environment Politics: Barack Obama denialists Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 13: You Know, I Think I Really Like Vanilla.
The WaPo reported (June 26) on President Obama’s Big Climate Speech:
WASHINGTON — Appealing for courageous action “before it’s too late,” President Barack Obama launched a major second-term drive Tuesday to combat climate change and secure a safer planet, bypassing Congress as he sought to set a cornerstone of his legacy.
Abandoning his suit jacket under a sweltering sun at Georgetown University, Obama issued a dire warning about the environment: Temperatures are rising, sea level is climbing, the Arctic ice is melting and the world is doing far too little to stop it. Obama said the price for inaction includes lost lives and homes and hundreds of billions of dollars.
“As a president, as a father and as an American, I’m here to say we need to act,” Obama said. “I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”
At the core of Obama’s plan are new controls on new and existing power plants that emit carbon dioxide — heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming. The program also will boost renewable energy production on federal lands, increase efficiency standards and prepare communities to deal with higher temperatures. Obama called for the U.S. to be a global leader in the search for solutions.
Same planet, different world. June 26:
Whether it’s the heat wave baking the Arctic, the wildfires raging in Colorado, or the rising sea levels that will soon eliminate island nations from the map altogether, the warning signals of runaway climate change are unequivocal. Naturally, environmentalists (and sensible people everywhere) are pleased with the President’s uninhibited use of the bully pulpit in his recent address on climate change. However, Mr. Obama’s unambiguous articulation of the crisis must be understood in two very different contexts.
Politically, the speech was a bold and dramatic warning shot to conservative lawmakers, and a recognition of the potentials of unilateral executive action.
From a climatological perspective, however, Mr. Obama’s address was an exercise in cautious incrementalism, understating both the magnitude and urgency of the danger.
And therein lies the problem. When the calm statement of undisputed scientific facts is too extreme to be politically palatable, our governance is clearly, perhaps fatally, broken.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies Barack Obama corporate irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 7, Day 12: There Is No God But Albedo
The Christian Science Monitor speculates about what a climate change strategy would look like, but makes a bad analogy:
For a man with his hands tied, President Obama is offering a decent enough plan to fight climate change. In a speech today, he’s expected to announce federal regulation of greenhouse gases at existing coal-fired power plants, increased energy standards for buildings and appliances, and greater development of renewable energy on federal lands. These are moves that he can try without approval from Congress. And while they are halfway measures, they are better than no measures.
But imagine if his hands were not tied. Imagine if they were joined with lawmakers willing to tackle this issue with the urgency and breadth that the government devotes to fighting terrorism.
Americans don’t think about the threat of climate change in the same way as terrorism, but perhaps they should. Climate change has killed individuals through vicious storms, if not by bombs and planes, and the financial damage is just as real.
Sigh. If the war on climate works as well as the war on terror, we’re completely fucked. June 25:
As an abstract noun, “climate change” is amorphous, too large to grasp either intellectually or emotionally (unless you’re a climate scientist, of course). But up close and personal, the accelerating greenhouse effect can drown your city, reduce your house to kindling, dry up your wheatfields, introduce non-native pest species into regional ecosystems, trigger toxic algae blooms, set the stage for gigantic wildfires, and make our lives more miserable and fearful in countless separate but complementary ways.
Which is, of course, what terrorism does. Our national response to terrorism is anything but serious; rather than reducing the root causes of violent extremism, our “war on terror” has enriched corporations and increased secrecy, while treating protesters and whistleblowers like criminals, and making us more fearful, not less. We need a climate change policy that reduces corporate power, increases openness, treats environmentalists as responsible citizens, and offers us reasons for optimism, not despair.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: laboratory Republican obstructionism scientifc method
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 27: Till You’ve Known The Meaning Of The Blues
The Indianapolis Star (IA) notes that Robert Redford is offering President Obama some free advice.
Like a lot of people, I felt reassured earlier this year when President Obama spoke of the need to combat climate change for the sake of our children.
The president demonstrated leadership that night in that State of the Union address by making it clear that he doesn’t see extreme heat waves, powerful storms like Hurricane Sandy, the most severe drought in decades and the worst wildfires ever in some states as just weird coincidences.
He demonstrated leadership by calling out Congress, saying if it doesn’t act soon, he will take executive action to reduce pollution, prepare communities to cope with climate change impacts and spur us toward cleaner energy.
Clearly, the president understands the climate issue. But he owes more to future generations than his intellectual acknowledgement about the hardships they will face if nothing is done to address it. He owes them action.
I just hope the president has the courage of his convictions.
It’s what separates presidents that we don’t often remember from those we do. Years ago, an ally advised newly sworn-in President Johnson against using his political capital to try to muscle civil rights legislation through Congress. Johnson’s reply was classic: “Hell, what’s the presidency for?”
Time to advocate for the national laboratory system again. June 11:
It’s true that when it comes to climate, the President talks a stronger game than he plays. And to be sure, the chief executive’s position is an unenviable one: caught between intransigent Republicans on one hand and the hard facts of the runaway greenhouse effect on the other, his desires for inclusive compromise have nowhere to go.
Robert Redford’s heartfelt and entirely sensible plea for decisive executive action misses an important resource which Mr. Obama could use immediately without interference from Congress: the U.S. national laboratories, originally created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the Manhattan Project to address the possibility that German scientists were going to build an atomic bomb. The climate crisis is an unambiguous danger to our civilization, and the president could issue an executive order instructing the national laboratory system to study options to reduce or alleviate climate change by finding ways to defuse the threats posed by atmospheric carbon, methane, and other greenhouse gases.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes drought first responders forest fires heat waves Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 18: Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind
The Christian Science Monitor offers an analysis of the fires in Southern California:
The Powerhouse fire, which erupted in scrub-covered rugged terrain north of Los Angeles and has blackened 30,000 acres, destroyed 6 homes, and forced the evacuation of thousands of people, is dramatizing the challenges facing states across the West, including a much longer fire season, analysts say.
The Powerhouse fire started last Thursday afternoon and now has 2,200 firefighters battling it on foot, vehicles, and in the air. It spread quickly, feeding on the several-decades-old scrub covering the area’s hills and canyons.
As of Monday morning, authorities said, the fire was 40 percent contained. Officials estimated the fire would not be fully contained for another week. Temperatures Monday were expected to climb into the mid-80s with wind gusts up to 45 mph in the hills and valleys south of Lake Hughes.
Analysts said the large early-season fire creates an opportunity to raise awareness about a long list of issues facing localities, states, and the federal government. Those range from man’s contribution to climate change, to choices of where to build homes, to what safety precautions to take in building those homes and how to enforce them.
Given that as a global society we are not seriously addressing climate change, says Dominik Kulakowski, adjunct professor of biology at Clark University Graduate School of Geography in Worcester, Mass., one good question is, “Is this the new normal?” The public, he says, should conclude not merely that this fire season is predicted to be longer, but that such longer seasons will continue for the foreseeable future.
I just don’t see what any of this has to do with me. . June 4:
As climate change accelerates and intensifies, the frequency and size of forest fires is going to go up — perhaps to the point that “fire season” is the default climate for parts of the world. In a climatically-transformed United States, we will have to direct more money to training, equipment and resources for firefighters, or face a far higher bill for lives lost, property destroyed, and ecosystems obliterated.
Republican lawmakers, fanatically averse to tax increases of any sort, will resist any policy that would increase funding for firefighting professionals, even if it means the final costs will be enormously greater. This penny-wise, pound-foolish approach characterizes conservative responses to every aspect of the climate crisis: rather than admit the existence of a very serious problem and take steps to protect their constituents’ lives from its likely consequences, these anti-science politicians would rather see their own country go up in smoke.
Warren Senders
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 16: I Ain’t Got Nobody That I Can Depend On
The Tampa Bay Times runs a remarkable document:
Editor’s note: A Yale University student from Miami and a fellow classmate have won the inaugural writing competition sponsored by the Energy & Enterprise Initiative founded by former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Their winning essay, written in the form of a letter to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is in print for the first time here.
Dear Senator Rubio,
To many young conservatives like us, it seems that our politics has ridden roughshod all over our ideals. For no issue is this truer than climate change. We are counting on leaders like you to show the country that conservatives have responsible, pro-growth solutions to pressing challenges that young people care about. There is a generation of fiscally conservative Millennials who neither wish to inherit crushing debt nor an abused environment. You are one of the few conservative leaders capable of leading on this issue.
By leading on prudent climate solutions, we can defend and strengthen the free-market system that has produced so much prosperity for America and the world. We can reinvigorate the principle of personal responsibility that our communities require to thrive. And we can bolster America’s energy security.
Conservatives have rightly opposed many of the climate change proposals offered by the Left. But standing against bad policy does not require hiding from good science. We can’t govern responsibly by belittling America’s National Academy of Sciences (and all the other science academies on the planet). We can only govern responsibly by confronting the reality that we will be forced to spend big money dealing with the effects of climate change — money that won’t be invested in our communities, our schools, or our private enterprises.
Aren’t they just adorable? June 1:
In their hypothetical letter to Senator Rubio, Rafael Fernandez and Taylor Gregoire-Wright blithely assume that conservatives can address climate change responsibly and intelligently. Their naivete is touching; Rubio is, after all, the senator who couldn’t bring himself to publicly acknowledge what science tells us about the age of the universe for fear of offending the Young-Earth creationists in his constituency.
Yes, once upon a time there were pro-business Republican politicians who recognized that intelligently conceived public policy required, well…intelligence. But that was long ago. In its aggressively faux-populist anti-intellectualism, today’s GOP rejects anything that smacks of reason, logic, or expertise.
As long as the Republican party’s held hostage by the proudly ignorant, responsible solutions to even trivial problems are unlikely to emerge — and the climate crisis is anything but trivial. In their laudable advocacy of reality-based solutions to a genuine emergency, Fernandez and Gregoire-Wright sound suspiciously like (gasp!) liberals.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republican obstructionism scientific consensus
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 9: Billiard Balls
The Philadelphia Inquirer runs an op-ed on climate change. Illustrated, presciently, with this picture: 
.
Nice.
With a new study showing 97 percent of scientific papers on climate change since 1991 agree that fossil fuels are largely responsible, the doubters need to stand aside so public-policy initiatives to protect the Earth can proceed.
There is as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now as there was in the Pliocene Age, three million years ago, when oceans were 70 feet higher and temperatures warmer. Carbon dioxide levels are 41 percent higher now than during the Industrial Revolution – and climbing.
The doubters, though, have done a lot of damage. By insisting climate change isn’t occurring, or not caused by human use of fossil fuels and industrialization, they have reduced investments in alternative energy and slowed the progress of policies such as demanding higher vehicle gas mileage and imposing stronger emission standards on coal plants.
Their ranting has so muddied the water that less than half of the American public knows that most scientists agree that fossil fuels cause climate change, according to a Pew Research study. They have spewed so much misinformation that politicians, including President Obama, appear afraid to call them out.
So….I did the best I could with it:
The illustration accompanying Sunday’s editorial on climate change is curiously and ironically appropriate. The mastodon — a prehistoric version of the elephant — could be a fine symbol for the regressive and anti-science Republican party which has done so much to hinder our national ability to respond to a clear and rapidly growing threat. With an all-encompassing disregard for the intellectual advances made during the past several hundred years, today’s GOP is nostalgic, not for the Leave-It-To-Beaver Eisenhower decades, but for the Dark Ages.
This would be hilarious if it were in a movie, but as a recipe for governance, it’s a terrible mess. When legislators who deny cosmology, biology, climatology and physics can influence our public policies on matters of scientific fact, it’s potentially disastrous, as our current inability to address the accelerating greenhouse effect makes clear. Will inaction on climate change consign us, with the mastodon, to extinction?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists heroes idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 7: I Knew That Would Happen!
Meet Paul Coyne, a congressional candidate in California. He’s a Republican, hence an ignorant asshole. The Ventura County Reporter:
Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara/Ventura, co-sponsored a House resolution suggesting there may be a link between prostitution and climate change, and Paul Coyne, Jr., a 2014 candidate for Capps’ congressional seat, has pounced on her for making such a claim.
“This is over the edge and a little out of touch with reality and the needs of our district right now,” said Coyne. “People are searching for jobs, looking for their next meal. There are higher priorities than this.”
Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, introduced the resolution that says climate change can cause drought and reduced agricultural output, which can be harmful for women who have limited socioeconomic resources and “may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy and poor reproductive health.”
Because weather patterns are changing, chances for regional conflict increase with climate change, the resolution says. This could lead to a refugee and migration crisis, which also links to prostitution.
Bet you didn’t see that coming. May 24:
One of the commonest phrases heard from conservative politicians is “nobody anticipated.” “Nobody” anticipated the crumbling levees in New Orleans during Katrina, the disastrous consequences of the Iraq invasion, the environmental impacts of oil spills, the widespread infrastructural failures that happen when the funding for public works is pulled, or the horrors of 9/11 (the August 6 PDB notwithstanding). And “nobody” is anticipating the thousands of large and small repercussions of global climate change, such as invasive insect pests, resurgent tropical diseases, agricultural collapses — and profound consequences for women around the world who are struggling in poverty.
“Nobody,” that is, except environmentalists, scientists, and the occasional politician like Lois Capps, who recognizes that an important and essential function of effective government is to analyze and consider the possible repercussions of our laws and policies. By mocking Representative Capps, Paul Coyne shows himself ignorant of the deeper responsibilities of public service.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists heroes Republican obstructionism Storms
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 4: Oh Yeah, Oh Yeah.
The New York Daily News, on Sheldon Whitehouse and Oklahoma:
A Democratic Senator who came under fire for linking turbulent weather in Oklahoma to Republican politicians who don’t believe in climate change has apologized for the ill-timed remarks.
Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse on Wednesday said he wasn’t aware that deadly tornadoes were hitting Oklahoma at the same time he made his statement, in which he criticized Republicans who take issue with climate change but still seek out federal relief funds after natural disasters.
“Tragically and unbeknownst to the senator at the time, a series of tornadoes were hitting Oklahoma at the same moment he gave his remarks,” a Whitehouse spokesman told FoxNews.com
“Senator Whitehouse regrets the timing of his speech and offers his thoughts and prayers to the victims of yesterday’s storms and their families, and he stands ready to work with the senators from Oklahoma to assist them and their constituents in this time of need,” the spokesman added.
As you value your sanity, avoid the comment thread on this article. May 23:
Sheldon Whitehouse’s weekly speeches frequently note the impact of extreme weather events on different states in the US. While his apology for the timing of a recent address is gracious and welcome, he’s got nothing to be ashamed of. Oklahoma’s own Senators, by contrast, are a different story. Tom Coburn’s “fiscal conservatism” is a kind of derangement in which spurious principles are misapplied to the detriment of his own constituents — while James Inhofe’s career is based on denying basic science when it conflicts with his ideological prejudices and the desires of his paymasters in the fossil-fuel industry.
Storms are caused by heat; a hotter world feeds more storms. Insurance companies are already observing a steady rise in storm-caused property damage, which is going to cost them real money, which is why, unlike Mr. Inhofe and his denialist colleagues in Congress, they’re taking the problem seriously. Like Senator Whitehouse.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists extreme weather Republican obstructionism Storms tornadoes
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Year 4, Month 6, Day 3: The Music Goes Round And Round
Lee Sandlin, in USA Today, on the OK Tornadoes:
The truth is that tornadoes like this are rare but not unheard-of. They have been part of the reality of life in the American heartland for centuries. So why do people have the idea that there is something so horribly sinister about this newest one?
Partly, of course, it’s the sheer overwhelming violence and terror of the tornado itself, transmitted in real-time and viewed over and over again by millions of people on news websites and the Internet. This naturally has the effect of dulling the memory of previous catastrophes.
There is also the current tendency of the news media to treat every meteorological event in apocalyptic terms. But now there is also our growing urgency about climate change. In much of the online discussion about what happened in Moore, we can hear the repeated fear that there’s something unnatural going on with the weather, that this one event — and if not this one, then surely the next — will be the tipping point for global disaster.
Among meteorologists there is a widespread consensus that climate change is real, but very little concern about what one specific tornado may or may not prove about it. In the first decade of this century, there were only three EF-5 tornadoes anywhere in North America; nobody knows why. In 2011 alone there were six.
What should concern us is what a tornado like the one in Moore says about the heedless way we occupy the American landscape. The heartland is being enormously overbuilt. Tornadoes are going to be more frequent occurrences in densely inhabited areas because there are going to be fewer empty places for them to touch down.
Whatever happens to the larger climate, events like Moore are increasingly going to be the norm.
Much of this letter was cribbed from information in Greg Laden’s blog. May 22:
Science can’t say definitively that climate change was responsible for a specific tornado, or any other example of extreme weather, but it can confirm that the accelerating greenhouse effect is clearly linked to an overall increase in storminess.
Tornadoes are so variable in distribution and strength that they’re poor indicators — but storms in general result from unevenly distributed heat in tropical areas (like the Gulf of Mexico) which moves Northward via air and water currents. A hotter world means more food for storms; although it’s impossible to say what particular types of storms will increase, we can see a steady rise in storm-caused property damage. Unlike the reality-detached denialists in Congress, insurance companies use real numbers, and stand to lose real money, which is why they’re making plans to address the problem. Isn’t it time America’s lawmakers started taking the threat of climate change with the seriousness it deserves?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 31: A Miasmatic Cloud Of Purple Stink
The San Diego Union-Times notes that their city’s residents are looking around them, and not liking what they see:
More than four out of five San Diegans are concerned about climate change, according to a newly released poll commissioned by a coalition of local universities and policy groups.
The telephone survey of 1,211 residents found that 84 percent of respondents believe climate change is happening, but that more than half think it’s not caused by human activities. About 72 percent believe climate change will affect them personally, while 58 percent believe their actions can make a difference in curtailing its effects.
Climate Education Partners, which commissioned the polling, includes the University of San Diego, California State University San Marcos, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the San Diego Foundation.
The survey of randomly selected residents cut across ethnic, economic and political lines, with 30 percent of participants answering in Spanish, said Michel Boudrias, lead scientist for Climate Education Partners and chairman of the University of San Diego’s department of marine science and environmental studies.
The Times-Union has a 125-word limit, most anomalously. May 19:
As atmospheric CO2 creeps ominously past the 400 ppm level, the day-to-day signs of global climate change are everywhere. Droughts, extreme storms, unpredictable temperature swings, longer and more intense fire seasons — name a place on Earth, and there are indicators that catastrophic climate shifts are under way.
With one shameful exception.
In the air-conditioned offices of fossil-fuel CEOs (along with the politicians and media figures they employ), there’s nothing to worry about. Insulated by billions of dollars from the terrifying realities of a climatically transformed planet, these malefactors of great wealth wield grossly disproportionate influence over our national and regional politics — an influence which they are using to block any responsible policy initiatives on climate change and the necessary transformations of our energy economy.