atheism Education environment: eschatology idiots religion
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 7: Only Sky
The Charleston Post And Courier (SC) runs a column from a religious apologist named Todd Levasseur:
I want to take this insight further to argue that religions also have ignored the climate crisis for 25 years. Mirroring American society at large, we see a slow but inexorable shift toward recognizing climate change as being a deeply ethical and religious matter, one that causes us to dig deeply and re-create our respective covenants with whomever we deem to be the creator’s.
Climate change brings an added urgency to the Holy City. We are at its “ground zero” with the emissions of the industrial economy set to trigger a predicted 3-foot rise in sea level this century. If climate models are correct, the standing water on East Bay Street during high tides is only the beginning, and the ports where cargo ships anchor will need to be raised quite a few feet.
We also are at “ground zero” for feeling the impact of ocean acidification, which can trigger the collapse of aquatic food chains and decimate our maritime economy.
Such scenarios call out for sober leadership from politicians and, especially, community leaders.
Religion historically has provided a seedbed from where our society could graft moral concerns onto progressive community change. Climate change may provide yet another occasion for the emergence of ecumenical, interfaith work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. March 25:
The growing turbulence of a planetary environmental emergency may well bring together adherents of different belief systems in the recognition of a common adversary. But for such a confluence of diverse faiths to have an impact on the climate crisis will require religious adherents to practice a different sort of renunciation. The proximate cause of climate change is the greenhouse gas emissions of industrial society, but at root is something far older and more pervasive — the notion that our species is privileged by providence.
If we are to survive on a climatically-transformed planet, religious traditions can no longer invoke the will of a supernatural being to justify human ignorance of, and antagonism to, the natural world. The faithful must engage in a new form of spiritual discipline, leaving behind the magical thinking of medieval times and recognizing the hard truths offered by climate science about atmospheric CO2 and its impact on Earthly life. There is more genuine evidence for the greenhouse effect than for any of humanity’s thousands of deities.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 3: Little Willie Leaps
USA Today reprints a story from a Delaware paper about a visit from denialist demigod Willie Soon:
GEORGETOWN, Del. — One of the nation’s more controversial climate-change skeptics dismissed warnings about sea-level rise and global warming as “scare tactics” and “sick” science in a talk here.
Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Professor David Legates of the University of Delaware, a former climatologist for the state, bluntly rejected leading climate change claims during the Monday event organized by two nonprofit groups that promote personal and economic freedoms, the Positive Growth Alliance of Millsboro, Del. and the Caesar Rodney Institute of Dover, Del.
“They’re a very sick group,” Soon said. “They’re not talking about science at all. It is all agenda-driven, science results.”
Sick. Right ho. March 22:
Upton Sinclair pointed out that “it’s very difficult to make a man understand something when his paycheck depends on his not understanding it.” Climate-change “skeptic” Willie Soon carries Sinclair’s maxim one step further: Soon’s paycheck depends on the American public not understanding three important things. First, the facts of global warming; second, the truth about his employers’ ties to the fossil-fuel industries whose greenhouse emissions have been incontrovertibly linked to the accelerating climate crisis; third, that he was never formally trained in climatology.
Willie Soon’s lengthy affiliation with the Heartland Foundation is one of the warning signals. Decades ago, Heartland collaborated with big tobacco against the public interest — and they’re employing the same diversionary tactics now, in order to delay action on climate change for as long as possible. In the light of these troubling associations, it’s clear that Soon’s pronouncements on “sick science” are simply callous defensive rhetoric.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 1: A Fool
The Otago Daily Times (NZ) notes the arrival of noted upper-class twit Lord Monckton…only they refer to him as a “skeptic,” which is a leftover bit of stupid that’s grown enough mold to solve mazes on its own.
A leading global warming skeptic, Lord Christopher Monckton, will speak in Dunedin next month. His visit is part of a national ”Climate Freedom Tour” and will include a lunch and an evening function on April 23.
Lord Monckton is a British politician, public speaker, hereditary peer and former newspaper editor.
Formerly a member of the Conservative Party, he worked for Margaret Thatcher’s Number 10 Policy Unit during the 1980s.
In recent years, he has received publicity for holding sceptical views about man-made climate change and has authored more than 100 papers on the climate issue. Dunedin organiser Jock Allison, of the New Zealand Science Coalition, said Lord Monckton was an entertaining speaker with different views from the mainstream on climate change.
Entertaining. March 20:
Lord Christopher Monckton is many things, as evidenced by his description in your recent article as “British politician, public speaker, hereditary peer and former newspaper editor” — but one thing he is not is a climate scientist. None of those four identifying phrases give his opinions on the phenomena of global climate change any credibility whatsoever. While his abilities as an “entertaining speaker” offer a feeble rationale for inviting him to speak under the auspices of the New Zealand Science Coalition, from the perspective of anyone who is sensitive to questions of scientific truth, his presence is an affront to genuine scientists and genuine science.
Would a proponent of the medieval theory of “humours” be asked to speak to a medical association, and described as an “infection skeptic”? Would a flat-Earther get an invitation to address a geological society and be billed as a “spherical skeptic”? Mr. Monckton’s assertions about global climate change have been repeatedly debunked; put simply, he’s an unscientific fraud, and describing him as a “skeptic” is doing a disservice to skeptics everywhere.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists heroes idiots Republican obstructionism timescales
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 31: The Kids Are Alright
The Seattle Times notes WA Governor Inslee’s commitment to issues that genuinely transcend politics:
OLYMPIA — There was a telling moment just before Gov. Jay Inslee raised his right hand and took the oath of office.
He was introduced as a politician who sees climate change as “an existential threat that transcends politics.”
“More than any other president or governor before him, Jay has an electoral mandate on this issue,” Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, told a packed audience in the rotunda two months ago.
If lawmakers did not grasp the significance of those remarks then, they do now.
Inslee talks about climate change all the time. He discussed it in his inaugural address, during most of his news conferences, when introducing a bill on the issue in the state House and Senate, even in announcing his choice for transportation secretary.
{snip}
Still, not everyone was expecting so much, so soon.
“I think there are greater, more pressing priorities at the moment,” said Senate Deputy Republican Leader Don Benton, R-Vancouver. “I think we need to look long term, and do little things that add up over time that will benefit and help the climate-change situation and the environment. But they are long-term strategies.”
Well, add Don Benton to our list of dingalings, I guess. March 19:
Of course State Senator Don Benton thinks there are more important things “at the moment” than climate change. Of course he’s ready to advocate “little things that add up over time” that may help us address what he charmingly calls the “climate-change situation.”
There will always be more pressing short-term issues than climate change, because even a steadily accelerating greenhouse effect is going to offer consequences on a time-scale larger than that of electoral politics. While there is no magic bullet that will fix the burgeoning climate crisis any more than there is a pill to cure lung cancer, this fact simply reinforces Governor Inslee’s sense of genuine responsibility.
That the climate “situation” is vastly larger than the problems usually preoccupying our politicians is no reason to dismiss it. There may be more important things at the moment — but climate change is not an issue of the moment, but of the millennium.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes conservative denialists idiots military Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 23: NewThink Tanks
The Jewish Daily Forward notes the recent report on the national security implications of climate change, presented by a whole bunch of military top brass:
If you missed this one, don’t beat yourself up. Hardly anybody noticed it. It was just another one of those calls for action to combat climate change, an “open letter” to the president and Congress from about three dozen public figures. We’ve seen hundreds of these things by now. After a while, they all look the same.
If there was anything different about this one to merit a second look, it might be the fact that it didn’t mention healing the planet or saving God’s creatures. Instead, it described climate change in starkly pragmatic terms as a “serious threat to American national security interests.” And it spelled out why.
Also noteworthy is the fact that the 38 signers were a collection of some of the country’s most distinguished authorities on national security, including nine retired generals and admirals, a former CIA director, both heads of the 9/11 Commission, 15 former senators and House members (10 Republicans, five Democrats) plus former secretaries of state, defense and other cabinet members from the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and both Bush administrations, father and son.
Given that kind of heft, you might think it would have gotten some respectful press coverage. But no. One article at Politico.com and a handful at obscure specialty websites. That’s it.
The silence is particularly odd when you consider the fact that the letter comes amid a virtual barrage of new warnings from intelligence, defense and other public agencies about the security dangers posed by climate change. In the past four months, at least four lengthy scientific reports have been published that detail various aspects of the threat — one in November, one in December and two in February. Three were produced or funded by arms of the U.S. intelligence community. The fourth came from an unusual consortium of conservative and liberal think tanks.
They won’t admit they were wrong. Ever. March 11:
That ostensibly security-obsessed conservatives in America are unwilling to take the expert opinion of our country’s top military personnel on climate change is highly revealing. They are not a responsible element of a representative government, but an ideologically-driven cadre which is absolutely unwilling to change any of its positions, even those which are repeatedly proved erroneous. The same people who’ve turned xenophobia into a political platform with their unhealthy fixation on illegal immigrants are ready to dismiss the inevitability of millions of drought-driven climate refugees in the coming decades — because such an acknowledgement would conflict with their anti-science, fact-phobic public personae.
Conservative politicians and their tea-party constituents often froth at the mouth over non-existent threats: Gay marriage! Birth control! Sharia law in the US! Confiscating our assault rifles! However, let a genuine crisis loom, and we can count on them to reject meaningful action while hamstringing those who accept and understand the facts — even if it means ignoring the advice of the military they vociferously claim to support.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility idiots insurance companies
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 22: I Promise The Check Is In The Mail
Wendy Koch (presumably no relation) writes in USA Today about the problems of insurance companies:
Most insurance companies do not have comprehensive strategies to cope with climate change despite mounting weather-related claims, says a report to be released Thursday.
Of 184 companies surveyed, only 23 had such strategies, and 13 of those that did were foreign-owned, according to report by Ceres, a Boston-based non-profit that promotes eco-minded business practices. The report says the most prepared tend to be the largest companies with scientists on staff and those that insure property rather than life or health.
Many companies “won’t talk about climate change” and if they do, they use “hedged” language to avoid the controversial issue of whether it’s man-made, says author Sharlene Leurig, senior manager of Ceres’ insurance program. She says the issue is less politically divisive in Europe, where insurers are often better prepared.
They’ll relinquish profitability rather than admit they were wrong. March 11:
The American insurance industry, unprepared for climate change? Given how much precision these folks bring to actuarial analysis, this suggests a systemic failure of impressive proportions — a notion borne out by the fact that those firms with on-staff scientists are much more likely to be developing and implementing strategies for coping with the ramifications of a runaway greenhouse effect.
The oft-circulated notion that climate science is “controversial” is an absurdity; global warming is at the center of a controversy not because scientists disagree, but because a single ideological bloc in American politics has decided to make it so. If insurance companies — the people who’ve turned the statistical measurement of risk into a profitable business — are shy about addressing the burgeoning climate crisis because it’s a politically contentious issue, this confirms that even in the corporate sector, ideology trumps common sense, and ignorance counts for more than data.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 21: Sigh…
Another day, another dullard. Meet Pennsylvania meteorologist Tom Russell:
Let’s say you’re an alien and your spaceship landed here on Earth in the 1500’s. Then you landed here again in 2013. Now think globally.
Would you say the climate on Planet Earth is generally the same? Same Oceans? Same land masses? You’d probably say it’s the same climate too, right?
Or maybe you’d look more closely and say the climate has changed. What? Climate change?
The point is, perspective matters.
Ken Caldeira of Stanford University says, “Climate is the statistics of weather over the long term.” Turns out the climate is always changing, no matter the time scale, hourly, monthly, yearly, per decade, etc. Even your every 500 year alien visit.
A recent Midwest snow storm was described in the media as “crippling.” Really? An 8-inch snowfall in the Midwest in February is so unusual it’s crippling? Makes you wonder if the weather really is worse than ever or just our reaction to it. Maybe we should dial it back a bit.
And our recent non-snowstorm should be a reminder of our forecast modeling limitations. Imagine carrying out that margin of error over 50 or 100 years.
His mother was a hamster and his father smelled of elderberries. March 10:
Tom Russell falls into an ancient logical fallacy: the argument from personal incredulity. But an inability to understand climate change is not a valid argument against its existence. He’s certainly correct that the extreme weather Americans are now experiencing is not unprecedented, and that the climate has always been changing. But his argument nevertheless fails.
First, no climatologist has ever said that our current weather is entirely new. Rather, they tell us that the frequency, intensity, and unpredictability of extreme weather is increasing — and that this increase is directly correlated with rising atmospheric temperatures. Second, no scientist has ever said our climate has always remained the same. Rather, they tell us that the past eleven millennia have a climate stable enough for agriculture to develop, and in its wake, a complex civilization — and that these “stable enough” conditions are currently ending.
The thing is, human intuition is poorly equipped to make sense of planet-wide data and geological timescales; Mr. Russell and his colleagues in the world of meteorology work exclusively with local and regional data on timescales a fortnight or less. Humans’ intuitions do poorly on larger scales of time and space, which is why science is important. Climatologists work with statistical analysis, historical data, and a continually improving model of the Earth’s climate — and they’ve have been making steadily more accurate predictions for decades.
Mr. Russell may not like the facts of climate change, but he’s going to have to live with them.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture assholes denialists idiots
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 20: You Know You Know
The Bismarck ND Tribune runs an article on a plan to study climate change impacts in the state…and introduces us to this guy:
The Senate Natural Resources Committee is mulling a resolution that would direct the committee of North Dakota legislative leaders, called Legislative Management, to study the effects of climate change. But Jeff Magrum of Hazelton told lawmakers enough studies have been done and a lot of money already has been spent worldwide looking into the issue.
Magrum, who also is an Emmons County commissioner, said if the state wants to spend money, it should buy more plows to help clear North Dakota’s snow-filled roads. The snowplows could be fitted with enhanced devices to capture carbon dioxide emissions that are blamed for global warming, “if climate change is a concern,” he said.
{snip}
Magrum, who owns an excavating business in south central North Dakota, said he has to work outside during the state’s notoriously brutal winters. He said global warming isn’t a bad thing for him.
“A little bit warmer weather wouldn’t matter to me,” Magrum said. “I’m in the construction business.”
There just aren’t enough faces and palms to go around. March 8:
In voicing opposition to studying the impact of climate change, Jeff Magrum asserts that “a little bit warmer weather wouldn’t matter,” since he works in the construction business. Well, perhaps. On the other hand, the droughts now hitting American farm states are going to raise Mr. Magrum’s grocery bills pretty significantly over the next couple of years. And when that “little bit warmer” turns into a summer like the one that recently hammered Australia (it got so hot that their national weather service had to invent new color correlations for their temperature map) — well, it’s a fair bet that he might not want to work outside at all.
But more to the point, human beings have accomplished wonders because we’ve been willing to sacrifice temporary benefits in favor of collective achievement and long-term happiness for our posterity. This is called civilization; and if we are to preserve what our species has accomplished in the past ten thousand years, we can no longer afford to dismiss the burgeoning climate crisis with the short-sighted platitudes of selfishness.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism rising sea levels
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 19: Ask Not For Whom The Poll Tells, It Polls For Thee
The Island Packet (SC) calls out the state government for trying to bury a report on climate change:
Shelving a report on climate change and its potential impact on South Carolina’s natural resources makes no scientific or political sense for an agency whose purpose is to watch over those resources.
In explaining why the report by a team of scientists wasn’t released for more than a year after it was completed, John Evans, the chairman of the state Department of Natural Resources board, said the report was “for information only” and didn’t require action.
But that’s exactly what the report’s findings do require. The agency charged with overseeing our natural resources should have no higher priority than working to manage and protect those resources in the coming decades.
The report, completed in November 2011 and presented to the board in July 2012, was labeled as a draft, but a foreword from the agency’s former director, John Frampton, stated it was ready for public review. That didn’t happen until The (Columbia) State newspaper got a copy and reported on its contents late last month.
Buncha bed-wetters. March 9:
There is only one reason to shelve a report on climate change’s effect on South Carolina: fear. Now, there are many different sorts of fear. There is that which all of us experience when facing the unknown and potentially very dangerous future awaiting us on a post-greenhouse-effect planet. Who looks forward eagerly to food shortages, resource wars, increasingly severe storms, heat waves, droughts and crumbling infrastructure? It is surely tempting to take a discomfiting document and hide it away where it won’t bother you, and perhaps the state’s Department of Natural Resources was attempting this understandable but obviously doomed-to-fail approach.
But there is another and far less excusable form of timidity. Republican politicians are petrified of offending their tea-party base, for these low-information, high-outrage voters are more sensitive to apostasy than any other constituency in America. To approve a reality-rooted report on climate change’s potential for harm in South Carolina would be politically fatal for these lawmakers, for there is hardly any heresy that more excites conservative indignation than the fact-based, scientifically-grounded analysis of our rapidly worsening climate.
Whether conservative politicians and tea-partiers like it or not, climate change is happening. Cowardice in the face of facts is always, ultimately, a losing strategy.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots scientific consensus
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Year 4, Month 3, Day 18: If We Cared Enough…
The Las Vegas Sun is one of many papers highlighting the “biggest heat spike in 11,000 years” story:
A new study looking at 11,000 years of climate temperatures shows the world in the middle of a dramatic U-turn, lurching from near-record cooling to a heat spike.
Research released Thursday in the journal Science uses fossils of tiny organisms to reconstruct global temperatures back to the end of the last ice age. It shows how the globe for several thousands of years was cooling until a dramatic spike in the 20th century.
Study author Shaun Marcott says his data shows that 1900 to 1910 was one of the coolest in the past 11,300 years. Yet 100 years later, the decade was one of the warmest.
Marcott and other scientists say the long-term context indicates global warming isn’t natural but man-made since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Everything’s fine so far, right? March 8:
If we condensed Earth’s 4.6 billion year history by a factor of a hundred millio, it’d be just under fifty years, and human beings wouldn’t emerge until about four hours ago. And in the last one minute, our species has not only cut down fifty percent of the planet’s trees, but reintroduced the carbon that fossilized over an entire geological epoch into the atmosphere. We shouldn’t need a climate scientist to tell us this is a bad idea.
Every year, our industrial economy burns five million years’ worth of ancient sunlight in the form of oil, coal and natural gas. A 5,000,000:1 ratio is obviously unsustainable, but because humans have for the most part not grasped the large-scale consequences of their consumption habits, we find ourselves hurtling toward the abyss. It is no coincidence that the vast majority of climate-change denialists reject many other scientific findings, preferring the comforting myths of ancient cultures to the disturbing truths of our predicament.
If we want our children and their children in turn to have lives full of hope, beauty and prosperity, we need to face the facts of the climate crisis. Denial is both intellectually and morally inexcusable.
Warren Senders