Education environment Politics: conspiracy theory denialists idiots Richard Hofstadter
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 13: Get A Brain! Morans!
Aw, jeez. These idiots again? Check it out. The NYT:
Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.
They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights.
“Down the road, this data will be used against you,” warned one speaker at a recent Roanoke County, Va., Board of Supervisors meeting who turned out with dozens of people opposed to the county’s paying $1,200 in dues to a nonprofit that consults on sustainability issues.
Oy. What can you do with this kind of dreck? Sent February 7:
In the minds of Tea-Partiers, everything is evidence of a conspiracy. If enough people are riding bicycles that municipal governments incorporate bike lanes in street planning, that’s not simple good sense — it’s a conspiracy. If research suggests that informing people about their energy consumption decreases waste, that’s a conspiracy, too. If the accumulated evidence supporting the existence (and threat) of global climate change outweighs that compiled by deniers by a twenty-thousand-to-one ratio, that’s just proof that the scientists are in on it.
Richard Hofstadter’s analysis of the “paranoid style” in American politics — “…heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” — has never seemed so accurate. Imagine the benefit to our country if these suspicious zealots could stop obsessing about a Socialist New World Order concealed in an innocuous UN memorandum about environmental responsibility, and instead turned their energy towards making a more cooperative, just, and sustainable society.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots media irresponsibility scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 10: We Don’t Do Long-Term. We Only Do Short-Term. Got It?
The Chicago Tribune writes about the epidemic of stupidity among TV weathertrons:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
But weather forecasters, many of whom see climate change as a natural, cyclical phenomenon, are split over whether they have a responsibility to educate their viewers on the link between human activity and the change in the Earth’s climates.
Only 19 percent of U.S. meteorologists saw human influences as the sole driver of climate change in a 2011 survey. And some, like the Weather Channel’s founder John Coleman are vocal in their opposition.
“It is the greatest scam in history,” wrote Coleman, one of the first meteorologists to publicly express doubts about climate change, on his blog in 2007. “I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; it is a SCAM.”
Jeebus, I hate these people. Sent February 4:
While there are still minor areas of uncertainty remaining in the scientific consensus on planetary climate change, it’s a fair bet that when television weather tycoon John Coleman calls global warming a “scam,” he is really describing his own work, not that of the world’s climatologists. The evidence corroborating humanity’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is overwhelming; as study after study adds to the collective understanding of climate scientists all over the world, the denialists’ position becomes increasingly untenable.
By advocating for improbable conspiracy theories and the views of fringe scientists, celebrity meteorologists undermine their own credibility. The fact that the denialist position is so common in the broadcast world simply demonstrates the corrosive power of big money’s influence in the media. Mr. Coleman’s term “scam” says more about the behavior of the fossil fuel industry and the info-tainment celebrities whose loyalty it has purchased than about scientific reality.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Hansen reality-based community sapir-whorf hypothesis scientific consensus scientific method
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 9: There Is No Word For That In Our Language
John Monahan writes a nice piece in Modern Times Magazine (AZ) addressing climate change denial, with specific reference to the WSJ flap. The whole piece is well worth your attention.
Feb. 3, 2012 — What a crazy seven days it has been for the climate change debate. Scientists from both sides of the issue took to the Wall Street Journal late last week and early this week to opine on the merits of the issue and what should be done about it.
But that’s just putting it nicely. What really happened is one side said the other was wrong — knowingly in an attempt to hide the truth — in pursuit of riches.
To say it even more bluntly, each said the other was the ‘real’ greedy liar.
The most important bit is the part where he quotes James Hansen, who is, as usual, right:
“Public doubt about the science is not an accident. People profiting from business-as-usual fossil fuel use are waging a campaign to discredit the science. Their campaign is effective because the profiteers have learned how to manipulate democracies for their advantage,” Hansen said. “The scientific method requires objective analysis of all data, stating evidence pro and con, before reaching conclusions. This works well, indeed is necessary, for achieving success in science. But science is now pitted in public debate against the talk-show method, which consists of selective citation of anecdotal bits that support a predetermined position.”
Simply, Hansen is saying corporations are using the scientific method to bolster an argument that has little merit only because it serves their bottom line. He also places blame upon the mainstream media, calling their need for “balance” a means to validate bad science and support corporate positions.
“Today most media, even publicly-supported media, are pressured to balance every climate story with opinions of contrarians, climate change deniers, as if they had equal scientific credibility. Media are dependent on advertising revenue of the fossil fuel industry, and in some cases are owned by people with an interest in continuing business as usual. Fossil fuel profiteers can readily find a few percent of the scientific community to serve as mouthpieces — all scientists practice skepticism, and it is not hard to find some who are out of their area of expertise, who may enjoy being in the public eye, and who are limited in scientific insight and analytic ability,” Hansen wrote.
They have a 500-word limit; I took about 225 to try and tie all these phenomena together. Sent Feb 3:
Climate-change denial is part of a larger problem, one exemplified by the anonymous Bush official who told journalist Ron Suskind, “We’re an empire; we create our own reality,” and ridiculed those who lived in the “reality-based community.” Conservative politicians and electoral strategists appear to believe in a post-modern universe where measurable reality is just another kind of fiction. Examples of this are easy to spot.
The anti-evolution politicians whose claim that “science is just another religion” serves as a rationale for their attempts to introduce creationism into public school science curricula; the runup to the war in Iraq, in which facts were manipulated and cherry-picked to support President Bush’s martial agenda; the legislators in some Southern states who seek to have any mention of slavery simply removed from history books — the list goes on and on.
Climate change denial is by far the most damaging of these delusions. Human science has discovered and illuminated the laws of physics and chemistry, but that doesn’t mean that the “we make our own reality” crowd can apply wishful thinking to the greenhouse effect. Given enough time, American culture could recover from forced creationism, historical revisionism, and clueless warmongering — but if we fail to recognize the imperative need to address climate change, we’re not going to have the chance.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes capitalism climate science denialists idiots Wall Street Journal
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 6: Hats Back On, Gentlemen.
Behold! An idiot. Meet James “Smokey” Shott:
— — More bad news for environmental alarmists came last week when 16 more well-known and well-respected scientists signed on to a Wall Street Journal article titled “No Need to Panic About Global Warming: There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy,” adding their names to a large and growing list of scientists opposing manmade climate change dogma.
This one was fun. Sent January 31:
“Smokey” Shott tells us that the established scientific foundation of global climate change has been dealt a terrible blow — a double blow, at that. How? First, he notes a piece just published in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the broad scientific consensus on climate change — and written by 16 (sixteen! count ’em!) scientists and engineers (almost none with actual climate science backgrounds). Omitted from his report is the fact that six of the Journal’s signatories have been linked to fossil-fuel interests, or that when 225 (two hundred and twenty-five! count ’em!) genuine climatologists submitted a paper providing scientific facts and analysis of the question, they were rejected out of hand by the WSJ (the paper was eventually published in Science Magazine).
And then Mr. Shott delivers what he clearly believes to be the coup de grace: an article from the UK’s Daily Mail, a paper notorious for its sensationalist, factually-challenged journalism. Quoting “fringe” scientists propounding a thoroughly-debunked “global cooling” hypothesis, the article has already attracted widespread derision in scientific circles.
Getting science from the WSJ is as silly as getting investment advice from a climatology journal. Getting science from the Daily Mail, on the other hand, is as silly as looking for celebrity gossip in the pages of “Global Biogeochemical Cycles.”
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes hippie-punching idiots Republican obstructionism Republicans
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 4: Nattering Nitwits of Know-Nothingism
The Daily Advertiser (Lafayette, LA) runs another in a series of rueful analyses from former Republicans who’ve broken with the batshit crazies now running their party:
The abuse directed at climate researchers sheds light on a tragic political truth — a cancer is consuming the soul of American conservatism. Conservatism is taking on many of the hallmarks of a cult — one in which information and doctrine are received, without question, from recognized authority figures or sources, and in which dissent cannot be tolerated. The conservative cult views the political process in apocalyptic terms, and sees its opponents as demonically evil. Sadly, climate denial is a key pillar in this cult’s ideology.
Under these circumstances, conservative scientists like Hayhoe and Emanuel are particularly dangerous. They demonstrate that there isn’t a fundamental incongruity between religious faith, or conservatism, and accepting the science behind AGW. They are heretics, calling to other conservatives from beyond the walls of the cult compound. And that’s a mortal threat to the climate deniers, and perhaps to the very existence of the cult itself.
In the end, the bullying and abuse of scientists is a sign of growing desperation. The cult must be defended, by any means. Dissenters must be intimidated into silence. With everything else against them, conservative climate deniers have only one option left – it’s time to get personal, and pound.
So the GOP’s full of crazy, huh? Gosh! Wouldn’t have expected that. Wonder why? Sent January 29:
Michael Stafford’s analysis of Republican cultishness (with particular reference to climate change denial) is exactly accurate. The exclusive reliance on received knowledge, the glib dismissal of ideologically inconvenient facts, the Manichaean mindset in which subtlety is inconceivable and compromise impossible — behold the public face of American conservatism today!
But how did the GOP turn into an apocalyptic, willfully ignorant mob? Mr. Stafford, a former party official, is readier to deplore his erstwhile compatriots’ behavior than to acknowledge the party’s complicity in its own degradation.
It’s undeniable: conservative politicians have long cultivated a virulent strain of electorally useful anti-intellectualism. Demagogues have been elected all over America by railing against “pointy-headed professors”, and “so-called experts.”
Who’d have thought that fifty years spent attacking intelligence, reason and scientific expertise would build an ignorant, unreasonable, and scientifically incompetent constituency? A few liberal intellectuals, perhaps — but their opinions didn’t count. Buncha damned hippies!
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Frank Luntz idiots media irresponsibility scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 2, Day 1: Time For Our Three Minutes Dumb
The Tribune-Chronicle (Warren, OH) responds to the new USDA map of hardiness zones with a marvelous piece of stupid:
Whether or not you believe global warming is caused by human activities or if you think it’s a natural effect of climate change, there is no doubt things are changing.
So much so that for the first time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has updated the growing regions in its Plant Hardiness Zone Map. This is the guide that gardeners, growers and just about everyone in the plant industry uses to determine which plants will survive the coldest temperatures in various regions of the country.
The map was upgraded in 2003, but rather than a zone change, it was a more detailed map that narrowed down the previous existing zones into sub-categories.
This time, however, the map has changed to reflect changes in climate and it tells the story that here in northeast Ohio, we are getting warmer.
Dingleberries. Sent January 26:
In a fine example of the the kind of journalistically, logically, and scientifically sloppy reportage that has kept Americans from fully understanding the magnitude of the climate crisis, Kathleen Evanoff’s January 26 article on the revised USDA Map of hardiness zones begins, “Whether or not you believe global warming is caused by human activities or if you think it’s a natural effect of climate change….”
Global warming isn’t a “natural effect of climate change,” but the other way around. The climate’s transformation in new and inhospitable directions is exacerbated by the rising atmospheric temperatures brought by the greenhouse effect, a phenomenon first discovered almost two hundred years ago and experimentally confirmed multiple times since then. And there is not one iota of controversy in the scientific community about the causes of the greenhouse effect: us.
The phrase “climate change” was originally proposed to the Bush Administration by the Republican pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz, as a way of neutralizing public response to the phrase “global warming.” The substitute term offered by the mastermind of Orwellian conservative NewSpeak was actually a more accurate description.
The USDA Map offers yet more evidence to add to the pile, but until science and environmental journalists learn to do their jobs, the public discussion will remain confused, and precious time will have been squandered in delay.
Warren Senders
Uncategorized: denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 1, Day 31: Just The Facts, Ma’am.
The Milford-Orange Bulletin (CT) runs an article detailing the work of a new group, http://forecastthefacts.org/ , which has called out a local TV weatherdude on his denialist stance:
As if broadcast meteorologists didn’t have enough pressure to get their forecasts right during the season of ice and snow, an advocacy group is slamming them for denying climate change. And one of the perceived offenders is Connecticut’s Geoff Fox of WTIC (Fox Connecticut), who in turn calls the people behind the group “zealots.”
{snip}
The group says that’s because the majority of meteorologists don’t believe in it. The online group (forecastthefacts.org) asks the public to sign on to the campaign to hold weathercasters accountable. It has a petition urging the American Meteorological Society to take a position on the facts of climate change and make it known to members.
Fox, a longtime forecaster in the Hartford-New Haven market who also does a science segment for WTIC, said Wednesday, “I’m not a denier, I’m a skeptic. The people who are advocating for global warming treat it like it’s a religion. So it’s like blasphemy (to question it).”
Good for forecastthefacts.org. This one was fun and easy to write. Sent January 25:
When it comes to climate change, there’s one absolutely sure bet: when someone says, “I’m not a denier, I’m a skeptic,” it means he’s a denier. Skepticism is a philosophical stance in which claims without verifiable evidence are rejected in favor of those which can be confirmed. Genuine climate skeptics are extremely rare, because the plethora of available evidence has convinced almost all of them that rising atmospheric CO2 levels are triggering a greenhouse effect, with potentially catastrophic consequences for human civilization. Climate deniers, by contrast, are a dime a dozen. They can be identified by their fondness for unsupported categorical statements, such as Geoff Fox’s, “the people who are advocating for global warming treat it like it’s a religion.”
The comparison is upside-down. Those who ignore the sound science of climate change are rejecting robust but disturbing evidence, in favor of debunked but comforting platitudes. In other words, deniers.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility excellent analogies idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 1, Day 30: Ooooh, Tell It! Tell It!
This article by Naomi Oreskes (originally in the LA Times, I gather) is absolutely brilliant. Go read it. Here’s the opening to whet your appetite:
Recently I had jury duty, and during jury selection something remarkable occurred. Early in the proceedings, the judge posed a hypothetical question to the 60 or so potential jurors in the room: “If I were to send you out now and ask you to render a verdict, what would it be? How many of you would vote not guilty?” A few raised their hands. “How many would vote guilty?” A few more raised their hands. “And how many would say you didn’t know enough to decide?” Every remaining hand – about 50 people – went up immediately.
That, of course, was the wrong answer, and the judge proceeded to explain why. In the American system of justice, there is a presumption of innocence. Because no evidence had been presented, the state had not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, and we would have to render a verdict of not guilty. After her explanation, she posed the question again, and (except for a few who clung to guilty and were sent home) we all raised our hands for not guilty.
Jury duty was in some ways difficult, but in one respect, it was easy: We were given clear instructions by a recognized authority and we followed them. No one argued about who had the burden of proof. No one suggested that the judge was not an appropriate authority, or that we should reject her instructions. On the contrary, when the time came to deliberate, we referred on more than one occasion to her instructions, and when the time came to vote, we had little trouble reaching a unanimous verdict. Driving home, I found myself contrasting this with the issue on which I work in my professional life: climate change.
I study the history of climate science, and my research has shown that the think tanks and institutes that deny the reality or severity of climate change, or promote distrust of climate science, do so out of self-interest, ideological conviction or both. Some groups, like the fossil fuel industry, have an obvious self-interest in the continued use of fossil fuels. Others fear that if we accept the reality of climate change, we will be forced to acknowledge the failures of free-market capitalism. Still others worry that if we allow the government to intervene in the marketplace to stop climate change, it will lead to further expansion of government power that will threaten our broader freedoms.
What she said. The piece provided me with a truly excellent analogy, too! Sent January 24:
There’s a good reason jurors are told to avoid media coverage of cases they’re involved in deciding. Much so-called “news reportage” is irresponsible sensationalism built around the easiest and most convenient framing of the facts.
So it is with global climate change, which long ago was turned by media and opinion outlets into a politicized clash of personalities instead of a careful examination of scientific findings.
To anyone who’s been paying attention to the expert witnesses in the case — i.e., the climatologists who’ve spent their careers studying the phenomena of atmospheric warming — the evidence is conclusive and unambiguous. The crime? Climaticide. The weapon? Greenhouse gas emissions. The culprits? All who burn fossil fuels to support a lifestyle of consumption — but especially those who’ve knowingly spread disinformation in order to hinder necessary changes in our ways of living.
What’s the word for lying in court? Oh, yes. Perjury.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 1, Day 28: Mitt And Newt’s Excellent Vacation
The Aiken Standard (PA) runs the same AP article on the environmental disaster presented by America’s Republican Party. Here’s another excerpt:
Michelle Pautz, a political science professor at the University of Dayton who focuses on environmental policy, said the current slate of Republicans may not be giving much reason to applaud their environmental stances, but it may not matter much overall with the economy taking center stage.
“The bottom line is both with the GOP primary and looking to Obama and the general election, the green vote is a non-issue,” Pautz said. “There are too many other issues crowding out the environmental ones.”
But Tony Cani, the national political director for the Sierra Club, said taking what he calls “extreme” views on the environment won’t play well come Nov. 6.
“They’re going to be hurt with young voters, women, families, Latino voters,” Cani said.
Jim DiPeso, of Republicans for Environmental Protection, said he hopes to see a shift as Election Day draws closer, but that the state of politics right now has made ecological issues untouchable.
“A lot of the more pragmatic mainstream Republicans just are trying to steer clear of the issue because it’s become so politically fraught,” he said.
I wrote this after reading a liveblog on DK of the Monday night debate. It was fun. Sent January 23:
In a year where Newt Gingrich poses as an exemplar of political integrity and Mitt Romney has more positions than a porn star, it’s irrelevant whether the candidates “believe” in the science of climate change. Both have previously stated that they think global warming is happening — only to backtrack rapidly once it became clear that their party’s multi-decade anti-intellectual strategy has created a constituency for whom any sort of science is anathema. It is to them that candidates must appeal; the question is not whether Gingrich, Romney or any other political aspirant accepts the reality of an overwhelming scientific consensus on atmospheric CO2 and the greenhouse effect, but what GOP primary voters are willing to accept from their anointed representatives.
The Republican front-runners’ will profess their adherence to whatever their base believes, whether they themselves believe it or not. That’s bad for democracy — and bad for the planet.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific literacy
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Year 3, Month 1, Day 23: Who’s Shrill?
The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson:
The attempt by Newt Gingrich to cover his tracks on climate change has been one of the shabbier little episodes of the 2012 presidential campaign. His forthcoming sequel to “A Contract with the Earth” was to feature a chapter by Katharine Hayhoe, a young professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas Tech University. Hayhoe is a scientist, an evangelical Christian and a moderate voice warning of climate disruption.
Then conservative media got wind. Rush Limbaugh dismissed Hayhoe as a “climate babe.” An Iowa voter pressed Gingrich on the topic. “That’s not going to be in the book,” he responded. “We told them to kill it.” Hayhoe learned this news just as she was passing under the bus.
A theory about the role of carbon dioxide in climate patterns has joined abortion and gay marriage as a culture war controversy. Climate scientists are attacked as greenshirts and watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside). Skeptics are derided as flat-earthers. Reputations are assaulted and the e-mails of scientists hacked.
Heh. Indeed. Also. Sent January 18:
Conservative politicization of science has borne bitter fruit in the intensifying battle over climate change. It’s worth recognizing that the GOP has been at the center of countless attempts to marginalize expertise for more than fifty years, starting with the McCarthy-era purges of China specialists from the State Department — a electorally expedient move, but one which created a policy vacuum with disastrous repercussions for our later experience in Vietnam. The only experts Republican politicians appear to respect are their political strategists, whose advice on winning elections is often extremely sound.
The problem with climate change is that the laws of physics and chemistry have no ideology; mounting atmospheric CO2 levels and increasing worldwide temperatures won’t vanish when presidential aspirants deny their existence, or ascribe the troublesome measurements to political bias among scientists. A hint to Republicans: if you stop denying scientific reality, scientists may eventually take you seriously again.
Warren Senders