environment Politics: alarmism denialists idiots media irresponsibility wildfires
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 14: Liberals Have A Reality-Bias…
The Portland (ME) Press-Herald runs a WaPo article on climate change and the hell-on-earth that is Colorado:
WASHINGTON — Snow hardly fell during winter in snowy Colorado. On top of that, the state’s soaking spring rains did not come. So it was no wonder that normally emerald landscapes were parched as summer approached, tan as a pair of worn khakis.
All the earth needed was a spark.
Colorado and U.S. Forest Service firefighters are battling the state’s most destructive wildfires ever. Lightning and suspected arson ignited them four weeks ago, but scientists and federal officials say the table was set by a culprit that will probably contribute to bigger and more frequent wildfires for years to come: climate change.
In the past two years, record-breaking wildfires have burned in the West — New Mexico experienced its worst-ever wildfire, Arizona suffered its largest burn and Texas last year fought the most fires in recorded history. From Mississippi to the Ohio Valley, temperatures are topping record highs and the land is thirsty.
“We’ve had record fires in 10 states in the last decade, most of them in the West,” said U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Harris Sherman, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service.
A revision and extension of the letter from two days ago. Sent July 3:
Not too long ago, any public figure who pointed out that a runaway greenhouse effect would have significant negative consequences for humanity could look forward to insults and mockery from conservatives. Anyone who suggested that it would probably be a good idea to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere would be called a “climate alarmist,” an “environazi,” or a “watermelon” (green on the outside, red on the inside — get it?).
The name-calling’s still going on, but some of the climate-change denialists are beginning to wake up. Even Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson publicly acknowledged the fact of human-caused global warming in a recent speech, although his assertion that humanity will “adapt” blithely glosses over the enormous human cost involved. More generally, the fact that America is undergoing a nationwide heat wave has rendered the denialist position harder to sustain.
More than three decades ago, climatologists started predicting that global warming would bring about this type of erratic and unpredictable weather, but politicians and the media have consistently ignored or derided their emergency signals. Such dismissals can now be understood as a grave abdication of the responsibilities of leadership.
“Alarmism” is just a sensible response to an alarming situation; as planetary temperatures rise and smoke billows above a burning Colorado, it’s obvious and inescapable: global climate change is as alarming as it gets.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialism media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 13: Zippadee Doo Dah, Zippadee Day!
The New York Times fails at journamalism:
HILL CITY, Kan. — This town on the parched plains, best known for its bountiful pheasant hunting and museum of oil history, recently earned a new, if unwelcome, distinction — the center of America’s summer inferno.
For five days last week, a brutal heat wave here crested at 115 degrees. Crops wilted. Streets emptied. Farmers fainted in the fields. Air-conditioners gave up. Children even temporarily abandoned the municipal swimming pool. Hill City was, for a spell, in the ranks of the hottest spots in the country.
“Hell, it’s the hottest place on earth,” Allen Trexler, an 81-year-old farmer who introduced himself as Old Man Trexler. He spoke while standing in the shade of a tree on Saturday morning, the temperature already sneaking toward 100.
Gotta love Old Man Trexler. Sent July 2:
When Kansas is reeling from a blistering heat wave, it’s a human interest story, complete with a picturesque old gentleman standing in the shade of a tree. When several states are hammered with extreme high temperatures, it’s a genuine emergency.
And when the whole country is experiencing either higher temperatures or extreme weather (like the massive thunderstorms that left millions of people without electricity in Virginia and Washington, D.C.), and hundreds of nations all over the globe are going through the same kinds of troubles, what is it then?
It’s a symptom of global warming — confirming predictions made as far back as the 1970s that an accelerating greenhouse effect would lead both to higher temperatures and weirder, uglier weather.
And what’s a good way to describe a feature article on Kansas’ disastrous weather that never once mentions planetary climate change?
“Irresponsible journalism” springs to mind.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialism invasive species media irresponsibility pine beetles Republicans rising sea levels
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 12: The Snooze Button Lasts For Twenty Thousand Years
The local “Metro-West” paper runs a piece by Rick Holmes, who’s clearly just another DFH:
Mountain pine beetles are tiny critters, the size of a grain of rice. They bore under the bark of Western pine trees, infecting them with a fatal fungus that turns their trunks blue, dries their needles to a rusty red, and then they fall.
Cold winters kill off the beetle larvae and keep populations in check, but over the last 20 years, cold winters have become fewer and farther between. The beetles have taken full advantage of changes in the climate. They are thriving at higher altitudes and have expanded their range. They now reproduce twice a year instead of once.
In the last few years, the beetles have ravaged Rocky Mountain forests from upper Canada to New Mexico. The blight has deadened 3.3 million acres of forest in Colorado alone.
A long-running drought has left those dead pines extra crispy, and Colorado has been seeing record heat. Denver hit 105 degrees this week, and Colorado Springs has had a string of 100 degree days.
Add a spark and what to you get? Colorado is in flames. The Waldo Canyon fire near Colorado Springs, having burned thousands of acres and destroyed hundreds of homes, is the most destructive fire in state history. It broke the record set the week before by the High Park fire outside Fort Collins.
It’s still early in the wildfire season, but everything seems to be coming early this year. Hurricane season is young, but we’re already up to E for named storms. It was a warm winter here in New England as well, and the flowers seem to be blooming about three weeks ahead of schedule.
Watch the mockery begin! Sent July 1:
For a long time, the word “alarmist” appeared regularly in the arsenal of right-wing pejoratives. Anyone pointing out some of the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect would be labeled a “climate alarmist” and mocked for presumed fealty to Al Gore (or, in Rush Limbaugh’s vernacular, “algore”). Watch what happens to Rick Holmes, who has the temerity to continue talking about the slow-motion emergency that is global climate change.
Climate scientists are the diagnostic physicians of our planet, and their increasingly urgent emergency signals have been ignored for decades by politicians and the media. Fortunately, more Americans are gradually accepting reality (even Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, who acknowledged climate change recently while blithely asserting that humanity will “adapt” to its new environment).
As the world sets high-temperature records, as Colorado burns, and the seas rise far faster than experts had anticipated, “climate alarmism” is looking increasingly like simple common sense.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 7, Day 10: Would I Lie To You?
Rex Tillerson is very sad. Nobody believes his reassurances. Poor baby.
NEW YORK (AP) — ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson says fears about climate change, drilling, and energy dependence are overblown.
In a speech Wednesday, Tillerson acknowledged that burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but said society will be able to adapt. The risks of oil and gas drilling are well understood and can be mitigated, he said. And dependence on other nations for oil is not a concern as long as access to supply is certain, he said.
Tillerson blamed a public that is ‘‘illiterate’’ in science and math, a ‘‘lazy’’ press, and advocacy groups that ‘‘manufacture fear’’ for energy misconceptions in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He highlighted that huge discoveries of oil and gas in North America have reversed a 20-year decline in U.S. oil production in recent years. He also trumpeted the global oil industry’s ability to deliver fuels during a two-year period of dramatic uncertainty in the Middle East, the world’s most important oil and gas-producing region.
It’s tough being one of the most powerful people on the planet. Sent June 29:
Poor Rex Tillerson. He’s the CEO of a fossil-fuel corporation that has reaped unimaginable profits from the exploitation of planetary resources over the past half-century, one of the most powerful economic agents in the world — and yet he just can’t seem to persuade his customers that he’s really got their best interests at heart. Given that Exxon has done its utmost to confuse the national discussion of energy and environmental policy by providing lavish funding to climate-change denialist organizations, Mr. Tillerson’s criticism of a science-ignorant public is disingenuous, to put it very mildly.
But why shouldn’t the American people trust Exxon’s word? Let us count the ways. This corporate leviathan has a long rap sheet ranging from disastrous spills and long-delayed compensation, to illegal extraction of oil from state and federal lands, to human-rights abuses in Indonesia and Columbia. In this context, Mr. Tillerson’s attempt to persuade us that climate change isn’t something to be worried about sounds anything but reassuring.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility false equivalence media irresponsibility mitigation
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Year 3, Month 6, Day 16: Summer In The City — Back Of My Neck Feeling Dirt And Gritty
Damn. I wonder how the hell this happened:
Major U.S. cities are among the world’s wealthiest and technologically advanced, but they lag behind their counterparts in Latin America in preparing for climate change, a survey finds.
Nearly all, or 95%, of major cities in Latin America are making plans to deal with the adverse impact of climate change, compared to 59% of such cities in the United States. according to a survey of 468 cities worldwide released this week by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The most prepared cities are often those facing the greatest changes in temperature or rainfall, the survey finds. For example, officials in Equador’s mountainous capitol of Quito have been studying the effects of global warming on nearby melting glaciers, developing ways to handle potential water shortages and organizing regional conferences on climate change.
U.S.A.!!!! U.S.A.!!!! U.S.A.!!!! U.S.A.!!!!
Why?
Because Shut Up, That’s Why.
Sent June 6:
It’s puzzling. The United States has been a world leader in science and technology for decades. Our record in innovation is unrivaled; our capacity for responding to crises is second to none.
Or so we claim, anyway. The news that cities in Latin America are far further along than those in the USA when it comes preparing for the inevitable effects of global climate should have a sobering effect on American exceptionalists. It should, but it won’t — because the folks who insist that our country is Number One in Everything are the same ones who’ve swallowed the convenient falsehood that the burgeoning climate crisis is actually a conspiracy fabricated by a secret cabal of scientists and liberals.
Maybe Latin America’s cities are ahead of us in preparation because they aren’t distracted by a clamor of media voices promulgating a false equivalency between climate science and corporate mendacity. Maybe.
Warren Senders
environment: economics media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 3, Month 6, Day 7: Well, I Guess You “Win” That Round.
Peter Passell offers a well-constructed argument in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
Climate change, we are often told, is everyone’s problem. And without a lot of help containing greenhouse gas emissions from rapidly growing emerging market countries (not to mention a host of wannabes), the prospects of avoiding disaster are small to nil.
Now you tell us, retort policymakers in the have-less countries: How convenient of you to discover virtue only after two centuries of growth and unfettered carbon emissions.
Since you were the ones to get us into this mess, it’s your job to get us out. (The United States’ what-me-worry posture on climate change does not, of course, make the West’s efforts to co-opt the moral high ground any more convincing.)
This clash of wills is a bit more nuanced than that, but not much. Almost all the net growth in greenhouse gas emissions for the last two decades – and more than half the total emissions today – is coming from the developing world.
What’s more, most of the cheap opportunities for reducing emissions are to be found in the same countries. But as a matter of equity, it’s hard to argue with “you’ve had your turn, now it’s ours.” And it’s equally hard to see how the stalemate will be resolved before the world goes to hell in a plague of locusts (in some places, literally).
The comments are full of stupid denialists who have not, apparently, taken the trouble to read the article. Shocked, I tell you. Shocked. Sent May 28:
Any approach to an equitable assignment of responsibility for mitigating the impact of climate change is doomed to fail as long as citizens of the developed world find it easier to reject the existence of the greenhouse effect entirely. In the world’s poorest and least developed countries, climate-change denialism is an unaffordable luxury; it is only the economically privileged who are free to indulge in careless wishful thinking under the guise of “skepticism.”
Ask any rural agriculturist whether the climate has changed; the answer will be immediate and unequivocal. An Indian farmer facing the consequences of a vanishing monsoon is immune to the persuasions of a petroleum-sponsored news program.
Yes, poor countries need to invest in economic growth along with sustainable technology — but rich countries cannot claim moral ascendancy as long as their citizens prefer to reject the evidence of science in favor of thinly disguised arguments of convenience.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture extreme weather media irresponsibility
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Year 3, Month 6, Day 2: Howdja Like Them Apples?
The Ionia County Sentinel-Standard tells us about their local fruit growers, who’ve been having a rough time. Naturally, the article never uses a certain phrase that rhymes with “primate strange.” Read it and weep:
IONIA COUNTY, Mich. —
Michigan’s unseasonably warm winter and late April freeze means a near-total loss to many Ionia County growers of apples, peaches and other tree fruits.
“It’s been a severe year as far as all Michigan cherries, apples, plums, peaches,” said Alex Hanulcik of Hanulcik Farm Market and Hanulcik Pick-Your-Own Peach and Apple Orchards in Ionia. “It’s all pretty much gone across the state.”
More than half of Michigan’s apple crop, and possibly more, could be lost, according to The Packer, a news source for the fresh fruit and vegetable industry.
In southwest Michigan, damage to tree fruit was even more grim, although the extent won’t be known until early June.
Hanulcik estimated his loss at “approaching 100 percent.” Luckily the strawberries were only minimally damaged, but that is small comfort.
“When two-thirds of what you grow is gone, I’m dependent upon what little is left,” he said.
“I’ve been through a number of years, and I haven’t seen anything like it,” said Hanulcik, who has been farming since 1985. His grandparents started the business in 1936.
“People have told me this is similar to 1945, when it was a complete wipeout,” he added.
Nothin’ to see here, folks. Move along. Sent May 23:
It’s not just Michigan. New England’s fruit growers also confronted the possibility of crop devastation from severe and unpredictable weather. And it’s not just the United States, either. All over the world, farmers are confronting a dangerous new reality in which weather patterns that have been consistent for centuries are transforming faster than human agriculture and infrastructure can cope.
But in the USA, an anti-science political party has framed the phrase “climate change” in exclusively ideological terms, thereby impossibly hamstringing any public discussion of critical issues like the plight of Michigan’s orchards.
Scientists have predicted for years with ever-increasing accuracy that mounting atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will lead to unpredictable and extreme weather, and Ionia County fruit growers are confronting this new reality for themselves. No one on Earth can evade the effects of climate change, and American news media should no longer evade direct discussion of the issue.
Warren Senders
environment: arctic methane media irresponsibility methane
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Year 3, Month 6, Day 1: Anybody In Here?
This is really really really scary:
Methane gas trapped for millennia under the Artic surface has begun to bubble up into the atmosphere, acccording to scientists.
Thousands of sites where methane has been trapped by ice have begun to emit the ancient gas as the ice melts and researchers believe it could have a significant impact on climate change.
Methane, the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2, has been found to be seeping from a number of spots in Alaska and Greenland, perhaps from natural gas or coal deposits underneath the lakes, whereas others are emitting much younger gas, presumably formed through decay of plant material in the lakes.
Scientists said that if the same thing happened in other areas, for example, in northern West Siberia, which is rich in natural gas and partially underlain by thin permafrost predicted to degrade substantially by 2100, “a very strong increase in methane carbon cycling will result, with potential implications for climate warming feedbacks”, according to the BBC.
Thanks to PZ Myers for the debunking of the dinosaur fart report. Sent May 22:
A major obstacle to public understanding of science is the difference between the way scientists communicate and the way science journalists communicate. An excellent example of this disconnect can be found in the treatment of two stories about methane.
When a recent scholarly paper suggested that dinosaurs may have contributed statistically significant amounts of methane to the atmosphere during the Mesozoic Era, media outlets seized the opportunity to conflate global warming with fart jokes (while getting the facts of the story wrong).
On the other hand, when researchers say that “very strong” Arctic methane releases have “potential implications for climate warming feedbacks”, this terrifying clause is buried in the last paragraph of a blandly written report. The results of those “climate warming feedbacks” will quite likely be catastrophic; responsible journalists should feel an obligation to pass on a warning to their readers.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots media irresponsibility Republicans
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 31: Sounds Pretty Fair And Balanced To Me….
The West Virginia Gazette-Journal has an editorial by some brave fellow who dares to speak the truth in the midst of Coal Country:
Last year, America suffered historic weather calamities: disastrous tornadoes, severe floods, extended drought, record-breaking snowfall, raging wildfires, etc. Federal agencies say $52 billion in property loss was inflicted, and more than 1,000 Americans died in weather ravages.
This year brought the warmest March ever known, breaking about 15,000 local U.S. heat records. Early tornadoes again left wreckage and death.
Scientists say the violent weather is solid evidence that fossil fuel fumes are girdling Planet Earth with greenhouse gases that produce global warming and climate change. Warmer air holds more moisture, producing more extreme storms.
A new study by Yale and George Mason university pollsters found that 70 percent of Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.” Yale professor Anthony Laiserowitz commented: “People are starting to connect the dots.”
Read the comments for the full effect. Sent May 21:
On one side of the Great Climate Change Debate, we have almost every single scientific association on Earth. Their overwhelming consensus, built on the integrated results of thousands of different studies and research projects over the past five decades, is that climate change is real, it’s dangerous, human consumption of fossil fuels is a major factor, and doing something about it before it gets worse is both an economic and an environmental necessity.
On the other side, we have the oil-funded American Association of Petroleum Geologists along with a few other scientists (like Dr. Richard Lindzen, who still firmly believes the link between cigarettes and cancer is statistically inconclusive). We have conservative “think-tanks” like the Heartland Institute (recently famous for recklessly comparing environmentalists with mass murderers), a coterie of professional denialists whose voices are heard constantly in our broadcast and print media, and a major political party firmly opposed to science of every sort. Their interpretation of the data? There is no such thing as climate change; if there is, it’s not dangerous; if it’s dangerous, it’s not caused by humans; if it’s caused by humans, it’s too expensive to address. And anyway: Liberals! Socialism! Squirrel!
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists ecologies idiots media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 3, Month 5, Day 25: The Pitter-Patter Of Little Feet
The Boston Herald (my local Murdoch rag) runs an article from the Seattle Times on a problem with animals:
SEATTLE — As climate change transforms their habitat, some animals are already on the move. But a new analysis from the University of Washington warns that many species won’t be able to run fast enough to survive a warming world.
On average, about 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere’s mammals migrate too slowly to keep pace with the rapid climate shifts expected over the next century, says the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In some areas, including parts of the Appalachian Mountains and the Amazon basin, nearly 40 percent of mammals may be unable to reach safe haven in time.
They’ll never print this one in a million years, but it was fun to write. Sent May 15:
If the thousands of mammal species whose slowly-changing migratory patterns put them at risk of extinction just knew that climate change is a hoax engineered by a worldwide conspiracy of scientists and liberal environmentalists, it would undoubtedly make them feel much better about the loss of their irrecoverable habitats.
But only humans are susceptible to the misdirection practiced by conservative news networks, which means that those endangered animals will just have to get used to their newly inhospitable ecological niches, or die. Ultimately, though, it’s not just regional and local ecosystems that are being transformed, but the entire planet. That’s what “climate change” means — global, not local; long-term, not short-term — and the implications of the University of Washington study should be a wake-up call for any still living in the denialist dreamland.
Humans are mammals, too. Where will we go when our habitats will no longer sustain us?
Warren Senders
Ha ha! The joke’s apparently on me. They printed it. And boy oh boy did it attract a fusillade of stupidity in the comments.