environment Gardening: agriculture denialism farming
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 24: The Farmer Is The Man Who Feeds Us All
The Montreal Gazette reports on a new study by the Universal Ecological Fund (sounds like hippie tree-huggers to me) that predicts higher food costs as a consequence of climate change. Damn. Jeez, that’s counterintuitive, all right.
One wonders how many warnings can be ignored by climate-change deniers. The Universal Ecological Fund report simply applies common sense to the relationship of agriculture and weather patterns; while alarming, its analysis is hardly surprising. If the weather is more unusual and extreme, crop failures will be more likely. Climatologists’ predictions have been repeatedly vindicated over the past several decades; any errors are almost invariably ones of underestimation. At this point ignoring climate science requires a readiness to embrace a bewilderingly complex conspiracy theory in which scientists all over the globe are attempting to “usher in a socialist world order” or some similar farrago of nonsense. The facts are in: climate change is here; it’s real; humans (especially industrialized humans) are causing it; it will make our lives enormously more complex, inconvenient and expensive in the coming centuries — and the costs of action are dwarfed by those of inaction.
Warren Senders
environment: denialism idiots NIMBY
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 23: The P.O.E. Principle
Based on his other writing, I’m going to assume that William Collins’ piece on climate change (which I found in the Youngstown News (OH), but which was originally published at OtherWords) is in fact written from a scientifically informed position. But the second half reads like…well, go check it out yourself.
Anyway, my letter:
William Collins’ analysis of the climate change issue is a remarkable feat. In the first half of his piece, he explicitly states that the warming atmosphere is a “truly alarming” problem, but his conclusion reads like a skillful parody of conservative thinking. Even assuming that Collins’ final paragraphs don’t represent his core beliefs, they deserve a careful response — because a statement like “we’re not about to inconvenience ourselves over some half-baked fad that says we’re damaging the world’s atmosphere” is representative of much current conventional opinion on the subject. The failure of our media to convey the magnitude of the climate crisis is perhaps the single most damaging consequence of the false-equivalence stenography that we’ve come to call “journalism,” just as the inability of our political system to address the very real possibility of a climate-triggered civilizational collapse is arguably the nadir of the American democratic experiment. Mr. Collins says, snarkily, “In 50 years, we’ll know what we should have done today.” Given that scientists (and politicians) have known about the greenhouse effect and its consequences for Arctic ice (to name just one affected area) since the early 1950s, that statement is a superb summary of a thoughtful position on climate change — from 1960. Our fifty years are already up. Over the next fifty, we’re going to discover that a world racked by water wars, droughts, wildfires and severe political instability (often in nuclear-armed nations) is not something Americans can ignore.
Warren Senders
environment: denialism North Carolina sea levels
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 18: Denial Is Flooding
The Charlotte Observer recognizes that rising ocean levels will have significant implications for people who live on the coast.
Rising sea level is the clearest signal of climate change in North Carolina. Few places in the United States stand to be more transformed.
About 2,000 square miles of our low, flat coast, an area nearly four times the size of Mecklenburg County, is 1 meter (about 39 inches) or less above water.
At risk are more than 30,500 homes and other buildings, including some of the state’s most expensive real estate. Economists say $6.9 billion in property, in just the four counties they studied, will be at risk from rising seas by late this century.
The comments on the article perfectly illustrate the point of my letter.
The equations are simple. The atmosphere warms and the ice melts; the ice melts and the sea rises; the sea rises and people lose their land and their homes. It’s only now that US citizens are beginning to experience things that people in Bangladesh (where only a few feet separate “highlands” from “lowlands”) have known for years. And the gradually rising ocean waters are accompanied by another, equally insidious tide: a greater percentage of Americans doubt the scientific evidence for global warming than ever before. Just as our industry adds greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at ever-increasing rates (despite the fact that their effects were predicted over fifty years ago), our media broadcasts the voices of denial, making a mockery of a genuine emergency. When did expertise, training and insight become liabilities in our public discourse? What will it take for us to recognize the danger we’re facing?
Warren Senders
environment: denialism NOAA
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 17: Say What?
The Seattle Times notices the NOAA report (2010 ties 2005 as warmest year on record, breaks the record for wettest year, etc., etc.)
If you’ve been paying attention, you knew by last July that 2010 was going to break planetary weather records. And if you’re still paying attention, you’re anticipating that 2011 will be pretty hot and pretty extreme, too. Unfortunately, if you’re paying attention to climate change, you’re in the minority; most of our fellow citizens have internalized the notion that “the science isn’t settled,” thanks to our media’s readiness to “balance” every genuinely worried climate expert with a smooth-talking shill for the fossil fuel industry. The facts have been in for a long time (for example, a 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine discussed atmospheric warming caused by CO2 emissions). And yet we have failed to act. Addicted to a culture of convenience, locked in cycles of conspicuous consumption, we are unwilling to make the hard choices on which our survival as a species is increasingly likely to depend. Hell, we can’t even talk about those choices and their consequences for our future and the futures of our children.
Warren Senders
environment: denialism timescale
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 4: Can A Bacterium Experience A Car Crash?
The Tennesseean notes that climate change takes place so slowly that most people don’t know how to recognize it.
It is unsurprising that the effects of climate change are difficult to spot on a day-to-day basis. We’ve become desensitized to changes in the natural world, which happen in timescales too slow for our hurried, impatient, post-industrial selves. Climatologists have worked for decades to develop the tools to trace the slow transformations of Earth’s climate over millions of years, and they are unequivocal: the climate change that’s happening right now is moving much, much faster than normal. However, that’s still a lot slower than our perceptions allow, and therein lies a critical problem for humanity. The coming centuries will feature increasingly severe and unpredictable weather, affecting our agriculture, infrastructure and community life in ways we can only begin to imagine. If we are to survive and prosper, it’s imperative that we begin re-learning how to perceive the world’s transformations on timescales greater than those of our own puny lives.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialism East Coast idiots Storms
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 31: If You Keep Being Right, We’ll Probably Just Have To Kill You
The Toronto Globe and Mail has an article on the escalation of storms on the East Coast, noting that a coastal weather expert believes that Climate Change might have something to do with it. The comments section is stupid beyond belief.
The increased frequency and severity of storms and unusual weather events is exactly what climatologists have been predicting for years as a long-term consequence of the greenhouse effect. Now that their forecasts are coming true, something quite remarkable is happening. Rather than receiving long-overdue and well-deserved recognition, these researchers are mocked, derided, threatened with de-funding, and stigmatized as threats to society. Why? Because they were right? The denialist conspiracy theory that an international cabal of scientists is plotting to achieve world dominance is far less likely than the alternative theory: that a group of petroleum billionaires and the multinational corporations they run are spending huge quantities of money to delay the day when their product is recognized as being profoundly toxic to the long-term health of both our planet and our civilization. The fossil fuel industry is a global version of Big Tobacco. Smoke and lies, smoke and lies.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility denialism idiots
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 30: It’s Only A Movie?
The Gisbourne Herald (NZ) runs an article asserting that there is “Clear scientific consensus that we are cooking the planet . . .”
Many of the other letters and articles in this paper (of which I’ve never heard) are full of denialist stupidity. So I thought I’d address that a bit. The movie analogy is new; I look forward to refining it in days to come.
Cui bono? Who benefits? When reading the assertions of climate-change deniers, we should investigate each position’s sources of money. On one side, scientific establishments: chronically underfunded, staffed by people deeply interested in their fields of expertise, with a system of fact-checking and theoretical rigor (peer review) that remains the world’s standard of intellectual quality. On the other side, big energy companies — making billions of dollars in profits, with a proven track record of disregard for the common good, and a system of misinformation and propaganda that includes heavily funded “think tanks” and access to the world’s most influential media. So-called “skeptics” are imagining the wrong movie. This isn’t a thriller where a cabal of mad scientists attempt to take over the world; this is the one where dedicated researchers attempt to alert humanity to a clear and present danger, but are mocked by short-sighted, profit-hungry corporate sociopaths.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Chris Christie denialism idiots
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 8: Hey, “Right-Wing Jim!” You Reading This?
I just couldn’t resist this. Some climatologists from Rutgers are hoping to change Chris Christie’s mind on climate change. Heh heh heh.
Maybe I’ll get another piece of hatemail!
If Governor Christie were motivated by longer-term concerns than his own electoral survival in a Republican environment dominated by the anti-science zealots of the Tea Party, he might be able to pay attention to the advice he’s receiving from climatologists. After all, it should be apparent to anyone that catastrophic climate change will be bad for business in multiple ways. Rising sea levels could submerge large swaths of coastline; droughts could imperil agriculture and lead to food shortages; increasingly severe storms could destroy or degrade infrastructure, necessitating expensive repairs. Unfortunately, the Governor is motivated exclusively by short-term electoral exigency — he’s made his ideological bed and is unlikely to get up from it. He has become a “climate zombie,” unable to acknowledge scientific reality without alienating his base constituency, a group of voters united in their distrust of expertise in general and scientific expertise in particular.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialism false equivalence media irresponsibility
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 17: Just Don’t Tell Them!
The Washington Post runs an article by Meg Bostrom, noting that Republicans who secretly know climate change is happening may be able to vote for good policies as long as the word “climate” isn’t attached. She also notes the new scientific SWAT team’s formation. This letter addresses both points.
It is tragic that environmentally attentive Republicans are no longer politically allowed to acknowledge the facts of global heating, and can support good climate policies only if they’re disguised as something else. The fact that decreasing numbers of Americans accept the scientific reality of global warming and the catastrophic changes it will bring is a testimony to the power of our media, which for years have promoted several false and misleading narratives: climate change isn’t happening; even if it is happening, humans aren’t responsible; humans might be to blame, but it won’t be that bad; even if it’s going to be bad, it’ll cost too much to do anything about it; the science isn’t “settled”; Al Gore is fat. It’s encouraging to see that climatologists are girding their loins to enter the media circus in order to combat the misrepresentations and misunderstandings. I wish them luck. They’ll need it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Darrell Issa denialism idiots
by Warren
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Month 9, Day 24: I’m Going To Donate Some Money To Democrats Now, Thank You Very Much.
Darrell Issa is a terrible person and should not be allowed to gain control of anything beyond his TV remote control. But here he is, blustering that if Republicans take the House, he’s going to hold his very own inquisition into “Climategate.” Which, of course, would ultimately exonerate the scientists involved, as it’s been demonstrated over and over that they were guilty of nothing more than being human beings…but Issa doesn’t give a shit. He just wants to make things worse.
I sent this to the San Diego Times-Union, which services Issa’s district among others. I couldn’t find an article to hang it on, which probably means it’s doomed. Since it’s unlikely in any case that a California paper is going to print a letter from Massachusetts, this was probably a lost cause…but it felt better to say it.
Now I’m going to go and spread a bit of money around. While the Blue Dog Democrats have been absolutely infuriating and the Dems in general have been appallingly weak, the Republicans cannot be allowed to take control this November.
Should Republicans gain control of the House this November, Representative Issa is now threatening to hold hearings on the so-called “Climategate” scandal. Although three separate investigations have cleared all the parties involved of any wrongdoing, the California congressman apparently never got the news. Issa’s reflexive denialism is now the rule in the GOP, with almost every single Republican candidate in the nation embracing an agenda that, if enacted, would be terrible news for our country and the world. While an anti-science ideology is evident in the Republicans’ vehement opposition to evidence-based policies in general, it is in their readiness to reject and misrepresent the work of climate scientists that they put us all in grave danger. The laws of physics pay no heed to the obstructive political games of our feckless opposition party; as atmospheric greenhouse gases accumulate to dangerous levels, time is running out.
Warren Senders