environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism rising seas scientific method
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 14: An Inconvenient Tooth
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (VA) reports on what a bunch of shrill tree-hugging hippies had to say:
A panel of speakers laid out a grim scenario for Hampton Roads’ future Monday night, predicting devastating effects if the region fails to adapt to escalating climate change.
It is a scenario that is particularly troubling to the Navy because of its enormous footprint in the area, said Rear Adm. Philip Hart Cullom, deputy chief of naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics.
Cullom was one of five speakers at a town hall meeting at Nauticus organized by Operation Free, a national coalition of veterans and security experts that portrays climate change as a threat to national security.
“We have to figure out how we’re going to adapt,” Cullom said. “There are good futures. There are bad futures. It depends on what path we choose.”
Hampton Roads is threatened by rising sea level, increased flooding and more frequent natural disasters, said Joe Bouchard, a retired Navy captain and a former commanding officer of Norfolk Naval Station.
Taking another opportunity to mock Teapublicans. May 2:
If Virginia wants to prepare for the rising seas and increasingly severe weather that is certain to accompany Earth’s climbing atmospheric temperatures, the state’s politicians must recognize that they cannot legislate climate change out of existence. All over America, Republican lawmakers have declared open hostility to scientific method, in which hypotheses are tested, experiments analyzed, and false results rejected. Instead, these legislators have chosen to exalt a kind of politicized wishful thinking, in which inconvenient facts are either erased from the record or not allowed in the first place. South Carolina’s recently enacted law requiring the use inaccurate projections of sea-level rise is one of many examples.
When it comes to climate, ideology trumps reality in the minds of conservative politicians. This is the worst sort of magical thinking, endangering the lives and livelihoods of millions of people through deliberate and cynical pandering to the forces of ignorance and denial.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists economics idiots Republican obstructionism sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 2: Crips And Dips
The York County Journal-Tribune (ME) talks about Earth Day and climate change:
Climate change is the focus of Earth Day 2013, a movement that is now in its 43rd year, and it’s a timely theme for anyone who cares about the environment in which we live.
For years, this phenomenon was labeled as “global warming,” but it’s much more complex than just increased temperatures. It’s true that Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.4°F over the past century, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and it’s projected to rise another 2 to 11.5°F over the next 100 years.
It’s also well-documented by scientific evidence that human beings – particularly our burning of fossil fuels – are the main contributor to this, since greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Global warming, however, is only part of bigger picture of climate change. The extra heat, in turn, causes long-term changes in rainfall that lead to floods, droughts or intense rain; as well as more frequent and severe heat waves, according to the EPA. As well, the EPA notes that oceans are warming and ice caps melting, raising sea levels and changing the nature of the ocean in which so many creatures live.
It’s easy to laugh off “global warming” when you’re shivering in subzero temperatures during a Maine winter, but we have to keep in mind that it’s the big picture over many years, not the day-to-day temperatures, that reveal the warming trend. And this phenomenon is no laughing matter, as it will affect all of our lives through its impact on our health, agriculture, air and water quality, electrical power and transportation.
Political action is necessary to combat climate change, since the biggest problems cannot be addressed by individuals alone. It’s great for each of us to do our own part – by recycling, cleaning up litter on our beaches and parks, conserving energy, planting a tree, and limiting our contribution to pollution – but while those efforts certainly add up to make a difference, they’re small potatoes in the face of major contributors such as the coal burning power industries.
It’s no small task to convince political leaders around the world that we must take significant action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The energy industries are powerful and have significant amounts of money to lobby for their cause rather than for the cause of the environment, which is why the world is so delayed in responding to this threat. As well, some politicians can’t even be convinced that climate change is happening, or believe it’s just the natural course of the environment, despite the solid evidence that it’s a man-made and dangerous phenomenon.
Just reinforcing their sentiments here; these are just ii-V-I licks I’ve strung together. April 20:
Meaningful responses to the threat of climate change have to happen in multiple ways, and on multiple levels. All of us have to be activists and educators — mobilizing our fellow citizens to put pressure on the political establishment, while making it clear to everyone that the science of global heating is absolutely unambiguous. On the individual level, we’ve got to change our lightbulbs and scrutinize our buying habits to eliminate waste — and on the national level, we’ve got to fight against the largest and most powerful corporate lobby in existence.
Major energy corporations are the biggest source of funding for many American politicians, a state of affairs that has hindered the formation of a robust national policy on climate change. Transforming the entrenched thinking of our leadership and the economic models that they exemplify is far more challenging than installing an energy-efficient water heater or composting our lawn clippings.
The coming century could be the saddest story ever told, the farewell of a species doomed by destructive ignorance and hubris. Or it could be the greatest story ever told — a tale of knowledge, conscience, cooperation and progress. The choice is ours.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots ignorance media irresponsibility statistics
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 28: Liars Figure
US News and World Report acknowledges that we’ve made some progress. But:
There’s a lot of angst or worry that we’re not doing anything,” says David Nelson, of the San Francisco-based Climate Policy Initiative and author of the report. “But quite clearly what we’re doing has managed to stop the growth of emissions in a number of sectors.”
Over the past seven years, carbon emissions have fallen by 13 percent in the United States.
Nelson says the gains haven’t been because of a concerted effort to fight climate change. The issue is still highly partisan—just 69 percent of Americans believe Earth is warming, according to a recent PEW poll.
Instead, a series of policy reforms focused on improving the economy, creating jobs and making the country less dependent on foreign oil have led to less carbon emissions overall. Tax credits for alternative energy sources, local antipollution laws, federal automobile fuel efficiency standards and new, more efficient energy technologies have led to a net overall positive.
Statistical criticism? April 16:
To describe climate change as a “highly partisan” issue is true enough; there is no doubt that one significant ideological bloc in the United States is dead-set against acknowledging either the existence or the danger of anthropogenic global warming. But to bolster this assertion by commenting that a recent Pew poll shows that “just” 69 percent of Americans accepted global climate change is an utterly bizarre interpretation of the data. A president elected with that margin would have won in a landslide; if “just” 69 percent of Americans supported marriage equality it would rightly be called an overwhelming mandate.
Interestingly enough, a 2010 Dartmouth survey found that “just” 69 percent of Americans believed President Obama was born in Hawaii, while 31 percent was still demanding to see his “real” birth certificate. The real story is that a slowly-shrinking percentage of conservative zealots will believe anything that supports their preconceptions, evidence and rationality be damned.
Warren Senders
atheism environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 27: My Ding-A-Ling
The National Post (Canada) tells us about important news on the diplomatic front:
WASHINGTON – The world’s two biggest polluters have signed what could be a groundbreaking agreement and “call to action” on the fight against escalating climate change.
The United States and China announced Sunday they would accelerate action to reduce greenhouse gases by advancing cooperation on technology, research, conservation, and alternative and renewable energy.
But while the listed actions sound relatively mundane, the words that accompanied the announcement were not. In a joint and quite powerful statement on the dangers of climate change, the two sides said they “consider that the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding climate change constitutes a compelling call to action crucial to having a global impact on climate change.”
The statement recognizes an “urgent need to intensify global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions… is more critical than ever.” It goes on to say, “Such action is crucial both to contain climate change and to set the kind of powerful example that can inspire the world.”
Just one problem…Sent April 15:
A US-China agreement on tackling global warming may indeed help Canada recognize that its positions on climate are inconsistent with the rest of the developed world. However, there’s another industrialized country with an appallingly backwards stance on this issue. “Conservastan” is a religion-dominated nation-state whose borders match those of the United States, and whose lawmakers have for decades adopted willful obduracy and inflexible scientific ignorance as policy.
Conservastani politicians have inordinate influence on US affairs, often exploiting their dual-citizenship status to block or hinder important treaties and legislation, often for bizarrely ignorant reasons. Texan Congressman Joe Barton recently cited Noah’s flood as an example of climate change unconnected to CO2 emissions, and asserted that this Bronze Age myth provided a “scientific” justification for ignoring the conclusions of the world’s climatologists.
While this intellectually backwards theocracy maintains its geopolitical influence, agreements between China and the USA may never be ratified.
Warren Senders
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 25: There’s Idiots, And Then There’s Texas. And Then There’s Texas’ Idiots.
Time Magazine, reporting on the latest embarrassment from Texas:
“I would point out that if you’re a believer in in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”
— Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) at a hearing Wednesday discussing the Keystone XL pipeline, according to Buzzfeed.
Give me a freakin’ break. April 13:
Leave aside that Noah’s Flood is a tribal myth originated in the Fertile Crescent thousands of years ago, for which no actual geological evidence can be found. Leave aside Texas Congressman Joe Barton’s obvious strawman fallacy in asserting that this mythical event is proof that climate change is not exclusively caused by human activity — a notion held by no climatologist ever, and which is equally incorrect on scriptural grounds: if the deluge was God’s response to human sinfulness, then it was as surely anthropogenic as industrial civilization’s greenhouse effect.
Leave these errors of history, science and logic aside, though…and consider Rep. Barton in constitutional terms. A congressman’s refusal to acknowledge scientific fact when it conflicts with a literalist reading of the Bible makes this a theater-of-the-absurd violation of the Establishment Clause. Barton’s buffoonery may win him points with his tea-party constituents, but Texas (and the United States) deserves better.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists geopolitics idiots Navy Republican obstructionism security
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 23: It’s Not THAT Kind Of Party
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman has a nice piece detailing Jim Inhofe’s idiotic “cross-examination” of a senior admiral:
Earlier this week, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, the senator and the admiral shared a little colloquy on the question of climate change. It went something like this:
INHOFE: “Admiral, I’d like to get clarification on one statement that was I think misrepresented. It was in the Boston Globe it reported that you indicated, and I’m quoting noew from the Boston the Globe now, the biggest long-term security challenge in the Pacific region is climate change. I’d like to have you clarify what you meant by that. … ”
Locklear did not back down, saying that the Pacific Rim is an area of high population growth, and that much of that growth is occurring in coastal or litoral areas, where people would be vulnerable to storms, flooding, rising sea level and other problems. He went on:
“From 2008 to 2012, about 280,000 people died (in natural disasters in the Pacific region). It was not not all climate change or weather-related, but a lot of them were due to that. About 800,000 people were displaced and there was about $500 billion of lost productivity. So when I look and I think about our planning and I think about what I have to do with allies and partners, and I look long-term, it’s important that countries in this region build capabilities into their infrastructures to be able to deal with the types of things … ”
At which point Inhofe broke in:
“OK, I — sir, I’m going to interrupt you here,” Inhofe said, “because now you’ve used up half my time, and we didn’t get right around to — is it safe to say that in the event that this — that the climate is changing — which so many of the scientists disagree with — in fact, when the Boston Globe, coming out of Massachusetts, made a statement, perhaps arguably one of the top scientists in the country, Richard Lindzen, also from Massachusetts, MIT, said that was laughable.”
He then changed the subject to China.
What a turd. April 11:
If James Inhofe didn’t want Samuel Locklear to tell the truth about climate change’s impact on geopolitical security, he shouldn’t ask the Admiral a direct question in a Senate committee hearing. While the Oklahoma Senator is well-known as the GOP’s uber-denialist, his readiness to disregard a senior military leader’s sworn testimony makes a mockery of his party’s ostensible respect for our nation’s armed forces.
The fact is that even if the accelerating greenhouse effect is not causally linked to human CO2 emissions, the world is still getting hotter. Those spiking temperatures are real, and their effects are devastating, as farmers in Inhofe’s drought-plagued home state know only too well. Admiral Locklear gave a direct answer to a direct question, but Senator Inhofe’s refusal to hear an answer that didn’t fit his ideology is further confirmation that the Republicans are now, in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s phrase, the “party of stupid.”
Warren Senders
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 22: Coming All The Time
The Daily Trojan (CA) notes a few spurts of sanity from the state’s Republican ex-governator:
During the opening remarks, Schwarzenegger stressed the importance of listening to the voices of our nation’s experts on the pivotal issue of climate change, likening their diagnosis to the opinions one would receive from a doctor after a yearly physical.
“If we are smart, we listen to our doctors, and if we are stupid, we ignore our doctors and it takes a heart attack to realize that we should listen,” Schwarzenegger said. “The National Climate Assessment Report is our physical and these scientists can give us a prescription for what we need to do to improve our climate. It is our duty to listen to them and encourage action — action all over the country.”
Once these guys lose power, they suddenly discover their consciences — and the truth. Fuckers. Sent April 10:
Arnold Schwarznegger’s right: climate scientists are the closest we’ve got to planetary physicians. But the sad fact is that the Governator’s Own Party (G.O.P.) is resolutely ignoring the doctors’ advice. While Mr. Schwarznegger’s attempt to awaken his ideological fellow-travelers is commendable, Republicanism no longer stands for “smaller taxes and limited government,” but for irrationality, paranoia, and ignorance.
And Mr. Schwarznegger must share the blame. Where was he when his party consciously dumbed itself down, cynically pandering to low-information voters? Where was he when radio hosts became conservatism’s public face? Like other Republican leaders, he was capitulating to the conspiracy theorists, borderline racists, aspiring theocrats, and jingoistic xenophobes who now make up his party’s core voting constituency.
It’s never too late to come to one’s senses. But for the sake of our planet, one wishes Mr. Schwarznegger had spoken out about this more forcefully a decade or two ago.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies assholes climatology denialists idiots James Hansen Keystone XL
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 18: Ain’t Got No Mash Potato
The LA Times runs an op-ed by James Hansen, which gets picked up by the Register-Guard (Eugene, OR):
In March, the State Department gave the president cover to open a big spigot that will hitch our country to one of the dirtiest fuels on Earth for 40 years or more. The draft environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline acknowledges tar sands are nasty stuff for the environment, but concludes that the project is OK because this oil will get to market anyway — with or without a pipeline.
A public comment period is under way through April 22, after which the department will prepare a final statement to help the administration decide whether the pipeline is in the “national interest.” If the conclusion is yes, a Canadian company, TransCanada, gets a permit to build a pipeline to transport toxic tar sands through our heartland, connecting to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, for likely export to China.
Around the world, emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide continue to soar. Australia is now finishing “the angry summer” — 123 extreme weather records broken in 90 days —which government sources link to climate change. Last year, 2012, also was the hottest year on record in the contiguous United States.
More Paul Revere analogies…coming up on Patriot’s Day here in Massachusetts! April 7:
Scientists have been warning us for over fifty years that our CO2 emissions were likely to transform Earth profoundly — perhaps catastrophically. And for over fifty years our elected leaders chose to pass the problem along to someone else to solve. When they weren’t simply trying to keep the scientists quiet, that is.
George W. Bush’s administration censored NASA climatologist James Hansen’s report on climate change, muzzling one of climate science’s most informed and articulate voices. Meanwhile, deranged talk-radio personalities incited their low-information audiences into an anti-science frenzy that brought Hansen and other researchers like Dr. Michael Mann death threats and torrents of hate mail.
Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago, farmers in a few Massachusetts towns hearkened to a midnight call, and our nation’s birth can be traced to their readiness to respond to a clear and imminent danger.
Now, a modern-day Paul Revere is again sounding the alarm. Where will we be in two hundred years if we ignore James Hansen’s urgent warnings?
Warren Senders
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 12: When We Said We Were “Against Drones,” This Was NOT What We Meant
The NYT’s article on neonicotinoids and bee death has a fine conclusion:
Neonicotinoids are hardly the beekeepers’ only concern. Herbicide use has grown as farmers have adopted crop varieties, from corn to sunflowers, that are genetically modified to survive spraying with weedkillers. Experts say some fungicides have been laced with regulators that keep insects from maturing, a problem some beekeepers have reported.
Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at the University of California, Davis, said analysts had documented about 150 chemical residues in pollen and wax gathered from beehives.
“Where do you start?” Dr. Mussen said. “When you have all these chemicals at a sublethal level, how do they react with each other? What are the consequences?”
Experts say nobody knows. But Mr. Adee, who said he had long scorned environmentalists’ hand-wringing about such issues, said he was starting to wonder whether they had a point.
Of the “environmentalist” label, Mr. Adee said: “I would have been insulted if you had called me that a few years ago. But what you would have called extreme — a light comes on, and you think, ‘These guys really have something. Maybe they were just ahead of the bell curve.’”
If they can say “you told us so,” we won’t say “We told you so.” Idiots. March 30:
Bret Adee’s grudging recognition that tree-huggers’ warnings about the dangers of unrestricted pesticide use were “ahead of the curve” highlights a central dilemma: environmentalists would love to be proven wrong. We’d love to be wrong about pesticides, about pollution, about ocean acidification, and (most of all) we’d love to be wrong about climate change — but denial is not a viable option.
Facts are troubling things, as American apiarists are now discovering. As the dismaying data accumulates on their doorsteps, even the most ardent climate-change deniers will eventually have to face the painful truth that those hippie liberal scientists knew what they were talking about. But environmentalists are a forgiving lot: if erstwhile skeptics like Mr Adee can acknowledge that we were right all along about neonicotinoids, maybe they’ll pay attention to our concerns about the greenhouse effect — before it’s too late for action to be of any use.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 11: He Knows How To Nasty
The Tulsa World reports on “Greedy Lying Bastards,” and its star turn for Jim Inhofe:
The movie poster for “Greedy Lying Bastards” features several government officials and other individuals that Rosebraugh targets in the documentary as “casting doubt on climate science” and denying global warming effects.
Among the most prominent figures on the movie poster is U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma.
“I was not surprised to see myself front and center on the promotional material for this climate change movie, and quite frankly, I’m proud of it,” Inhofe told the Tulsa World on Wednesday when asked for a comment on the film, which he has not seen.
“As I said in July 2003, when I first called global warming the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people, science has been co-opted by those who care more about peddling gloom-and-doom fear tactics to drive their own broader political agenda,” continued Inhofe, formerly the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
“Just by watching the trailer, that’s exactly what this video seems to do, as well, leveraging the unknown to incite fear and raise money to make people like Al Gore even wealthier.”
In the film, which is executive-produced by actress/activist Daryl Hannah, Inhofe is reportedly “singled out for his obstructionist rhetoric,” according to the Washington Post.
On the movie poster, Inhofe is joined as a target by former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and the Koch brothers.
What a turd. March 29:
Even while Oklahoma’s farmers are facing one of the worst droughts the state has ever experienced, Senator James Inhofe continues to reject climate change’s existence, severity, and causes. Why such vehement dismissal of expertise, insight, facts and physical reality? The Senator’s motivations emerge from the interactions of two different kinds of fundamentalist thinking: Biblical literalism and crony capitalism. The first appears to have imbued Mr. Inhofe with a profound mistrust of the natural world in all its aspects, while the second has rewarded him amply for services rendered.
Either one of these worldviews by itself is bad enough, but when they combine, the resulting stew is both environmentally deadly and intellectually indigestible. Mr. Inhofe’s readiness to embrace lucrative conspiracy theories at the expense of his own home state’s well-being gives the measure of the man.
As long as his public contempt for scientific expertise keeps getting funds from fossil fuel corporations, Senator Inhofe will continue to be an “enemy of the Earth.” It’s Oklahoma’s misfortune that hefty contributions from big oil can’t relieve its parched and cracking soil.
Warren Senders