environment: assholes denialists heroes idiots
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 4, Day 1: How To Handle A Fool
John Abraham is one of my heroes. He’s a climate scientist who’s actually taking the battle to the denialists, one at a time. Most recently, he skewered a neoconservative radio host named Jason Lewis who wrote a collection of the usual bullshit for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
I thought I’d get his back on this one. Sent March 23:
It is refreshing to read what an actual scientist has to say about Jason Lewis’ denialist shibboleths. John Abraham has devoted significant time and attention to the debunking that is essential for the discussion of climate and energy policy to move forward, but in one area he’s avoided the exact truth. Perhaps his gracious euphemisms indicate that he’s just too polite to describe Mr. Lewis with scientific accuracy. I’m not. Jason Lewis is a well-paid professional liar, provided with irrelevant and confusing talking points by his paymasters in the fossil fuel industries. Lewis and the rest of his denialist brethren fail to recognize that if climate change is as big a threat as scientists say it is, then there is no longer any room in responsible debate for misdirection and mendacity. Who should we trust? Scientific experts with decades of experience — or vocational misinformers with good radio voices?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: heroes
by Warren
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My Representative!
Ed Markey is one of my heroes.
environment Politics: Ed Markey EPA heroes
by Warren
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Month 9, Day 16: One Of The Good Guys
Very tired. Looked through lots of newspapers but their coverage was all about the primary elections, with nothing I could link to climate. So I decided to send a fan letter to my Rep.
Dear Representative Markey,
I write to thank you for your ongoing efforts in the vital area of climate change. Two things are becoming more and more obvious. First, the upsurge in unusual and extreme weather all over the world is a consequence of the increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — an increase directly caused by human activity. Second, the Republican Party is now the home of climate-change denialism. For example, an examination of voting records and public statements shows that every single GOP candidate for a Senate seat is a climate-change denier. Every one; no exceptions.
Because of the growing urgency of the problem, this is an exceptionally troublesome development. Never before in our nation’s history has an existential threat of such magnitude been treated with such indifference by so many. It is not, of course, just Republican Senatorial candidates who are “climate zombies;” some Democrats as well have fallen prey to an anti-science mindset that bodes ill for the futures of our nation and the world.
Given that robust legislative action is unlikely to happen in the current political environment (I can only imagine your frustration at watching the Markey-Waxman bill languish without action from the Senate) it is absolutely essential that any effort made to curtail the regulatory power of the Environmental Protection Agency be rejected. The EPA needs as much power as possible if we are to have a hope of accomplishing the needed regulation of greenhouse gases from American industries and consumers.
Please continue your work in this area. Generations to come will thank you for standing up for their right to sustainable lives on a healthy planet.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders