Here’s a tip for the Senator and her colleagues in the GOP: failure to move strongly and swiftly on the climate crisis is going to bring results more costly and unpopular than anything you’ve ever imagined. The costs of inaction on this civilizational threat are conservatively reckoned in the trillions; the health of the entire planet is at stake.
Perhaps House and Senate Republicans think Earth should just go to the Emergency Room.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots lakes Republicans
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 3: Twenty-Five Or Six To Four
The Superior Telegram (WI) on Lake Superior’s ongoing transformation:
Researchers say even Lake Superior, the largest lake connected to the state, is feeling the effects of climate change.
Swimming in Lake Superior has never been easy without a wetsuit, but if you’re going in with just a swimsuit late August is usually one of the best times. On a hot day near Marquette, Mich. last weekend, three college students jumped off what are called the Black Rocks and into the relatively cool water. Even a visiting journalist took the plunge.
As refreshing as a brief swim in the big lake might be, scientists and advocates say there appear to be trouble signs for the waters. In some of the last few years Lake Superior’s average daily temperatures in August have been around 70 degrees, well above 30-year averages.
Last year, Marquette had its first ever beach closure tied to E. coli bacteria, which is often linked to warmer lake temperatures. Winter ice cover is also down.
Generating letter after letter today, trying to get ahead of the game. August 29:
The heating of Lake Superior is a local manifestation of a global phenomenon. All across the globe, people are figuring out that things ain’t what they used to be, climatically speaking. Regions that require glacial melt for their water are looking at increasingly arid futures, while citizens of island nations are getting ready for the day rising seas turn their homelands into historical footnotes. And, closer to home, people who live on the shores of America’s largest lake are discovering that industrial civilization’s century-long fossil-fuel binge has some serious consequences right in their own neighborhoods.
But the USA is unique among nations in that many of its citizens reject the existence of climate change entirely. We can sympathize with the denialists’ reluctance to accept that the greenhouse effect will disrupt their lives in countless unpredictable and complex ways (after all, nobody looks forward to planetary catastrophe), but future generations on the shores of an ice-free Lake Superior will deplore their inaction.
Warren Senders
environment: agriculture drought sustainability
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 3: Headin’ For A Fall…
I wonder when Ownership is going to take notice. The Farm Journal:
Drought conditions have rapidly spread and worsened in Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois over the past six weeks, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. But longer term, odds are that conditions will improve in the eastern half of the Corn Belt, while worsening again in the western half, experts say.
This week’s hot, dry weather helped late-planted corn and soybeans catch up, but lack of water could also prevent proper ear filling in non-irrigated corn.
Dug out an old one, filed off the serial numbers, and sent it on. August 29:
It’s harder and harder to reject the evidence for the slow-motion catastrophe of climate change. As Duke Ellington’s old song says, “Things ain’t what they used to be” — and there’s nobody in our society better equipped to recognize this than our nation’s farmers, now reeling from sustained droughts that are approaching Dust Bowl proportions.
But while more people are aware of the problem, much of our agricultural infrastructure is stuck in the past. With equipment and systems belonging to a period of conspicuous consumption, both farming and manufacturing sectors waste unimaginable quantities of water every day — and there’s nothing like a prolonged drought to remind us that it’s not a disposable commodity, but a precious resource.
While technological improvements are essential to properly husband our dwindling water supplies, the most important transformations must be in our collective behavior and attitudes. Climate change’s most important lesson may well be that the era of waste is ended.
Warren Senders