environment Politics: Barack Obama media irresponsibility scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 12: There Is No Gravity; The Earth Sucks.
The L.A. Times records both candidates’ responses on climate change issues from the online Science Debate:
WASHINGTON — At the Republican National Convention last week and in at least one stump speech over the weekend, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney used climate change as a laugh line ridiculing President Obama’s priorities.
But in comments to the Science Debate website Tuesday as part of an online debate organized by a consortium of scientific organizations, the Republican candidate took another position, similar to the more moderate stance he struck last year, when he conceded that the planet was getting warmer.
“I am not a scientist myself, but my best assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human activity contributes to that warming, and that policymakers should therefore consider the risk of negative consequences,” Romney said in response to a question about climate change.
Obama for his part seldom utters the words climate change, although his administration has taken several significant steps to combat it. Yet, as he has worked the last few weeks to draw clear contrasts between himself and Romney, the president has talked about climate change to younger audiences, often at colleges. To Science Debate, Obama identifies climate change as one of the most pressing concerns of the era and lists the steps he has taken during his term to mitigate it — and what he might do next.
“Climate change is one of the biggest issues of this generation, and we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits,” Obama said.
We are soooooo fucked. Sent September 5:
In a political environment dominated by scandals du jour and the demands of the chattering class, it is inevitable that science in general — and climate science in particular — will get short shrift. However, it is fascinating to observe the responses from Mr. Romney and President Obama to questions about climate change.
While Mr. Romney typically says one thing to his scientific interlocutors and something else to his tea-party constituency, who regard any acknowledgement of global warming as apostasy, one can only speculate about the President’s reluctance to use climate change as a campaign issue. He may be correct in feeling that a crisis unfolding over decades lacks the emotional immediacy required for a modern electoral campaign. Perhaps as planetary extreme weather intensifies, the greenhouse effect’s epiphenomena will no longer fall outside the purview of the 24-hour news cycle. That would be good news — of a very bad kind.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists idiots media irresponsibility Rex Tillerson scientific method
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 11: Eppur Si Muove
Originally from the Guardian (UK), but reprinted in the Hindustani Times:
No one would want a novelist to perform brain surgery with her biro. No one would want a man with a PhD in political science to then write textbooks claiming that those misadventures are best medical practice.
Society understands the architecture of academia and knows there are
relevant qualifications in different fields, and the media accepts the idea of specialisations and accords greater respect to those with greater expertise. With one exception: climate science.When it comes to this academic discipline, it seems that if you are a specialist in public sector food-poisoning surveillance or possess a zoology doctorate on sexual selection in pheasants, editors will seek your contrarian views more avidly than if you have qualifications in climate science and a lifetime’s professional expertise. The press is further littered with climate “heretics” almost all of whom have academic backgrounds in history, literature, and the classics with a diploma in media studies. (All these examples are true.) One botanist trying to argue that glaciers were advancing took his data (described as simply false by the World Glacier Monitoring Service) from a former architect.
I recently watched a debate between a climate scientist and that pheasant-expert-turned-journalist. An audience member asked: “Please could you explain how it is that you are ‘right’ while all climate scientists are ‘wrong’?” He could not. I almost felt sorry for him. I know that he has lectured publicly on scientific heresy. I think that he wants to be Galileo.
Well said. Sent September 4:
When Galileo turned his eyes outward to the stars and planets, he was setting the power of direct observation and analysis against a body of received knowledge that, although internally consistent, was unverifiable and unfalsifiable. He was also taking on the church of Rome, the most powerful institution in the world at the time.
Given that fossil-fuel corporations are the most powerful economic forces of our era, it takes no courage whatsoever to align one’s opinions with their interests. Denialists’ attempts to assume the mantle of one of the founders of modern science is ludicrous at best and deeply cynical at worst.
While it took the church many centuries to acknowledge that it was mistaken and Galileo was correct, even big oil companies are now recognizing the factuality of global warming, as witness the recent remarks of EXXON CEO Rex Tillerson. Climate-change deniers aren’t “heretics” — they’re just plain wrong.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Arctic ice melt denialists media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 10: Don’t Do That Anymore. Please. Do You Hear Me?
The Gainesville Sun’s John L. Ward is shrill:
The alarm expressed in the Sun editorial of August 26 over the record-breaking Arctic sea ice melt is deserved.
Even before this year’s stunning loss, a study published in the journal Nature last November, based on historical records, ice cores, tree rings, and lake sediments, concluded that “both the duration and magnitude of the current decline in sea ice seem to be unprecedented for the past 1,450 years” and that human activity “stands out as a very plausible cause.” The record melt not only confirms that the world is warming, it speeds the change. Since everyone, including the yet unborn, will be affected, we should all grasp the significance of the event and the response it requires.
The white surface of ice limits warming by reflecting more of the sun’s rays back into space; darker water absorbs the heat. A feedback loop is created so that the warmed water melts even more ice, and the increased area of dark water warms the water even more.
The warmer Arctic water also warms the air, which increases the melting of glaciers and other land ice. Scientists were startled this summer to find that nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland deposited the previous winter had melted, an event unprecedented since satellite observations began 33 years ago. This ice loss contributes to sea level rise worldwide.
Cue the parade of ignorance. Sent September 3:
Yes, Arctic ice is melting rapidly, but the climate-change denial machinery is already working hard to spin away the most recent set of horrifying numbers. We saw it at the RNC, and we see it daily in the irresponsible pontifications of media figures dutifully repeating the talking points they receive from their petroleum-industry sponsors.
Apparently expertise is no longer persuasive, or we’d consult teachers (not corporations) when it comes to education reform, economists (not corporations) when it comes to economic reform, and doctors (not corporations) when it comes to health-care reform. Since McCarthyite Republicans purged the State Department of China experts (thereby setting the stage for our Vietnam debacle), the GOP has rejected people who actually know something about a subject in favor of those who reinforce their ideological biases. Climate change is one of many such examples — albeit the one upon which our species’ collective future hinges.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes false equivalence idiots media irresponsibility Republicans timidity
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 6: Truth And Falsehood Are Opposites, Therefore They Are Equally Responsible For All The Lies
The Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle perpetuates benign false equivalency:
It is unfortunate that global climate change has become one of those articles of faith by which politicians self-identify. On the left, there is little argument the planet is growing warmer; on the right, there is inadequate proof.
In the middle lie industries such as agriculture and utility companies, both nationally and regionally, which must deal with the consequences of a warming planet and its attendant weather disruptions. They are getting precious little help from lawmakers.
The languishing Farm Bill, for example, reflects business as usual, continuing sizable subsidies for large agribusiness interests while failing to encourage sustainable farming practices and other adaptive measures. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy called the bill “a step backwards for efforts to bring about a more fair, sustainable and healthy food and farm system” and said it “completely ignores the effects of climate change on agriculture.”
Those effects can be as specific as a Clifton Springs, Ontario County, dairy farm that will discontinue raw milk production because this year’s drought has dried up the pastures cows feed on. Or they can be as systemic as crop insurance, which is becoming more expensive as heat waves and droughts continue to decimate crops.
Our romance is going flat. Sent August 31:
Yes, it’s regrettable that the burgeoning climate crisis has been politicized. As Earth’s atmosphere heats up, as polar ice melts, as the ocean acidifies and the weather gets more extreme, the last thing we need is for any discussion of the problem to turn into another example of back-and-forth partisan squabbling.
Things have indeed come to a pretty pass. How did this happen?
Any news report that simply leaves the question at this point wrongly imputes equal responsibility for America’s partisan deadlock on climate issues to Republicans and Democrats. Given that GOP strategists have spent decades misrepresenting the science, stigmatizing environmentalists and framing every discussion of the climate crisis as a battle against socialist liberal New-World-Order conspiracies, suggesting rhetorical equivalence between the two sides of the discussion is disingenuous at best and mendacious at worst.
Democrats and liberals and environmentalists didn’t politicize climate change. Republicans, conservatives, and oil-industry money did.
Warren Senders
environment: denialists droughts extreme weather media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 1: Nice Try, Though.
The Long Beach Press-Telegram has a writer named Paul Silva, who’s trying to be funny:
The world is getting hotter and I have the scientific proof.
This weekend is supposed to be cooler than the previous three weeks of broiling temperatures, but don’t let that resurgent marine layer fool you.
Global warming is real, and I don’t need temperature charts, drought-stricken plains or pictures of polar bears swimming in search of ice to tell me that.
I know the world is in meltdown because of three simple harbingers of heat we can’t beat.
Sign No. 1: My tennis-ball obsessed dog has started to quit on me.
Normally, Louie, the younger of my two Labradors, will retrieve a tennis ball as long as I am willing to throw it. When I sit on my couch watching TV, he drops the ball in my lap over and over again until I relent and take him outside to play.
To Louie, tennis balls are the point of living. They are his bliss and his chi. I do not know what this dog would have done with himself before tennis was invented. Maybe he would have fetched pine cones or small furry animals, but he would have fetched something.
During the heat wave, though, he actually reached his level of tennis ball tolerance. After about 10 minutes, he would go for the ball only if I threw it right at his mouth. If it bounced a few feet from him, he would look at me, tongue hanging out, as if to say, “Maybe I have really overestimated this whole tennis ball thing.”
I’m just a f**king killjoy, I suppose. Sent August 26:
Paul Silva’s humorous perspective on climate change offers an inadvertent demonstration of the fact that there’s remarkably little to laugh about when it comes to the rapidly accelerating greenhouse effect. It’s not just hotter beach sands and rapidly tiring Labs, but droughts, storms, wildfires and bizarre forms of extreme weather, like the record-setting hot rain earlier this month in Needles, California. With food prices set to spike this fall, and well over a million acres of the United States currently on fire, it’s pretty clear that global climate change isn’t really a gold mine for humorists.
That only one in five Americans feels any sense of responsibility for our greenhouse emissions and the slow-motion disaster they’ve helped create is a sad commentary on a complaisant media that has eschewed thoughtful coverage of science in favor of scandals and titillation. But Mr. Silva’s got a point: as the crisis deepens in the coming years, we’ll need all the laughs we can get.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists fishing hunting media irresponsibility National parks
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 30: Two Game Wardens, Seven Hunters, And A Cow.
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle (MT) discusses climate change’s impact on huntin’ and fishin’ and all that kinda outdoors-y stuff:
Climate change and the subprime mortgage crisis share two trends: They had early signs that some people ignored or denied, and they can strain the economy, experts said Wednesday.
Four people addressed both trends during a presentation titled, “Feeling the heat: The impact of climate change on Montana’s outdoor heritage,” at the Emerson Center for the Arts & Culture on Wednesday.
All four said this summer’s excessive heat and drought were bringing the issue home to more people nationwide. Crop failures in the Midwest and large wildfires in Colorado and Idaho have dominated the news and demonstrate how climate change can cause costly events.
Montana has so far been spared the brunt of the extreme weather. But many Montanans didn’t need the heat to hit before noticing changes that have occurred over the past quarter century, said Bill Geer, a 39-year veteran of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
“We believe that sportsmen are actually among the first to recognize climate change, even if they don’t say the word,” Geer said. “They see the evidence in the field because they’re out there hunting and fishing.”
Sent August 24:
There’s one group of people who’ll be among the first to recognize the signs of climate change. When the timing of animal migrations changes radically, when entire forests are devastated by invasive insect species, when regional biodiversity is decimated by shifting patterns of extreme weather — who better to notice and report the damage than hikers, hunters, and fishermen?
It’s a tragic irony that the national discussion of the climate crisis has become politicized through the misrepresentations of conservative politicians and media figures. Teddy Roosevelt, a great Republican president, and a legendary outdoorsman, was the force behind America’s system of National Parks, and a staunch advocate of wilderness conservation; can you imagine his response to the science-denying anti-environmentalists in today’s GOP? A vote for the party of Big Oil and Coal is a vote against the timeless joys of the wild, and for a Big Sky turned gray with smog.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 25: Come Back With Your Shield, Or On It.
The San Francisco Examiner notes that California governor Jerry Brown is taking steps on behalf of science-type stuff:
Gov. Jerry Brown isn’t shooting for the moon on this one.
On Monday, the governor used an annual summit in Lake Tahoe to launch a new website to rebut skeptics of climate change, commonly referred to as global warming. California has implemented many programs and laws to lead the fight against emissions that contribute to climate change, and now Brown is using his bully pulpit to counter critics who deny there is a problem.
The issue is especially pressing for California, where miles of coastline, including here in the Bay Area, could be hit by rising sea levels, larger waves and higher storm surges in the coming decades. The best science we have points to the inescapable conclusion that emissions from human activity are preventing heat from escaping the atmosphere, causing our planet to warm. Such higher temperatures have myriad consequences, including altered weather patterns — such as droughts, scorching heat waves and stronger storms — and the rapid melting of polar ice, which adds more water to the oceans.
A recent report from the National Research Council pointed out that a sea level change could affect oceans around the world. But one key highlight was that the sea level along the California coastline could rise by more than 3 feet by 2100. For San Francisco, a city bordered on three sides by water, this is a critical topic to address. Thousands of residents and businesses near the ocean or Bay could be affected, as well as key infrastructure such as San Francisco International Airport.
With an urgent need to focus on the monumental task of working to curb future emissions and to plan for those climate changes that it’s too late to avoid, it is frustrating that effort must still be expended to combat climate change deniers. Too much energy is being wasted on peripheral fights that delay the real work that needs to be done. Many might remember “ClimateGate,” the investigation into emails stolen from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit in 2009 that allegedly showed scientists were exaggerating the perils of climate change. Years later, the core of the studies have held up, showing an overall warming of Earth. Fighting against such allegations merely diverts time from solving the real problems.
Good for him. Sent August 14:
Governor Brown’s recent climate-change website launch is a salutary example of a politician advocating on behalf of the truth. There will always be people proclaiming that human-caused global warming is illusory (or a liberal hoax), but this isn’t a valid argument against the scientific consensus. Some people believe the Earth is flat, that aliens abducted their aunts, that Elvis lives in Buenos Aires, that the Moon landing was staged — every absurd notion has its adherents. A responsible news media, however, has no obligation to report on such eccentric “true believers.”
Climate change denialists in politics develop energy and environmental policies rooted not in reality, but in a fantasy world where tax cuts for the rich create jobs, President Obama was born in Kenya, and human CO2 emissions have no impact on the planetary greenhouse effect. Responsible politics, like responsible media, should be based on facts and evidence, not ideology.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: false equivalency media irresponsibility Richard Muller scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 24: You Say Ee-ther, I Say Eye-ther…
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in an editorial:
While those with vivid memories of weather during the Depression might take umbrage, it is now official that July 2012 was the hottest month ever in the United States.
So far, 2012 is the driest and hottest year in more than a century. Farmers are battling a drought estimated to cover 63 percent of the country. Crops are failing and livestock are being put down. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated half of all counties disaster areas and expects the lowest corn yield in 17 years. This soon will be reflected in higher food prices.
Meanwhile, wildfires have been a problem nationwide. Rivers are receding and exposing once dark river beds to direct sunlight. At the same time, heavy rains have hit parts of the United States, but the damage to crops and livestock has been done.
Writing July 28 in The New York Times, former climate-change skeptic Richard A. Muller conceded what most of the scientific community has already considered gospel — global warming is real. Mr. Muller now agrees that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to the rise in the planet’s temperature, but he also believes much of the extreme weather is the result of cyclical, natural forces.
While there will probably be an argument about the validity of global warming until the last polar bear drowns, the oppressive heat of July 2012 will be remembered for a long time — or until its record is broken.
That is to say, August. Sent August 13:
The scientific argument about the reality of planetary climate change was settled quite some time ago — well before the recent conversion of erstwhile skeptic Dr. Richard Muller. The overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists (ninety-seven percent, more or less) are in agreement on the issue, differing only in their interpretation of particular details.
Yes, there probably will “be an argument about the validity of global warming until the last polar bear drowns,” as your editor writes. Heck, there’ll probably be such an argument as long as there are enough humans to encompass a wide range of opinions and beliefs. But just because there’s an argument doesn’t mean that both sides have equivalent factuality. The Earth is not flat; astronauts actually landed on the moon; Elvis is dead; global warming is real, human-caused, and getting worse.
Without a responsible news media, the Jeffersonian ideal of “a well-informed citizenry” is unachievable — and if there ever was a time when we needed such a citizenry, it’s now.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Big Coal Big Oil corporate irresponsibility economics media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 23: If This Had Been A Real Emergency, You Would Have Received Instructions…
The Sarasota (FL) Herald Tribune assesses the grim situation:
In drought-scorched parts of the country these days, some farmland bears a resemblance to NASA’s photos of Mars’ barren plains.
Here on Earth, crops are suffering. On Friday, the federal Department of Agriculture cut by 17 percent its estimate for the corn crop and said the U.S. soybean crop is expected to drop, too. Soaring prices are forecast.
The drought stems from a number of causes, science suggests. But some of it appears to be consistent with the kind of long-term drying patterns seen in global-warming climate models.
Furthermore, James E. Hansen, a NASA expert in the field, issued a report last week tying man-made climate change to three severe heat outbreaks from 2003 to 2011.
These latest developments won’t resolve long-running arguments over global warming or its causes. But they heighten the sense that precious time to address the problem is evaporating.
There’s no mystery as to what needs to be done: Carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel must be cut.
The fossil-fuel industry is an ichneumon wasp which has laid its eggs inside our civilization. Ick. Sent August 12:
Why is our political system unable to address climate change in anything approaching a responsibly adult manner? The answer rests in the synergy of three separate forces, interacting to produce paralysis: fossil fuel money, politicians’ cupidity, and media irresponsibility.
Taking full advantage of our compromised campaign finance system, the oil and coal industries use their huge financial resources to purchase the loyalty of as many lawmakers as possible. More of that same money funds conservative “think tanks” and “institutes” which generate spurious studies using cherry-picked data and misinterpreted statistics — and also produce telegenic pundits trained to deliver denialist talking points on cue. Hewing to the doctrine that there are two exactly equivalent sides to every story, our print and broadcast media then allow equal time to worried climatologists and petrol-funded shills — reinforcing the notion that “the debate on climate change isn’t settled.” Purchased politicians seize on this false notion as an excuse for continued inaction, which is all Big Oil and Big Coal require.
Repeat and fade.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots James Hansen James Inhofe media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 8, Day 22: Admitting Error Would Cause Me To Lose Face. Therefore Global Warming Is A Hoax.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review offers a forum to arch-denialist Marc Morano:
Marc Morano operates Climatedepot.com, an Internet clearinghouse for information on climate, environmental and energy news. Morano, a former aide to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., spoke to the Trib on the latest developments in the climate-change debate.
Q: It’s the hottest year on record so far in the Northeast. Must be global warming, right?
A: Globally, it’s not the hottest. In fact, here is the problem: The heat they are touting as proof of man-made global warming is occurring in the continental United States, which is less than 2 percent of the Earth’s surface. So far in 2012, (global) temperatures have been slightly below the average for the last 15 years. So if the Earth isn’t actually in record warmth globally, why are we looking at 2 percent (of its surface) and then trying to draw extrapolations?
Q: Why are we?
A: It’s politics, pure and simple. When James Hansen (director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies) announces this week, as he has done in previous years, that we’re having (record heat), it sounds so impressive and scary. It sounds like proof of their theory, except for one problem: The (record) temperatures are within hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit difference between (ordinary) years and the years they are claiming are the hottest years.
Q: So you consider such pronouncements scare tactics?
A: Yes, these are hard-core ideological activists at work posing as neutral scientists. It’s not that Hansen is lying; it’s that he’s excluding any information he doesn’t find convenient. Satellite temperature data for July (indicated the month was the) coolest globally since 2008. So not only was it not impressively warm globally, it was actually somewhat cooler. We are not looking at unprecedented warmth. They (global-warming activists) are cherry-picking.
Assholes. Sent August 11:
Marc Morano, the alter ego of Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, offers a textbook example of projection in his interview with Eric Heyl. Offering no foundation for his accusation that climatologists are “playing politics” in their research, Mr. Morano’s overheated rhetoric implies that such gamesmanship is to be expected from anyone who participates in a discussion of climate change. In other words, it’s not scientists, but Mr. Morano and Senator Inhofe who “play politics” with science.
In March, Senator Inhofe told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow that “I was actually on your side of this issue…I thought it must be true until I found out what it cost.” The Senator’s reason for changing his mind was fiscal, not factual. By analogy, rejecting your biopsy results because chemotherapy is too expensive may be an understandable first reaction to a poor prognosis, but beating the disease necessarily begins with acknowledging the truth.
Climatologists have delivered their diagnosis. Now it’s time for us to face the facts. Morano, Inhofe and their compatriots in climate-change denial are exemplars of irresponsibility, in the face of a crisis of historic proportions.
Warren Senders