environment Politics: denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 18: You Know What Your Problem Is? Your Problem Is That You Don’t Play In The Middle Of The Beat.
The National Post (Canada) offers a forum to a not-completely-insane conservative named Ken Silber, who lives in a dreamworld where GOP voters can be persuaded by appeals to reality:
I have drafted a speech that may help some current or future GOP candidate achieve all of the above. Any candidate who wishes to use the following material is more than welcome:
My fellow Republicans,
I am a conservative and I believe that facing up to reality is essential to conservatism. Today I outline how I will lead our nation in addressing a difficult and complex – but very real – problem. That problem is climate change, and specifically the global warming that is being caused by humanity’s use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
There is ample evidence that global warming is happening and that human activities are the key factor causing it. Scientists overwhelmingly agree the temperature rise is real. Moreover, they have examined possible factors ranging from volcanoes, to the sun’s fluctuations to cosmic rays that bombard the Earth from space. There is a strong scientific consensus that fossil fuels are the main cause – as pumping car-bon into our atmosphere creates a greenhouse effect that traps the sun’s energy and heats the Earth.
Science never gives us absolute certainty, but the real uncertainties here are about the future. We do not know how fast temperatures will rise over decades, or the full effects this will have on our world. We do know that the risks are great – for example, large sections of American farmland becoming unusable, coastal cities flooding, 100-plus-degree heat waves, massive wildfires and other extreme events becoming common.
We must address those risks but not by weighing our economy down with taxes and regulations. On the contrary, a dynamic free-market economy is crucial to limiting the risks and managing the effects that do occur. My plan does not involve picking winners among energy companies and technologies with subsidized loans. Nor is it a capand-trade scheme that includes handing out credits to the politically connected. And for that matter, I note that President Obama never actually managed to bring a climate-change plan to a vote in Congress.
My plan is straightforward and honest. We will raise taxes on carbon emissions across the board, while cutting taxes on payrolls and incomes. That means more money in people’s pockets, and more incentives for industry to develop cleaner and safer energy supplies.
Wow. What can you say to that? Here’s what I sent them on December 14:
Ken Silber’s almost-but-not-quite advocacy of a fee-and-dividend approach to reducing carbon emissions is a rare manifestation of sanity in the bizarre world of conservative science denial. The problem isn’t with taxing CO2 — an eminently workable idea that has won the approval of experts from all sides of the ideological spectrum — but with the notion that there are enough conservatives left who actually care what scientists and economists have to say.
For decades, conservatives have employed the language of anti-intellectual American exceptionalism: only liberals pay attention to eggheads. This approach, refined through many electoral generations, has succeeded in producing an entire political demographic that regards measurable reality (all those boring statistics) as the exclusive province of liberals — that is, anathema.
Just as his party’s rank-and-file reject humans’ role in global warming, Mr. Silber cannot accept conservative ideology’s role in making a political environment hostile to science and factuality.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Durban Conference idiots Republicans scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 16: It’s 20-20, All Right.
REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON — Negotiators at a climate change meeting in South Africa struck an 11th-hour deal to avoid the collapse of international negotiations over global warming, averting the worst fears of environmental advocates but doing little to immediately advance the cause of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
The agreement in effect would postpone new concerted global action on climate change for at least eight years. However, given the political realities, particularly in the United States and China, the accord probably offered the best chance to move the process forward, analysts said.
The mood at the United Nations gathering in Durban was somber as the talks ended just before dawn Sunday, participants said, largely because many questions remained unanswered and the risk of a catastrophic increase in global average temperature had not been reduced.
Under the deal, nations committed themselves to talks aimed at reaching a legally binding agreement by 2015 that would limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming. The limits would not go into effect until 2020 at the earliest.
Decrying the oppositional nature of these two cultures is an easy way out, but I don’t mind. Sent December 12:
Political and scientific realities are entirely different. Politics, the “art of the possible,” deems the recent agreement from the Durban climate conference to be a triumph — the result of tremendously difficult and complex negotiations, one that offers participating nations, and the world, a best way forward. Scientists, on the other hand, concern themselves with measurable facts and their implications — and the details of the general scientific consensus on climate change suggest that Durban’s “best way forward” is virtually certain to be too little, too late.
It’s time for a reality-based politics to emerge in our nation and the world. The fact that Republican presidential candidates can gratuitously dismiss scientific expertise should be a red flag: ideologies that must reject facts in order to survive cannot be successful in the long run — for in the long run, the laws of physics and chemistry will win. They always do.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists Durban Conference idiots
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 13: First Off, I Didn’t Borrow It. Second, It Was Broken When You Gave It To Me. And Third, I Fixed It Before I Brought It Back.
New York’s Murdoch outlet runs a fairly even-handed report on the Durban Debacle:
World climate talks are on the brink of failure as several of the largest polluters — including the United States — could block attempts to save the only treaty on governing global warming.
The 194-nation UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, is scheduled to end later Friday after two weeks of tense negotiations.
Under the proposed deal, the European Union would extend its pledge to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
In exchange, other countries would have to promise to negotiate another deal that would include legally binding obligations for every nation — not just for the wealthy, industrialized countries who initially approved the Kyoto Protocol.
The European Union has also maintained it will not renew its pledge, which expires next year, without agreement to begin work to compel all countries to curb their emissions, including the U.S., China and India.
The comments, as usual on Murdoch-owned outlets, are a great outpouring of stupid. Sent December 9:
The scientific evidence confirming the rapid warming of Earth’s atmosphere is growing faster than the glaciers are shrinking. In consequence, the paranoids who once theorized that global temperature measurements were part of a giant liberal conspiracy have retreated; their new position is that while the planet is indeed getting hotter, humans aren’t responsible.
Once the nay-sayers absorb the massive amounts of evidence for human causes of climate change, they’ll assert that climate chaos can only be solved by “the power of the free market,” presumably including tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%.
Let’s review: first they claimed it wasn’t happening; now they claim humans didn’t cause it. The denialists were wrong then, they’re wrong now, and they’ll be wrong in the future. So why are they still determining American environmental and energy policy? The US should lead the world in coping with climate change, not stand in the way of progress.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Durban Conference heroes idiots Kyoto Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 11: What Barbara Said
I wish we could clone Barbara Boxer. The LA Times:
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) stepped up Wednesday to deliver an appeal from Capitol Hill for action at the mostly lackluster U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which wraps up this week in Durban, South Africa. Her speech was delivered to an almost-empty Senate TV/radio gallery, which is indicative of the low priority given ongoing greenhouse gas treaty negotiations by the federal government and the media.
Audience shortfall be damned, Boxer soldiered on, registering her support for urgent action in Durban and beyond, and attacking climate deniers who have slowed progress toward reform. She and 15 other senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton looking for a “strong and ambitious outcome” in Durban.
“Although I am not there with you in person, it in no way lessens my commitment to the work that you are doing in Durban and the importance of your mission to address climate change,” Boxer said. A text of the speech was also provided to the media.
“This massive threat to the environment and human health that is posed by climate change requires us to put aside partisan differences, to find common ground and to demand immediate international action.”
Statesmanship. How weird is that? Sent December 7:
Senator Boxer’s impassioned address on the urgency of the climate crisis is an all-too-rare example of long-term thinking from a member of America’s political class. Most senators and representatives cannot imagine anything beyond the political exigencies of the next election cycle and the concomitant financial requirements of their political campaigns. This has brought us a government obsessed with trivia and symbolism but unable to focus on a genuine existential threat.
For the United States and the rest of the world’s biggest carbon-burners to postpone meaningful emissions reductions yet again, they’ll have to disregard mountains of scientific evidence linking human activity to the greenhouse effect, along with the increasingly accurate predictions and urgent warnings climate specialists have been making for decades. If we are to survive as a nation (indeed, as a species), we have to get our attention deficit under control — and address climate change realistically and vigorously. Now.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Citizens United corporate irresponsibilty corporate personhood idiots
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 28: Gooooooood Morning!
Why am I not surprised? USA Today:
As prospects for a major global accord on climate change look dim, ensuring that negotiations continue may be the most a United Nations climate summit will achieve next week.
Beginning Monday in Durban, South Africa, the 12-day U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change picks up where last year’s meeting in Cancun left off.
What eluded negotiators then, and still does today, is a grand bargain in which 194 nations commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions that most scientists contend are contributing to a warmer climate.
“Almost everyone agrees that some kind of big deal is unlikely,” says international negotiations expert David Victor of the University of California-San Diego. Economically, he says, “these are dark times and we have made that choice already in past meetings.”
Sheesh. Sent November 24:
In theory, our democratic government is supposed to be ever-active on behalf of the people. But in practice, it looks like America’s political system defines “people” rather more narrowly. Perhaps in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision affirming the “personhood” of corporations, our representatives mistakenly concluded that since corporations are now “people”, ordinary citizens aren’t.
How else to interpret America’s inability to take significant action on the profound threat of climate change? When the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are “unlikely” to come to any kind of meaningful accord at the upcoming Durban conference, there is only one interpretation: “corporate persons” believe themselves invulnerable to the runaway greenhouse effect scientists say is is now all but inevitable.
Maybe so. If climate change brings an “evolutionary bottleneck” for humanity, Earth may indeed eventually be ruled by mindless, consumption-driven corporate intelligences. Cockroaches, after all, are the ultimate survivors.
Warren Senders
environment: Climategate idiots media irresponsibility Michael Mann Phil Jones
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 27: Fool Me Twice…
The Washington Post addresses the new attempt to cobble together another “Climategate” from another batch of the same damn emails:
LONDON — The British climatologist ensnared in a major new email leak took his case to the public Wednesday, arguing that he and his colleagues’ comments have again been taken out of context.
The University of East Anglia’s Phil Jones was one of the major players in the controversy that erupted two years ago over the publication of emails which caught prominent scientists stonewalling critics and attacking them in sometimes vitriolic terms.
The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit is one of the world’s leading centers for the study of how world temperatures have varied over time, and Jones came under particular scrutiny following the 2009 disclosures — even receiving death threats over allegations that he was a leading a conspiracy to hype the dangers of climate change.
Sarcasm isn’t usually going to make it into print, but it felt good. Sent November 23:
Goodness! What a coincidence that another batch of hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s climatology team should be released just in time for this year’s Durban Climate Conference. One wonders if our nation’s journalists have learned anything from the last time this happened. The fortunate few who have access to the series of tubes known as the “internet” will discover that climatologists Phil Jones, Michael Mann and their collaborators were cleared of any wrongdoing by no fewer than six independent investigations.
Perhaps one or two reporters may sense a bigger story at work here: why are stolen communications from 2009 being released in the build-up for another important conference on global warming? Who’s behind the subterfuge? Who will benefit should these inconvenient scientists be discredited? Who gains from confusing the discussion, from delaying action on the climate crisis?
The losers, of course, are the rest of the world’s people.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility idiots IPCC journalistic irresponsibility rising sea levels
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 26: Cluck Old Hen!
The Portsmouth (NH) Herald notes a locally-based conference addressing regional implications of the IPCC report:
PORTSMOUTH — The likelihood of more frequent and severe weather events, increased asthma and the death of crucial plant life in Great Bay are all realities on the Seacoast.
That was among the conclusions reached by experts who were in Portsmouth on Thursday at a conference sponsored by the New Hampshire Carbon Action Alliance.
“Climate Change and New Hampshire’s Seacoast” brought together professors, engineers, doctors and scientists who provided statistical evidence to suggest a correlation between climate change and a number of issues facing the region.
Their talks were framed, many said, by the recent draft document by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change that links man-made climate change to the extreme weather conditions in much of the world in recent years.
I think I come off as a bit of a scold here. On the other hand, who could resist the allure of “carbon dioxide chickens”? Sent Nov. 22:
There have been many failures in our civilization’s handling of the crises posed by global climate change. Our politicians have failed in their responsibility to the common good, and their corporate paymasters have failed to look beyond the demands of their next quarterly profit reports. Our reporters, seduced by the ease of he-said, she-said stenography, have failed to live up to their journalistic responsibilities. And we, as citizens, have sustained a collective failure of imagination: unable to conceive the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect, we have chosen to pretend the carbon dioxide chickens will never come home to roost.
The failure of those who insist that “climate change” is a liberal conspiracy rests in their inability to recognize that scientific reality trumps conservative ideology. But if humanity is to succeed as a species we must stop avoiding the truth of the climate crisis, and start making profound changes in our ways of life. Recent climate studies from organizations such as the International Energy Agency and the IPCC make it clear: the time for failure is past.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots IPCC Rajendra Pachauri
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 24: Who’s That Knocking At My Door?
More on the IPCC report, this time from America’s McNewspaper:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, obtained in draft form by USA TODAY, stresses that expanding cities and populations worldwide, also raise the odds of severe impacts from weather disasters.
“Unprecedented extreme weather and climate events” look likely in coming decades as a result of a changing climate, says the draft report. The final version was released early today by IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri at a meeting hosted by report sponsors, the World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Programme, in Kampala, Uganda.
Nothin’ to see here, folks. Move along. Move along.
Sent November 20:
Climate-change denialists are sounding increasingly desperate these days, as the volume of evidence and analysis mounts ever higher. Coming hard on the heels of a recently-issued study from the International Energy Agency (which gives us about five years to change our fossil-fuelish ways or risk irreversible damage to the Earth’s climate) is the IPCC report, which offers a sobering preview of what that irreversible damage is likely to look like.
Enthusiastic fans of Armageddon will enjoy the IPCC’s predictions, which include droughts, wildfires, unpredictable storms of unprecedented severity, massive disruption of agriculture and infrastructure, and political instability, often in areas of the world that are nuclear-armed and dangerous.
It’s too bad the greenhouse effect doesn’t come with a scary-sounding name that politicians could invoke to mobilize our nation to action, for all that excess atmospheric CO2 is sure to do far more damage than any terrorist group ever could.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots IPCC Republicans Richard Muller scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 23: Defund or Defend?
More on the IPCC report, this time from the Washington Post:
Climate change will make drought and flooding events like those that have battered the United States and other countries in 2011 more frequent, forcing nations to rethink the way they cope with disasters, according to a new report the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued Friday.
The report — the culmination of a two-year process involving 100 scientists and policy experts — suggests that researchers are far more confident about the prospect of more intense heat waves and heavy downpours than they are about how global warming is affecting hurricanes and tornadoes. But the new analysis also speaks to a broader trend: The world is facing a new reality of more extreme weather, and policymakers and business alike are beginning to adjust.
It’s late at night in a hotel room in Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve got a big day tomorrow — four hours of classroom teaching and a concert, so I figured I’d get the letter out of the way before I went to sleep. Sent November 18:
As the case of Dr. Richard Muller case demonstrates, a responsible scientist changes his or her mind when confronted with factual evidence. The past few weeks have seen a plethora of studies demonstrating over and over again that the reality of human-caused climate change is no longer deniable. The newly released report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offers an ominous look at a post-greenhouse-effect future in which extreme weather is the norm, with concomitant effects on agriculture, infrastructure and geopolitics that range from inconvenient to outright terrifying.
Scientific ethics compelled Dr. Muller to revise his opinion once he confirmed the validity of worldwide temperature measurements. Confronted with the same data, conservative politicians would resolve the problem differently — by defunding the IPCC and any other scientific organizations with the temerity to report facts as they are. In Republican politics, electoral exigencies trump the truth, every time.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes capitalism denialists greed idiots IPCC
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 22: If You’re So Rich, How Come You Ain’t Smart?
The Wall Street Journal runs a piece on the latest IPCC report, which is chock full of hideous news:
KAMPALA Uganda—Climate change is leading to at least some cases of more extreme weather events across the globe, according to a report released on Friday by a United Nations-led scientific panel on the subject.
The scientific link between climate change and extreme weather isn’t uniformly clear, according to the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body established in 1988 to assist global policy makers with climate change.
As usual with WSJ articles, the comments on this piece are a critical mass of stupidity. What’s with these people? Sent November 18, from Logan Airport while waiting for my plane:
You’d think that once a critical mass of evidence has accumulated, climate-change denialists would have no choice but to change their minds. Indeed, it’s interesting to ask self-styled “skeptics” what evidence would suffice to convince them that human-caused climate change is genuinely dangerous. Many say that nothing will alter their opinions — in which case they cannot be “skeptics.” Some require proof so definitive as to be unachievable — in which case they misunderstand both scientific consensus and the nature of the situation.
Even before the most recent IPCC report, evidence supporting anthropogenic global warming far exceeded the critical threshold required for unilateral action in other policy areas. The “Cheney doctrine” held that even a 1% chance of Iraqi WMDs was sufficient to justify an invasion, a level of likelihood acknowledged by even the stubbornest denialists. Our only remaining excuse for inaction is a toxic combination of cupidity and willful ignorance.
Warren Senders