environment Politics: assholes idiots Iraq media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 27: I Don’t Like You…
The Detroit Free Press reports on February 17th’s climate rally in DC:
WASHINGTON — In what was billed as the largest climate rally in U.S. history, thousands of people marched past the White House on Sunday to urge President Obama to reject a controversial pipeline and take other steps to fight climate change.
Organizers, including the Sierra Club, estimated that more than 35,000 people from 30-plus states — some dressed as polar bears — endured frigid temperatures to join the “Forward on Climate” rally, although the crowd size could not be confirmed. Their immediate target is Obama’s final decision, expected soon, on the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would carry tar sands from Canada through several U.S. states.
“This movement’s been building a long time. One of the things that’s built it is everybody’s desire to give the president the support he needs to block this Keystone pipeline,” Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental activist group, 350.org, said as protesters gathered on the National Mall.
Read the comments on the article to get your stomach churning. February 18:
In the aftermath of America’s largest-ever demonstration for environmental causes, it’s worth remembering what we were doing ten years ago.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, politicians and media outlets hammered relentlessly on the potential for a global conflagration ignited by Saddam’s WMDs, and the expression of doubt was considered a moral failing. Lost in the hullabaloo was the fact that credible intelligence about the purported threat was nonexistent; now that a decade has passed, we’re eager to forget our national credulity.
Climate change offers precisely the inverse situation. Here is a genuinely civilizational threat, backed up by mountains of credible intelligence from thousands of different sources. If our politicians and media cared about a real danger as much as they did about a spurious one, we’d see an entirely different set of stories on the daily news, and an entirely different set of policy responses from Capitol Hill.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 25: A Donkey And A Ditch
The Times-Record-News of Wichita Falls, TX is reporting on drought conditions in Oklahoma – and the fact that the state’s recent minor snowfall isn’t going to help a whole heck of a lot:
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Recent snowfall of 5 to 6 inches in parts of western Oklahoma and lighter amounts in the remainder of the state did little to alleviate ongoing drought conditions, according to a state climatologist.
Still, any moisture is giving hope to wheat farmers as the crop emerges in advance of a harvest that typically begins in June.
“We do have some improvement, both from the rain and the snow,” said David Gammill, who has about 1,300 acres of wheat planted near Grandfield in southwestern Oklahoma, one of the areas hardest hit by drought. “There was from a half inch to .9 rain in the area. It has perked the wheat up considerably in the area.”
Cattlemen, however, “are still in dire need of water” for dry ponds, Gammill said.
The latest U.S. Drought Monitor report shows 87 percent of Oklahoma in extreme or exceptional drought, the two most severe categories, with exceptional drought continuing in the western third of the state and across the northern tier of counties, an area making up nearly 40 percent of Oklahoma. Counties along the far eastern border were in severe drought, the drought monitor reported.
James Inhofe! Feb. 17:
If the parched Oklahoma earth could only watch television, it would have a chance to hear Senator Inhofe’s reassurances that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by world-government environmentalists out to confiscate all our SUVs. If herds of cattle seeking water could only read the news, they’d feel reassured that the ongoing drought that has dessicated huge swaths of American farmland is all a fabrication of the liberal media. If wheatfields slowly baking in the heat only knew “the truth” about global warming…
Of course, wheat, corn, and cows already know that Earth is getting hotter. And as the temperature rises, we’ll experience droughts, heat waves, and extreme weather of all sorts — all of which are going to impact the agricultural sector in ways we’ve barely begun to imagine. The question is, can James Inhofe and other conservative climate-change denialists figure out what the Oklahoma ground is telling them — or are they, quite literally, dumber than dirt?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility fracking idiots methane
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 24: Things Would Be Very Different If They Were Not As They Are
The UK Guardian reports on a scientist who’s not on my gift list this year:
America will only achieve the ambitious climate change goals outlined by President Barack Obama last week by encouraging wide-scale fracking for natural gas over the next few years. That is the advice of one of the nation’s senior scientists, Professor William Press, a member of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Fracking – known officially as hydraulic fracturing – involves pumping high-pressure water through underground rocks to release natural gas trapped deep underground. It is believed that there are vast reserves of these subterranean gas fields across the US.
Thousands of wells have already been drilled in Texas, leading to a substantial rise in the use of natural gas in the US and a major decline in the burning of coal, a far more serious cause of carbon pollution. However, fracking is also controversial. Environmentalists say it can lead to the contamination of underground water reservoirs and the pollution of the surface with chemicals used to help to release subterranean gas stores. They also point out that burning natural gas releases carbon dioxide.
The concluding analogy leapt to my mind as I sat down to write. February 16:
Backers of natural gas as a tool in the fight against climate change have adopted an extractive technique that is wasteful, resource intensive, and environmentally hazardous. Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has in only a few years’ time accumulated a troubling history of communities and ecosystems destroyed. A study released in Scientific American in early 2012 confirmed that hydrofracturing releases significant quantities of methane, and families living near fracking sites discover that their tap water is foul-smelling, discolored, and highly flammable, all strong indicators what was touted as a climate-friendly and ecologically benign process is anything but.
In 1895, morphine addiction was a serious social and medical problem, and the Bayer pharmaceutical company introduced a new drug as a “non-addictive” substitute — diacetylmorphine, marketed under the trade name of “Heroin.” Let’s remember how well that worked out for everybody before we unquestioningly accept the claims of William Press and other natural gas advocates.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists economics idiots infrastructure Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 23: Helplessly Hoping…
Another group of socialist hippie treehuggers heard from:
As climate change leads to more frequent and destructive natural disasters and threatens crop yields, bridges and other infrastructure, the federal government faces big financial risks that it is poorly positioned to address, auditors said Thursday.
These risks, along with the threat of gaps in critical weather forecasting satellites that could last years, topped a biennial list released Thursday of federal programs at high risk of waste, fraud, abuse or financial loss.
“The federal government is terribly exposed to this change,” Gene L. Dodaro, comptroller general and director of the Government Accountability Office, said in announcing why climate change made his agency’s high-risk list. “The government needs a much more strategic and centralized approach.”
Not that we’re gonna get one, of course. Feb 15:
If we needed yet another demonstration of how Congressional inaction is causing grave harm to our nation, we need look no further than the GAO report confirming that climate change is a financial disaster in progress. Damage to government infrastructure is only one part of the picture, but it’s a big part — and failure to address the problem in a timely fashion is going to cost taxpayers untold billions of dollars.
In fact, addressing climate change in a “timely fashion” would have required us to get started three decades ago, and the cold equations of a warming atmosphere now leave us no wiggle room. The irresponsible delay-and-deny tactics of conservative legislators beholden to the fossil fuel industry are pushing the price of governmental gridlock ever higher. If Congress can’t lead, they’ll have to follow; if they can’t do either, they’ll have to simply get out of the way. Immediately.
Warren Senders
atheism environment: apocalypse believers Christians god-botherers idiots
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 22: The Fire This Time
USA Today links the sensitive fee-fees of the god-botherers to the environmental crisis in a touching piece entitled, “God and Climate Change.”
Today, new prophets tell us that our modern sins will lead to rising seas, stronger hurricanes and longer droughts. If we don’t reform our sinful ways, global catastrophe on a biblical scale looms. Billy Graham could hardly have said it better.
Hearing God’s call
In traditional Christian theology, there are two direct ways to access the thinking of God: the “Book of the Bible” and the “Book of Nature.”
Until Charles Darwin, Christians believed that the earth was not much changed from its creation about 6,000 years ago, meaning the design of the natural world offered a glimpse into the mind of God. John Calvin would thus write that God “daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe.” The plant and animal kingdoms are “burning lamps” that “shine for us … the glory of its author.” To eliminate a species or damage the earth is to limit our knowledge of God.
In some ways, environmentalism should be seen as a secularized version of Calvinism, minus God. Obama has brought God back into the environmental conversation, even if his theological knowledge is incomplete.
Go ahead. Tell me I’m angry. Tell me something I don’t know. February 14:
To the extent that their creeds encourage them to act in the interests of our collective survival, religious believers are important participants in the struggle against devastating climate change. But the sword of faith cuts both ways; the fact is that most major world religions deny the reality and finality of the world, viewing it instead as an illusory prelude to a hypothetical afterlife. Whether in the extreme form of those eagerly anticipating the fiery Armageddon described in Revelations, or in the less apocalyptic thinking of religious liberals who simply wish that death wasn’t so, um, deadly, these eschatologies are ultimately incompatible with the idea of long-term sustainability.
Climate change is a global phenomenon unintentionally created by human behavior and detected by human perceptions; it won’t be solved by the prayers of the faithful but by the concerted work of billions of humans seeking to preserve their shared planetary heritage.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists Deval Patrick idiots power grid
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 19: Can’t Do Nothin’ Without The Man.
The Boston Herald reports that Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is arguing in favor of buried power lines. Given that the power lines currently have about 200 kg of ice on them, that’s not such a bad idea:
SCITUATE – Gov. Deval Patrick this morning called for a sweeping review of the cost to bury power lines underground as the weekend’s storm left 100,000 Bay Staters still without electricity and more than 1,000 still in shelters.
“I am personally very interested in seeing a real analysis done on the cost to bury utilities underground. I know it’s expensive, but I have to believe that with the cost of recovery, the disruption to personal and work lives over time and given the increased frequency of storms of this severity,” it’s worth a review, Patrick said.
Early Monday, an estimated 100,000 Bay Staters were still without power and approximately 1,500 storm-displaced people were still in shelters.
With fiercer weather events predicted, and the state’s history of long-lasting power outages, the governor said, “We need to start thinking long term about how we adjust. Meteorologists are telling us that we’re going to see more storms like this, and so we are going to have to start thinking, long term, about how we address this,” Patrick said from this hard-hit town’s high school, where more than 100 residents rode out Superstorm Nemo.
But since climate change isn’t real, this is going to cost too much. Sent February 11:
When Governor Patrick, arguing for underground power lines in the Commonwealth, says that “meteorologists are telling us that we’re going to see more storms like this,” what he’s really talking about, of course, is climate change. Rising sea levels and increased atmospheric humidity are going to make the next generation of hurricanes and snowstorms into massive events. The prospect of a Nemo-sized storm once or twice every winter is an excellent argument for putting as many electrical lines underground as possible — as fast as possible.
States on the frontline of the transforming climate will have to work rapidly to avert catastrophic consequences over the coming decades. But there is another strategy which has outlived its usefulness: the attempt by conservative politicians and media to deny the obvious facts of a rapidly transforming climate. Climate-change denialists are on the wrong side of science, and the wrong side of history.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 18: Hey Now Baby, Get Into My Big Black Car
The Palm Beach Post wonders if the President is gonna go there:
Climate change — a topic absent from last year’s presidential campaign — has slipped so far down the nation’s to-do list that stakeholders have taken to counting how often the president even utters the phrase.
So when President Barack Obama mentioned climate change in his inaugural address Jan. 21, those observers cautiously took notice. Now they are waiting to see whether the president mentions climate change again in his State of the Union address Tuesday.
“If he were to talk about it regularly, then it would matter,” said Theda Skocpol, professor of government and sociology at Harvard, who recently published articles on climate change policy during the president’s first term. “Public opinion researchers have found that public opinion decays really fast, so you have to keep at it.”
Read the comments on the article and get seriously depressed. Sheesh. February 9:
A storm of unprecedented size hammers the East coast of the USA, destroying towns and causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage. A giant snowstorm drops two feet of snow on the Northeast, leaving half a million people without power. Drought cripples our agriculture; last year is confirmed as the hottest in recorded history — and yet there is still a question as to whether climate change deserves presidential recognition? How bizarre.
Think of it this way: if a terror attack destroyed thousands of homes, wrecked infrastructure, crippled huge sections of the power grid, and threatened the continued safety and productivity of our agriculture, politicians and media would be beating the war drums night and day. But when the same wreckage is a consequence of our addiction to oil, those voices are curiously silent.
There is still hope to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, but there is no time to lose, and none to waste. Conservative commentators who treat “global warming” as a laugh line are on the wrong side of science, and the wrong side of history.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific literacy
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 17: Lies From The Pit Of Hell
The Christian Science Monitor extols the potential of new technology for carbon capture:
Global temperatures are rising faster than scientists thought possible even a few years ago. The Arctic icecap is melting at a rate that few researchers had anticipated, and, most ominously, the permafrost is beginning to thaw, which could release vast amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2.
The situation is indeed grave – but not unsolvable. While the majority of scientists agree that we humans have made the problem, new innovations show that we can also solve it. Climate change is a global problem, but the world looks to the US for leadership and solutions.
There are three reasons for this. First, America is the world’s largest economic power. Second, the US has been the main obstructionist at global climate conferences preventing the tough action that needs to be taken to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases and slow the progress of climate change. Finally, and more hopefully, the US remains the world leader in science and innovation.
I saw proof of this when I visited Dr. Klaus Lackner, the chairman of the Earth and Environmental Engineering department at Columbia University in December. He showed me a palm-sized mockup for an “artificial tree” that mimics the photosynthesis of real trees by chemically sucking CO2 out of the air. A single such tree-sized device left standing in the wind, Dr. Lackner told me, would remove one ton a day of carbon from the atmosphere, the equivalent of the greenhouse gases produced by 36 automobiles.
If horses could fly, they’d be airplanes. Or something. Feb 9:
It’s comforting to think that American ingenuity, resourcefulness, and determination can mitigate the rapidly accelerating climate crisis. After all, we’re the nation that initiated the Manhattan Project, that landed men on the moon and brought them back safely. Surely the threat of global heating can be eliminated with good old American know-how and our iconic “can-do” spirit?
Maybe. But putting all that ingenuity, resourcefulness, and determination to work addressing the climate threat will take money, a taboo subject for the Republican lawmakers currently blocking forward motion on meaningful energy or environmental policy. So much for the “can-do” part of the equation. If we can take their public statements on scientific subjects as evidence, those same legislators are notoriously short on know-how.
Yes, scientific and technological innovations may well provide ways to cope with climate change — but only if our politicians fully accept the science and fully fund the innovation.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: blizzards denialists idiots Storms
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 16: If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now
Time Magazine takes another whack at the argument from personal incredulity:
As the blizzard-bound residents of the mid-Atlantic region get ready to dig themselves out of the third major storm of the season, they may stop to wonder two things: Why haven’t we bothered to invest in a snow blower, and what happened to climate change? After all, it stands to reason that if the world is getting warmer — and the past decade was the hottest on record — major snowstorms should become a thing of the past, like PalmPilots and majority rule in the Senate. Certainly that’s what the Virginia state Republican Party thinks: the GOP aired an ad last weekend that attacked two Democratic members of Congress for supporting the 2009 carbon-cap-and-trade bill, using the recent storms to cast doubt on global warming.
(See pictures of the massive blizzard in Washington, D.C.)Brace yourselves now — this may be a case of politicians twisting the facts. There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm. As the meteorologist Jeff Masters points out in his excellent blog at Weather Underground, the two major storms that hit Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this winter — in December and during the first weekend of February — are already among the 10 heaviest snowfalls those cities have ever recorded. The chance of that happening in the same winter is incredibly unlikely.
Stupid is as stupid does. Feb. 8:
While the notion that a warming planet could trigger more extreme snowstorms is counterintuitive, the fact is that if nature always corresponded to our intuitions, there would be no science. Our species’ innate intuitive sense of how things work doesn’t include bacteria, DNA, irrational numbers, subatomic particles, or radioactivity — but they’re real beyond any doubt. So, too, are the localized manifestations of a steadily rising global temperature, which include extreme rain and snow, droughts, heat waves, superstorms, and increasingly unpredictable weather everywhere around the planet.
Indeed, many of the processes attendant to global heating are complicated and unobvious, which is why scientific insights are essential. Climate-change deniers, unable to understand the mechanisms whereby a hotter atmosphere turns once-in-a-century storms into frequent occurrences, reject the science entirely, shamefully rendering America’s energy and environmental policies captive to the intellectual failures of our most willfully ignorant and superstitious politicians.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 2, Day 11: Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart!
The Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) wonders about Republicans:
President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address made specific references to climate change. He called on the country to address the process.
Republicans did not react with enthusiasm. Although he did not scoff at climate change itself, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley questioned how much the United States could accomplish on its own. Climate change presents a global challenge, he explained; it requires a global response that is more appropriately addressed in negotiations and treaties than in congressional legislation.
Hmmmm.
The last time we checked, the Republican response to global initiatives regarding the climate fell somewhat short of gung-ho. Remember Kyoto?
Specific treaties or protocols must be judged on their merits. They do not command automatic support. Nevertheless, conservatives tend to be skeptical of international agreements that commit signatories to action. They consider them threats to American sovereignty. The other day, Del. Scott Lingamfelter, a candidate for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor, warned that United Nations’ efforts, supported by the Obama administration, to combat “so-called global warming” assault the rights of Virginians. Republicans who rail against one-world policies are not noted for proposing homegrown plans to address the reality of climate change.
So I took this opportunity to rag on the GOP a bit. Always fun…and always well-deserved. Feb 3:
The Republican anti-response to the threat of climate change highlights the degree to which a once-proud political party is trapped in an ideological double-bind, captive to the tea-party extremism which helped them in the 2010 election, and which now dominates their primary process. Only the most extreme views — on climate, on health care, on gun control, on anything — can pass muster with their anti-reality core constituency.
While the GOP has always been ready to indulge a strain of anti-intellectual populism when it was politically expedient, its doctrinal rejection of climatological expertise is both scientifically and politically foolish. Scientifically — because the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists are in absolute agreement on the factuality and human origins of the accelerating greenhouse effect; politically — because a significant majority of the American people are in agreement that climate change poses a genuine threat that warrants robust and meaningful government action.
Warren Senders