environment Politics: idiots indigenous cultures Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 8: It’s After The End Of The World. Don’t You Know That Yet?
Steve Stajich offers a caustic assessment of the GOP’s resistance to reality, in the Santa Monica Mirror (CA):
At some point years ago, an exhausted demonstrator warning of global warming probably set down his or her protest sign and sighed heavily, adding, “Those who think we’re kidding won’t believe us until they’re knee-deep in flood waters at their own picnic.”
CUT TO: Tampa, Florida. Exterior GOP Convention. Sign on door reads, “Monday is canceled because of violent weather caused by altered climate. The Oil and Coal Lobby Cocktail Hour will be moved to higher ground.”
For those in the GOP, or anywhere, who are still in denial about climate change and global warming I guess the next question is, “I’m sorry but what, exactly, will it take?”
Romney-Ryan (or as I’m starting to think of it, the Kraken…) believes that there is a jackpot of jobs waiting for unemployed Americans in the “development” of domestic energy supplies. Drill, baby, drill. Coal interests tout a “clean coal” that, so far, does not actually exist. “Energy security” trumps any concerns we might have that the weather we’re creating with our use of fossil fuels could ultimately destroy us… for $5 a gallon.
Go ahead. Have your armageddon; let’s just get it over with. Sent September 1:
While the customs of many indigenous peoples are far from infallible (tribal views on medicine, causality and gender are often spectacularly wrong), there’s one area where we post-industrial humans could learn a crucial lesson. The whole world over, traditional cultures recognize the close interdependent relationship between their own survival and the planetary ecosystems surrounding them — an awareness placing a higher priority on societal than individual survival. Our media-saturated culture, by contrast, offers only the fleeting thrills of the moment.
The climate crisis is a profound indictment of a cultural inability to think in the long term. Our political system offers us only Hobson’s choice: whether we select complete denial (the Republican option) or platitudes coupled with inaction (the Democratic approach) the end result is the same. The tribal wisdom reminding us to consider the next seven generations in our decision-making? Now buried beneath a mountain of titillating trash.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 7: Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay
The Washington Post notices that the “GOP platform highlights the party’s abrupt shift on energy, climate”:
This language didn’t just come out of nowhere. At the time, a handful of prominent Republican politicians appeared genuinely interested in tackling climate change. Then-Senator John Warner (R-Va.) was co-sponsoring legislation to reduce the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions. On the presidential campaign trail, John McCain was talking up his cap-and-trade program that would put a price on carbon. (McCain, for his part, was one of the earliest members of Congress to endorse this idea.)
The 2008 GOP platform certainly didn’t agree with liberals and environmentalists on everything. Far from it. The document put a heavy emphasis on nuclear power, which tends to cause some green groups to bristle (although many Democrats softened their opposition to atomic energy in the years that followed, in a failed effort to woo conservatives on climate policy). The platform also had harsh words for “doomsday climate change scenarios” and “no-growth radicalism.” Yet the 2008 GOP platform was, essentially, taking part in a debate over how best to tackle greenhouse gases—not about whether the climate was changing at all.
Skip ahead to 2012, and the GOP platform takes a markedly different tone. That section devoted to climate change? Gone. Instead, the platform flatly opposes ”any and all cap and trade legislation” to curtail greenhouse gases. It demands that Congress “take quick action to prohibit the EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations.” It criticizes the Obama administration’s National Security Strategy for ”elevat[ing] ‘climate change’ to the level of a ‘severe threat’ equivalent to foreign aggression.” The platform even tosses in what appears to be a subtle swipe at climate scientists:
Moreover, the advance of science and technology advances environmentalism as well. Science allows us to weigh the costs and benefits of a policy so that we can prudently deal with our resources. This is especially important when the causes and long-range effects of a phenomenon are uncertain. We must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research.
The language echoes an op-ed written by Paul Ryan in December of 2009, which accused climatologists of using “statistical tricks to distort their findings and intentionally mislead the public on the issue of climate change.” Ryan’s charges were untrue; a number of subsequent investigations into the leaked Climate Research Unit e-mails found no evidence of wrongdoing by the scientists involved. Nevertheless, the insistence that research institutions lack “scientific integrity” remains intact.
We just got one thing to say to you fuckin’ hippies.
Sent August 31:
It isn’t just Paul Ryan accusing climatologists of cherrypicking scientific data in order to increase their funding. Conservative politicians and media figures across the country level the same charges, evidence or no. It might be Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, James Inhofe, Michelle Bachmann, or dozens of other climate-change denialists — but the substance of the calumny is identical: scientists are guilty of manipulating the facts for personal and political gain.
And who better to make such assertions than the people who’ve made data-mining and math-massaging into a political art form? After all, Republicans ignored intelligence reports on Iraq’s non-involvement in 9/11 and started a war on utterly specious grounds, support photo ID laws to protect against nonexistent voter fraud, and claim tax cuts for the wealthy will rebuild our economy. Intellectual dishonesty is the preferred modus cogitandi for conservatives, who assume that everyone, including scientists, is as mendacious as they are.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes false equivalence idiots media irresponsibility Republicans timidity
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 6: Truth And Falsehood Are Opposites, Therefore They Are Equally Responsible For All The Lies
The Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle perpetuates benign false equivalency:
It is unfortunate that global climate change has become one of those articles of faith by which politicians self-identify. On the left, there is little argument the planet is growing warmer; on the right, there is inadequate proof.
In the middle lie industries such as agriculture and utility companies, both nationally and regionally, which must deal with the consequences of a warming planet and its attendant weather disruptions. They are getting precious little help from lawmakers.
The languishing Farm Bill, for example, reflects business as usual, continuing sizable subsidies for large agribusiness interests while failing to encourage sustainable farming practices and other adaptive measures. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy called the bill “a step backwards for efforts to bring about a more fair, sustainable and healthy food and farm system” and said it “completely ignores the effects of climate change on agriculture.”
Those effects can be as specific as a Clifton Springs, Ontario County, dairy farm that will discontinue raw milk production because this year’s drought has dried up the pastures cows feed on. Or they can be as systemic as crop insurance, which is becoming more expensive as heat waves and droughts continue to decimate crops.
Our romance is going flat. Sent August 31:
Yes, it’s regrettable that the burgeoning climate crisis has been politicized. As Earth’s atmosphere heats up, as polar ice melts, as the ocean acidifies and the weather gets more extreme, the last thing we need is for any discussion of the problem to turn into another example of back-and-forth partisan squabbling.
Things have indeed come to a pretty pass. How did this happen?
Any news report that simply leaves the question at this point wrongly imputes equal responsibility for America’s partisan deadlock on climate issues to Republicans and Democrats. Given that GOP strategists have spent decades misrepresenting the science, stigmatizing environmentalists and framing every discussion of the climate crisis as a battle against socialist liberal New-World-Order conspiracies, suggesting rhetorical equivalence between the two sides of the discussion is disingenuous at best and mendacious at worst.
Democrats and liberals and environmentalists didn’t politicize climate change. Republicans, conservatives, and oil-industry money did.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republicans sociopaths theocracy
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 5: Water, Water Everywhere…
Boston Magazine asks, “Why Does The GOP Still Ignore Climate Change?”
Heh:
With Hurricane Isaac hammering Louisiana with 80 mile-per-hour winds, you would think the Republican Party might pause to consider: “Hey, what’s with all this crazy weather?” New Orleans, after all, is just a short trip around the Gulf of Mexico from Tampa, where the GOP is holding their Republican National Convention. And it’s clear they’re aware that Isaac actually exists, since they shortened the convention from four days to three—not necessarily because Tampa was going to get hit, but just to avoid the “optics” of a big Republican party occurring while New Orleans floods. After all, George W. Bush didn’t avail himself too well during Katrina.
But instead of acknowledging the fact that climate change exists and is responsible for the increasing weather extremes—more hurricanes, more snowstorms, more tornadoes, more scorching-drought-filled summers—the Republicans continue to not just ignore climate change, but mock President Obama for being concerned about it. The only mention of climate change in the entire 2012 Republican Platform isn’t in the environmental/energy section, but in a critique of Obama’s national security strategy:
“The current Administration’s most recent National Security Strategy reflects the extreme elements in its liberal domestic coalition…the strategy subordinates our national security interests to environmental, energy, and international health issues, and elevates “climate change” to the level of a “severe threat” equivalent to foreign aggression.”
Boston Magazine didn’t tell me a word limit, and this one took me just below 250. Sent August 30:
Explaining why Republicans ignore the facts of climate change is impossible without understanding that there are several separate types of Republicans, each with their own reasons for rejecting the conclusions of the world’s scientists. Let’s look at them each in turn.
First: the Theocrats. Christian fundamentalists almost exclusively, politicians from this group reject all science for ideological reasons (although they’re happy enough to fly in airplanes, receive state-of-the-art medical treatment, and use contemporary technology). Climatology is conflated with evolution as a “secular religion” and denounced on these grounds. And since many of these folk eagerly anticipate the Book of Revelations’ promised Armageddon, the thought of a secular end-of-the-world triggered by CO2 emissions is an affront. Think Michelle Bachmann.
Second: the Corporatists. Owing allegiance entirely to the quarterly report, these politicians receive staggering sums of fossil fuel money, and do their masters’ bidding — delaying and blocking any action towards addressing climate change, which would necessarily reduce the profitability of Big Oil and Big Coal. Think Paul Ryan.
Third: the Bullies. These guys would walk ten miles in pouring rain to punch a hippie. They’re just in it because…well, I can recognize sociopaths even if I don’t understand them, and they congregate in today’s GOP. Think Mitt Romney.
Of course, some inhabit two or even three of these categories, making them even more dangerous. Think James Inhofe.
Of course, today’s Republican party doesn’t do all that much thinking — even as the world around them keeps getting hotter.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists extreme weather idiots Republicans tropical storms
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 31: Here Comes The Story Of The Hurricane…
As of August 25, Tropical Storm Isaac is heading straight for the GOP Convention. What could possibly go wrong? The Washington Post:
MIAMI — Forecasters cast a wary eye Tuesday on Tropical Storm Isaac, which was looming in the Atlantic Ocean and poses a potential threat to Florida during next week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa.
It’s much too early to say with any certainty whether it will gain hurricane strength or make a beeline for Tampa, on Florida’s west coast. But it’s the type of weather that convention organizers knew was a possibility during the peak of hurricane season — and they have backup plans in place in a worst-case scenario.
Blown away? Dare we hope? Sent August 25:
Fans of irony have much to savor in the news that Tropical Storm Isaac is now moving directly towards Tampa and the site of the Republican Convention. First, information about the storm’s likely path is provided to city, state and federal planners by the exact same government agencies the GOP’s policies would systematically de-fund. Similarly, plans for coping with such extreme weather events — before, during, and after — are unimaginable without the support of U.S. Government agencies, such as FEMA.
That the Convention’s planners apparently never considered that scheduling their event in a storm-prone area might be problematic exemplifies the Republican Party’s difficulty with reality — a difficulty that reaches its apex in the fact that the erstwhile party of Teddy Roosevelt is now the political home of those who deny both the science of global climate change and the very notion of environmental responsibility as a civic virtue.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots media irresponsbility Richard Lindzen Richard Muller Roy Spencer scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 28: Nice Work If You Can Get It
The Arizona Star discusses the problem and tries to be even-handed, while simultaneously pointing out that the denialists are full of shit:
The following appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Friday:
It’s official: July was the hottest month in the continental U.S. since the government began keeping those records in 1895.
For years, scientists have warned that climate change is happening. They reached that conclusion not because of a hot summer like this one, but from decades of data that show slowly rising temperatures.
In 2010, the National Academy of Sciences unequivocally warned: “A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”
Americans have heard similar alarms before, and no doubt many have become adept at tuning them out, which is why we’d like to draw attention to physicist Richard Muller, a prominent climate-change skeptic who has changed his mind. Here’s what Muller wrote in a July 28 New York Times op-ed:
“Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that in my mind threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”
One reason Muller’s conversion is drawing attention: His Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project was heavily funded by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which has a history of supporting groups that deny climate change.
Muller’s latest scientific paper will be pawed and poked by climate scientists – skeptics and believers alike. We’ll see how well it holds up.
One thing we can predict with certainty: Muller will not convince all climate doubters. But complete agreement usually isn’t necessary or achievable in science. Heck, there are still physicists who don’t think Einstein got it right.
Climate is complex and doesn’t yield easily to computer models and scientific calculations. Scientists won’t ever be able to predict with 100 percent certainty how bad warming will get and when.
And let’s acknowledge this isn’t just about data. Somewhere along the way, what started out as a scientific debate turned into a political, even ideological, spat. Highhanded advocates for slashing our use of fossil fuels backed extreme restrictions that would damage the world’s developed economies – America’s included. Skeptics pushed back, as aggravated by the righteousness of the climate-change Cassandras as by their doubts about the underlying – and incomplete – science.
Sent August 23:
Now that erstwhile skeptic Richard Muller has satisfied himself that the science of global warming is real and indisputable, the doubters are running out of scientists to reassure them that the greenhouse effect isn’t really happening. Leaving aside the voices of a few television weather forecasters and a phalanx of conservative pundits, the only scientists still supporting the denialist side are MIT’s Richard Lindzen and the University of Alabama’s Roy Spencer — names certain to appear frequently in the coming months as the evidence confirming climate change continues to accumulate.
Lindzen is notorious for his continued refusal to accept a causal relationship between cigarettes and lung cancer, and Spencer’s papers have been repeatedly debunked. Sure, these two contrarians could still be right, and thousands of climatologists could be wrong. But American energy and environmental policies should be based on the worldwide scientific consensus, not a handful of extreme minority opinions.
environment Politics: denialists idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 25: Come Back With Your Shield, Or On It.
The San Francisco Examiner notes that California governor Jerry Brown is taking steps on behalf of science-type stuff:
Gov. Jerry Brown isn’t shooting for the moon on this one.
On Monday, the governor used an annual summit in Lake Tahoe to launch a new website to rebut skeptics of climate change, commonly referred to as global warming. California has implemented many programs and laws to lead the fight against emissions that contribute to climate change, and now Brown is using his bully pulpit to counter critics who deny there is a problem.
The issue is especially pressing for California, where miles of coastline, including here in the Bay Area, could be hit by rising sea levels, larger waves and higher storm surges in the coming decades. The best science we have points to the inescapable conclusion that emissions from human activity are preventing heat from escaping the atmosphere, causing our planet to warm. Such higher temperatures have myriad consequences, including altered weather patterns — such as droughts, scorching heat waves and stronger storms — and the rapid melting of polar ice, which adds more water to the oceans.
A recent report from the National Research Council pointed out that a sea level change could affect oceans around the world. But one key highlight was that the sea level along the California coastline could rise by more than 3 feet by 2100. For San Francisco, a city bordered on three sides by water, this is a critical topic to address. Thousands of residents and businesses near the ocean or Bay could be affected, as well as key infrastructure such as San Francisco International Airport.
With an urgent need to focus on the monumental task of working to curb future emissions and to plan for those climate changes that it’s too late to avoid, it is frustrating that effort must still be expended to combat climate change deniers. Too much energy is being wasted on peripheral fights that delay the real work that needs to be done. Many might remember “ClimateGate,” the investigation into emails stolen from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit in 2009 that allegedly showed scientists were exaggerating the perils of climate change. Years later, the core of the studies have held up, showing an overall warming of Earth. Fighting against such allegations merely diverts time from solving the real problems.
Good for him. Sent August 14:
Governor Brown’s recent climate-change website launch is a salutary example of a politician advocating on behalf of the truth. There will always be people proclaiming that human-caused global warming is illusory (or a liberal hoax), but this isn’t a valid argument against the scientific consensus. Some people believe the Earth is flat, that aliens abducted their aunts, that Elvis lives in Buenos Aires, that the Moon landing was staged — every absurd notion has its adherents. A responsible news media, however, has no obligation to report on such eccentric “true believers.”
Climate change denialists in politics develop energy and environmental policies rooted not in reality, but in a fantasy world where tax cuts for the rich create jobs, President Obama was born in Kenya, and human CO2 emissions have no impact on the planetary greenhouse effect. Responsible politics, like responsible media, should be based on facts and evidence, not ideology.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Hansen James Inhofe media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 22: Admitting Error Would Cause Me To Lose Face. Therefore Global Warming Is A Hoax.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review offers a forum to arch-denialist Marc Morano:
Marc Morano operates Climatedepot.com, an Internet clearinghouse for information on climate, environmental and energy news. Morano, a former aide to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., spoke to the Trib on the latest developments in the climate-change debate.
Q: It’s the hottest year on record so far in the Northeast. Must be global warming, right?
A: Globally, it’s not the hottest. In fact, here is the problem: The heat they are touting as proof of man-made global warming is occurring in the continental United States, which is less than 2 percent of the Earth’s surface. So far in 2012, (global) temperatures have been slightly below the average for the last 15 years. So if the Earth isn’t actually in record warmth globally, why are we looking at 2 percent (of its surface) and then trying to draw extrapolations?
Q: Why are we?
A: It’s politics, pure and simple. When James Hansen (director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies) announces this week, as he has done in previous years, that we’re having (record heat), it sounds so impressive and scary. It sounds like proof of their theory, except for one problem: The (record) temperatures are within hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit difference between (ordinary) years and the years they are claiming are the hottest years.
Q: So you consider such pronouncements scare tactics?
A: Yes, these are hard-core ideological activists at work posing as neutral scientists. It’s not that Hansen is lying; it’s that he’s excluding any information he doesn’t find convenient. Satellite temperature data for July (indicated the month was the) coolest globally since 2008. So not only was it not impressively warm globally, it was actually somewhat cooler. We are not looking at unprecedented warmth. They (global-warming activists) are cherry-picking.
Assholes. Sent August 11:
Marc Morano, the alter ego of Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, offers a textbook example of projection in his interview with Eric Heyl. Offering no foundation for his accusation that climatologists are “playing politics” in their research, Mr. Morano’s overheated rhetoric implies that such gamesmanship is to be expected from anyone who participates in a discussion of climate change. In other words, it’s not scientists, but Mr. Morano and Senator Inhofe who “play politics” with science.
In March, Senator Inhofe told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow that “I was actually on your side of this issue…I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.” The Senator’s reason for changing his mind was fiscal, not factual. By analogy, rejecting your biopsy results because chemotherapy is too expensive may be an understandable first reaction to a poor prognosis, but beating the disease necessarily begins with acknowledging the truth.
Climatologists have delivered their diagnosis. Now it’s time for us to face the facts. Morano, Inhofe and their compatriots in climate-change denial are exemplars of irresponsibility, in the face of a crisis of historic proportions.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Hansen media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 21: He’s Just Not A Very Serious Person.
James Hansen again, this time reprinted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
This is the world we have changed, and now we have to live in it — the world that caused the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed more than 50,000 people and the 2011 drought in Texas that caused more than $5 billion in damage. Such events, our data show, will become even more frequent and more severe.
There is still time to act and avoid a worsening climate, but we are wasting precious time. We can solve the challenge of climate change with a gradually rising fee on carbon collected from fossil-fuel companies, with 100 percent of the money rebated to all legal residents on a per capita basis. This would stimulate innovations and create a robust clean-energy economy with millions of new jobs. It is a simple, honest and effective solution.
The future is now. And it is hot.
So right…he’s wrong. What? Sent August 10:
Has anyone noticed that our politicians and media figures are determined to avoid acknowledging anyone who had it right from the get-go? Those who protested the disastrous and costly Iraq invasion are ignored in all subsequent formulation of foreign affairs. Those who knew from the beginning that Bush’s tax cuts were a fiscal disaster are marginalized in any discussion of economic issues. And, most importantly for all of us, the scientists and environmentalists who’ve been warning us for years about climate change are systematically excluded from any influence on environmental and energy policy.
After being silenced by the Bush administration, NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen is speaking out with increasing fervor and eloquence, hoping against hope that we can address the looming climate crisis before time runs out. Since Dr. Hansen recognized and understood the danger early on, it seems all too likely he’ll be ignored again. Why?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists greenhouse effect idiots James Hansen media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 17: Quiet Out There! Do You Have Any Idea What Time It Is?
James Hansen again, this time reprinted in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
When I testified before the Senate in the hot summer of 1988, I warned of the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil fuels.
But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.
My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.
In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.
This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened. Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.
The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.
These weather events are not simply an example of what climate change could bring. They are caused by climate change. The odds that natural variability created these extremes are minuscule, vanishingly small. To count on those odds would be like quitting your job and playing the lottery every morning to pay the bills.
Another Paul Revere letter. Sent August 6:
As far back as the Kennedy administration, scientists have warned that consequences of our CO2 emissions had the potential to transform Earth in potentially devastating ways — and politicians chose to leave the problem for someone else to solve. By the 1980s, climate science had grown more sophisticated, and experts predicted that genuine disaster loomed unless action was taken to limit our greenhouse emissions. Instead, the can was kicked again and again; the public was kept in the dark. During the Bush administration, NASA climatologist James Hansen’s report on the situation was blocked by politically-motivated censorship — and increasingly unhinged conservative media figures whipped up anti-science zealotry among their audiences. Climate scientists like Hansen, Michael Mann and many others routinely receive hate mail and death threats for reporting their findings.
Over two centuries ago, the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord responded unhesitatingly to a midnight warning, and our nation remains grateful. Now, a modern-day Paul Revere is trying to wake us up. Where would America be if the patriots of 1775 had hurled abuse and calumnies at that midnight rider before they rolled over and went back to sleep? And where will we be two centuries from now if we ignore James Hansen’s clear and urgent warnings?
Warren Senders