environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
by Warren
1 comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 2, Day 10: Looking Through A Bent-Backed Tulip, To See How The Other Half Lives
The Argus-Leader’s Steve Young discusses climate change’s impact on South Dakota:
South Dakota in 2050 will have longer growing seasons, milder winters and more extreme weather events if national weather experts are correct in analyzing the effects of greenhouse gases on climate warming.
A draft report released earlier this month by the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee projects that at the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, the average temperature in South Dakota will rise an additional 5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050.
That comes as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the contiguous United States.
What will warming bring to the state? Growing seasons will stretch longer. There will be fewer subzero-degree days in the winter and snow won’t stick around as long. Storms will be more extreme, dumping significant amounts of snow and rain but unleashing precipitation less often.
Wheee! Same basic letter I’ve sent twice already to different states; I’m in a hurry today.
South Dakota’s not alone. The whole planet is finding out that climate change is an abstraction no longer, but a radically disruptive fact. If the weather’s too unpredictable, agriculture becomes impossible, and even the most robust infrastructure can be damaged or destroyed by extreme storms. Once-fertile land turns arid and unproductive under drought conditions, while rising sea levels may simply wipe some island nations off the map completely.
Although the accelerating climate crisis is irrevocably altering lives all over the planet, in the offices of Senate and Congressional Republicans, it’s making no impact at all. These plush chambers aren’t just air-conditioned against the heat — thanks to fossil-fuel corporations, they’re also cash-conditioned against the facts. Anti-science conservatives may come from different parts of the country, but ultimately they all represent the same state of denial. In a time of planetary emergency, South Dakota — and the world — deserves better.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: conspiracy theory denialists idiots scientific consensus
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 2, Day 9: The Paranoid Style
The Detroit News has a pair of columnists, Donald Scavia and Knute Nadelhoffer. They reiterate the danger we’re in:
In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama said, “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.” It was gratifying to hear the president finally making climate change a priority. The evidence is overwhelming and the time to act has long been upon us.
Make no mistake: The fact that our climate is changing beyond the bounds of natural variation comes from many indisputable scientific sources, including advanced satellite sensing systems, the chemistry of Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, ancient tree rings, shrinking Arctic ice caps and literally millions of ground- and sea-based measurements. The recently released National Climate Assessment draft report and the peer-reviewed science upon which it is built confirm that our planet is warming, droughts and storms are more severe, air quality is worse and the negative effects of these changes are damaging our health and economy. If we continue the unabated release of climate-warming gases, temperatures will continue to climb and extreme weather events will increasingly disrupt our lives and livelihoods.
Historical global warming is incontrovertible and the rate of warming in the Midwest has, in fact, accelerated in recent decades. Between 1900 and 2010, the average Midwest air temperature increased by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit. But it increased twice as fast between 1950 and 2010 and three times as fast between 1980 and 2010. The length of time that ice covers our lakes is decreasing. Winter snow-cover seasons are shorter and interrupted by thaw events.
And predictably they get a storm of denialist conspiracy theorists in the comments. Sheesh. Sent Feb. 1:
The evidence of planetary climate change is not just supported by an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists, but is now visible to the eye, all over America and the world. But this won’t be enough to convince the denialist contingent that the greenhouse effect isn’t a liberal plot hatched in secret meetings between Al Gore, the United Nations, and a non-specified group of socialist scientists.
While these half-baked conspiracy theories laughably fail any sort of inspection, the lack of evidence feeds rather than starves the paranoid mindset. If temperatures are climbing, it’s because of collusion among scientists, or cosmic rays; if droughts are killing off our amber waves of grain, it’s because of sunspots, or environmentalists cutting the water lines — or something, anything, other than what it is — the consequences of drastically increased atmospheric CO2.
While there has long been a vibrant streak of anti-science faux populism at work in American conservatism, the accelerating climate crisis offers these willfully ignorant citizens and their representatives an unparalleled opportunity to damage our nation and our planet irreparably — simply by obstructing reality-based energy and environmental policies. History will not treat them kindly.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism World Bank
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 2, Day 5: We Just Got One Thing To Say To All Of You F**king Hippies…
The Wichita Eagle (KS) reprints the recent Op-Ed on major threats from Jim Yong Kim:
The world’s top priority must be to get finance flowing and get prices right on all aspects of energy costs to support low-carbon growth. Achieving a predictable price on carbon that accurately reflects real environmental costs is key to delivering emission reductions at scale. Correct energy pricing can also provide incentives for investments in energy efficiency and cleaner energy technologies.
A second immediate step is to end harmful fuel subsidies globally, which could lead to a 5 percent fall in emissions by 2020. Countries spend more than $500 billion annually in fossil-fuel subsidies and an additional $500 billion in other subsidies, often related to agriculture and water, that ultimately are environmentally harmful. That trillion dollars could be put to better use for the jobs of the future, social safety nets or vaccines.
A third focus is on cities. The largest 100 cities that contribute 67 percent of energy-related emissions are both the center of innovation for green growth and the most vulnerable to climate change. We have seen great leadership, for example, in New York and Rio de Janeiro on low-carbon growth and tackling practices that fuel climate change.
At the World Bank Group, through the $7 billion-plus Climate Investment Funds, we are managing forests, spreading solar energy and promoting green expansion for cities, all with a goal of stopping global warming. We also are in the midst of a major re-examination of our own practices and policies.
I rewrote the letter I sent to the WaPo a few days ago, and sent it on January 27:
Watching conservative lawmakers who no longer face elections reveals a great deal about our dysfunctional political process. When California Republican David Dreier retired recently, he took the opportunity to tell his colleagues that “climate change is a fact of life.” Fine words — especially from someone cast countless votes against meaningful environmental legislation during his career. While it’s no secret that America’s political system is well and thoroughly broken, when it comes to climate change, our systemic corruption and cowardice may well have catastrophic repercussions.
Now that he’s out of office, Mr. Dreier can agree that we need robust and immediate action on climate change, but as long as corporations continue to exert disproportionate influence on our political system, Senators and Representatives will attend to the needs of their paymasters before those of their constituents and their posterity. If they’re serious about fighting the threat of climate change, perhaps the best option for Jim Yong Kim and the World Bank would be to purchase the Republican Party. There’s no doubt it’s for sale.
Warren Senders
Warren Senders
environment Politics: American exceptionalism assholes denialists idiots
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 2, Day 4: You’ll Never Get Me Up In One Of Those Things.
The Kansas City Star says, “The United States Should Lead On Climate Change.” Indeed:
President Barack Obama called on Americans last week to renew the battle against climate change.
This line from his inaugural address garnered deserved attention: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”
But pause the tape right there.
First, Obama in his four years as president already has taken several actions aimed at reducing carbon emissions, primarily through increased fuel efficiency rules for vehicles.
So the president hasn’t exactly been missing in action on this issue, although he did suffer a big failure in 2009 when Congress killed a loophole-filled bill designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But we won’t, because freedom. USA! USA! Love it or leave it! Sent January 27:
It’s funny how the noisy proponents of American exceptionalism fall silent when it comes to actually doing something exceptional. For the USA to claim a position of world leadership on global warming and the necessary transformation of our energy economy, we’d have to mobilize every iota of creativity, resourcefulness and entrepreneurship. We’d have to bring scientists and community leaders on board, and get people working on every aspect of climate change from the local to the planetary. The crisis is real, demanding nothing less than a total commitment — the kind of dedication in notoriously short supply among self-styled conservatives who are reluctant to act in any way that’s not of immediate personal benefit.
Nowhere else in the world are so many resources squandered, so much potential lost, so many opportunities for greatness neglected for such petty motives. In that respect, at least, America is first among nations.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes cowering before the apocalypse denialists evolutionary bottleneck extinction idiots Republican obstructionism
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 2, Day 3: Of Course. Why Do You Ask?
The San Antonio Express-News (TX) runs a rather grim op-ed from Carolyn Lochhead, who wonders if it’s too late already:
In his inaugural address last week, President Barack Obama made climate change a priority of his second term. It might be too late.
Within the lifetimes of today’s children, scientists say, the climate could reach a state unknown in civilization.
In that time, global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are on track to exceed the limits that scientists believe could prevent catastrophic warming. CO2 levels are higher than they have been in 15 million years.
The Arctic, melting rapidly and probably irreversibly, has reached a state that the Vikings would not recognize.
“We are poised right at the edge of some very major changes on Earth,” said Anthony Barnosky, a biology professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies the interaction of climate change with population growth and land use. “We really are a geological force that’s changing the planet.”
Short answer: yes. Long answer: below. Sent January 27:
If what we’re aiming for is the preservation of the status quo, an Earthly condition in which a largely benign climate supports the continued growth and prosperity of our species, then yes, we’re definitely too late to arrest the consequences of global climate change. It’s barely possible that had we heeded the calls of environmentally conscious leaders like Jimmy Carter back in the 1970s, we would not be facing such a crisis today — but just barely possible. The power and complexity of a planetary fossil-fuel economy is beyond our comprehension, and it’s been growing unchecked for well over a century.
The question is not whether we’re too late to avert catastrophe; we’re not, and it is ironic that our inability to understand the crisis was facilitated by “conservatives” whose fear of social and economic change prevented them from acting in time to avert a tragedy of planetary scope. Humanity’s best hopes now rest with science and communication: in expanding our ability to understand a rapidly transforming climate, and bypassing our wholly-owned politicians to apply these insights to species-wide action.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Barack Obama denialists economics idiots Keystone XL Senate Republicans Tar Sands
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 2, Day 2: Block That Kick!
The Washington Post runs an AP story on John Kerry’s stance on climate change and the Keystone XL pipeline:
In his opening statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry said that American foreign policy “is defined by life-threatening issues like climate change,” along with political unrest in Africa and human trafficking across the globe. Kerry, the panel’s outgoing chairman, has made the issue of global warming central to his career in public service. The Massachusetts Democrat has traveled repeatedly to international climate negotiations and pushed in the Senate — unsuccessfully — for a limit on national greenhouse gas emissions.
Later this year, the State Department must decide whether to grant TransCanada a presidential permit to build the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline extension, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada’s oil sands to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. Climate activists warn that the project would be devastating to the planet, while proponents say it would boost the nation’s energy security and generate short-term construction jobs.
We’ll see about that. Sent January 26:
Given his record of respect for evidence and expertise, John Kerry’s acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change is unsurprising. Conservatives arguing that action on global warming is too expensive operate from a stance of multiple denial: they reject the climate science substantiating the greenhouse effect’s dangerous consequences, they reject the economic evidence that investment in clean energy and sound environmental practices are net positives for job creation, and they reject the fact that a significant majority of Americans recognize that climate change is a problem with huge repercussions for our nation and the world. It’s no accident that these same fact-rejecting politicians are the ones advocating strongly for the Keystone XL pipeline, a project whose likely contribution to climate change could well tip the balance from disastrous to catastrophic.
As Secretary of State and as a member of the “reality-based community,” Mr. Kerry must block the pipeline project.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism World Bank
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 2, Day 1: Another Country Heard From
Perhaps as atonement for publishing thousands and thousands of words from George Will, the Washington Post runs an op-ed from Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank.
The weather in Washington has been like a roller coaster this January. Yes, there has been a deep freeze this week, but it was the sudden warmth earlier in the month that was truly alarming. Flocks of birds — robins, wrens, cardinals and even blue jays – swarmed bushes with berries, eating as much as they could. Runners and bikers wore shorts and T-shirts. People worked in their gardens as if it were spring.
The signs of global warming are becoming more obvious and more frequent. A glut of extreme weather conditions is appearing globally. And the average temperature in the United States last year was the highest ever recorded.
As economic leaders gathered in Davos this week for the World Economic Forum, much of the conversation was about finances. But climate change should also be at the top of our agendas, because global warming imperils all of the development gains we have made.
If there is no action soon, the future will become bleak. The World Bank Group released a reportin November that concluded that the world could warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by the end of this century if concerted action is not taken now.
Just another hippie, ya know. Slackers. Sent January 25:
As reports, assessments, and analyses on the clear and present danger presented by a runaway greenhouse effect appear in the national spotlight, Republicans (and a few Democrats) have to work harder than ever to stay ignorant. Interestingly, once lawmakers no longer face electoral battles for their conservative constituencies, they’re sometimes willing to admit the grim realities, as witness retiring California Republican David Dreier’s statement to his erstwhile colleagues that “climate change is a fact of life.”
The arguments for robust and immediate action on climate change are overwhelming, but the sad truth of the matter is that massive amounts of corporate cash control our political system, ensuring that it will continue to respond poorly (at best) to genuine dangers. If Jim Yong Kim and the World Bank really want to fight climate change, perhaps they should simply purchase the Republican Party, lock, stock, and barrel. After all, it’s for sale.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama denialists idiots National Climate Assessment scientific consensus
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 1, Day 29: What He Was Doing In My Pajamas, I’ll Never Understand.
The Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot runs an op-ed:
In the four years since a 2009 federal report detailed global warming in America, the evidence has become harder to ignore.
It’s not just the freaky, violent weather of 2012, the warmest year on record. It’s also temperatures over the past decade, the highest on record.
“Americans are noticing changes all around them,” concluded the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee in a draft report released last week.
The report, mandated by Congress, was last compiled in 2009. Since then, the panel says, the case for global warming has grown more widespread:
“Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the year, last later into the fall, threaten more homes, cause more evacuations, and burn more acreage. In Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and fall storms now cause more erosion and damage that is severe enough that some communities are already facing relocation.”
All well and good. The Second Inaugural should be a help. Sent January 22:
To anyone who’s been paying attention, the recently released National Climate Assessment is hardly breaking news. After all, 2012 was marked by devastating droughts, all sorts of extreme weather, and heat waves strong and sustained enough to make the year the hottest yet recorded in human history. Still, as Groucho Marx once asked, “Who are you gonna believe? Me, or your lying eyes?” A significant number of Americans still reject the evidence when it comes to climate change.
That’s why President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address was a big deal. By making a firm commitment to address the threat, the President came down on the side of science, delivering a strong rebuke to those still locked in the denialist mindset. Presidential follow-through must include the rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline project, and initiatives to promote the work of climate scientists, so that the American public can understand the threat posed to our nation and our posterity.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 1, Day 26: There Must Be Some Kind Of Way Out Of Here
The Black Hills Pioneer (SD) has an op-ed piece by Bob Mercer, looking at climate change’s effects on the state:
The most important topic missing from political debate in South Dakota is potentially more harmful in the long run than any semi-automatic handgun or AR-style mock-assault rifle.
The topic is climate change. There isn’t a single piece of legislation in the 2013 session that addresses it.
During the 2012 election campaigns for state Public Utilities Commission and U.S. House of Representatives, there was next to zero public discussion beyond the bumper-sticker level.
That was despite the previous involvement in climate-change matters by two of the Democratic candidates, Matt McGovern and Matt Varilek.
McGovern and Varilek, rather than make their cases, dodged political punches from their Republican critics on the topic.
I pulled out the recently published letter to the Honolulu Weekly, adjusted it, and sent it off. Tra la la la. Sent January 19:
South Dakota isn’t alone. People everywhere around the world are discovering that climate change isn’t an abstraction any more, but a life-changing — sometimes life-threatening — fact. Farmers can’t plan if the weather’s too unpredictable; extreme storms will threaten even the most robust infrastructure. Droughts can turn once-fertile land arid and unproductive; island nations may simply disappear as polar ice melts and sea levels rise.
Yet while the climate crisis is transforming lives all over the planet, there’s one place where the consequences of an accelerating greenhouse effect aren’t making any impact at all. In the comfortably air-conditioned chambers of Senate and Congressional Republicans, global warming isn’t a devastating reality, but a liberal hoax. These anti-science conservatives may nominally represent different constituencies, but ultimately they all hail from the same state of denial. Which is bad news for South Dakota — and the rest of the world.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment Politics: denialists idiots scientific consensus scientific method
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 1, Day 25: Here Comes Science!
Now THIS is a damn good idea — Naomi Oreskes, in the Washington Post:
But President Obama can move independently of Congress to address this critical issue: He can mobilize scientists through the U.S. national laboratory system.
There is a powerful precedent for the president to take this route. The core of the national laboratory system was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the Manhattan Project to address an earlier threat to American safety and security: the possibility that German scientists were going to build an atomic bomb that could have been decisive in World War II. Scientists brought the issue to the president’s attention and then did what he asked: They built a deliverable weapon in time for use in the war.
While historians have long argued about the seriousness of the threat of a Nazi atomic bomb, there is no question that at the time it was viewed as imminent. Today we face a threat that is somewhat less immediate but far less speculative. An obvious response is to engage the national laboratory system to study options to reduce or alleviate climate change, which the president could do by executive order.
Let’s defuse the Carbon and Methane bombs. Sent January 18:
A national call to scientists is precisely what is needed in the face of the metastasizing threats posed by climate change. A negative consequence of the Industrial Revolution has been the consumption of many millions of years’ worth of fossilized carbon in a geological instant, with concomitant consequences for our biosphere and our civilization. But another consequence is the rapid expansion of human intellectual resources; thanks to leapfrogging technological advances, we’ve made strides of understanding and insight into the nature of our universe that even a few decades ago would have seemed beyond the wildest imaginings of science fiction.
If there are solutions to the greenhouse effect and its destructive epiphenomena, they won’t be found by those so-called conservatives who’ve carried out a multi-decade campaign against scientific understanding and method, but by climatologists, physicists, chemists and other experts working together for the common benefit of our species and our posterity.
Warren Senders