environment: conspiracy theory denialists idiots oceanic acidification
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 9: Today Is The First Day Of The Rest Of Our Lives
Oceanic acidification is the great unrecognized disaster awaiting us. The Albany Times-Union:
ALBANY — Greenhouse gases that drive man-made climate change are also dangerously changing ocean chemistry, likely faster than at any other time in the past 300 million years, according to research coordinated between New York state and the United Kingdom.
The change — known as ocean acidification — is associated with several massive extinctions of marine life in that period of Earth’s history, and now presents a growing threat, said study lead author Barbel Honisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Located in Rockland County on the Hudson River, where the ocean tides stretch upriver to Troy, the observatory was joined by the University of Bristol in southern England in the report, which examined several hundred independent studies from around the world done over the last two decades.
I just felt in the mood for some mockery. Sent March 3:
Red alert! The global scientific conspiracy is not satisfied with contaminating the minds of our nation’s citizens with actual, you know, science-y stuff about the accelerating concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These nefarious empiricists have now infiltrated oceanography!
As part of their plan to bring about a New World Order, rogue researchers are now presenting genuine facts about the terrifying likelihood of catastrophic acidification in the world’s oceans. Have they no shame? Because of this unprecedented power play on the part of the corrupt scientific cabal, climate-change denialists will need to work even harder to keep their minds unsullied by any contact with actual evidence. Note: if you don’t see the sarcasm in these paragraphs, you’re probably part of the problem.
What will the doubters do when the evidence is finally too much to refute? How much more will it take for them to change their minds?
Warren Senders
environment India: analogies glacial melt Himalayas
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 8: First There Is A Mountain, Then There Is No Mountain, Then There Is
The Oshkosh Northwestern (WI) runs an AP story on the likelihood of glacial-melt floods in the Himalayas:
TATOPANI, Nepal (WTW) — Before Apa became a legendary Sherpa mountaineer, he was a humble Himalayan potato farmer who worked his fields in the Everest foothills until, without warning, raging floodwaters swallowed his farm.
The flash flood — unleashed when a mountain lake fed by melting glacier waters burst its banks — destroyed homes, bridges and a hydroelectric plant. Apa scrambled up a hill, but at least five neighbors were swept away.
Twenty-six years later, after scaling the world’s highest mountain a record 21 times, Apa is on a quest to draw attention to the danger of more devastating floods as glacial melt caused by climate change fills mountain lakes to the bursting point.
The 51-year-old Apa, who like most Sherpas uses only one name, is trekking the length of Nepal to warn villagers to prepare themselves for change. A third of the way along his 120-day journey, he has already seen many lakes that look ready to spill.
“If it happens again, many villages would be washed away and lives lost,” he said during a break in his trek in Tatopani, a resort village near the Tibet border.
Chances are, it will happen again.
There are now thousands of such lakes transforming Himalayan foothills and waterways into extreme danger zones for some of the millions of people in seven countries abutting the massive mountain range.
I smell an analogy. Sent March 3:
As Himalayan glacial ice melts, Nepal’s mountain lakes are filling up faster than they can drain, making catastrophic flooding a certainty, and forcing the villagers living below to confront the dangerous reality of climate change every day. The choice they face is a devastating one: stay — and continue an imperiled existence, or go — and abandon their ancestral lands for an uprooted and uncertain future? It only adds to the irony that they have contributed absolutely nothing to the planetary accumulation of greenhouse gases that now threatens their lives and livelihoods.
But the Sherpas, unlike most citizens of the industrialized world, are acutely aware of their precarious position. Ultimately, of course, their plight is humanity’s dilemma in microcosm; all of us are confronting a danger far graver than any our species has faced in all recorded history. Whether it’s floods, storms, fires or droughts, the consequences of the burgeoning greenhouse effect are a Damoclean sword hanging over all our heads.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: denialists scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 7: Don’t Criticize Our Coffee; You May Be Old, Weak and Bitter Yourself Some Day.
I knew all that weird-ass weather was good for something. More on the “Everybody’s getting a clue” story, from the L.A. Times:
After several years of finding that fewer and fewer Americans believed in man-made climate change, pollsters are now finding that belief is on the uptick.
The newest study from the National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change, which is a biannual survey taken since fall 2008 and organized by the Brookings Institute, shows that 62% of Americans now believe that man-made climate change is occurring, and 26% do not. The others are unsure.
That is a significant rise in believers since a low in spring 2010, when only about 50% of Americans said they believed in global warming, but still down from when the survey first began, when it was at around 75%. The pollsters talked to 887 people across the country.
What’s caused the sudden rise? Mostly the weather.
“People, for good or for bad, are making connections in what they see in terms of weather and what they believe in terms of climate change,” said Christopher Borick, co-author of the survey. He is an associate professor of Political Science and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Pennsylvania. His co-author is Barry Rabe, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a professor at the University of Michigan.
So I wrote this and sent it on March 1:
Learning that more Americans accept the scientific factuality of global climate change is a problematic sort of good news — like watching a cherished friend start to realize that the warnings he’s receiving from his cardiologist are genuine.
Of course, recognizing the seriousness of a problem is a long way from actually doing something about it. Your old friend may have gotten a medical alert, but he’s still smoking two packs a day. Similarly, while Americans are waking up to the dangers of climate change, we’re a long way from changing the way we live.
Because our modern economy developed when energy was “cheap,” it was easier to consume than to conserve. Now that the true cost of all that fossil fuel is emerging, it’s clear that protecting ourselves from the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect is going to be expensive and inconvenient. Unless we consider the alternative.
Warren Senders
atheism Education environment Politics: belief systems media irresponsibility scientific consensus
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 6: Still I Look To Find A Reason…
According to a number of news reports, more Americans have stopped whacking the snooze button, as witness this, from the San Diego Union-Tribune:
The percentage of Americans who believe in global warming has rebounded to the highest level since the fall of 2009, according to a University of Michigan survey released Tuesday.
When the initial poll was done in the 2008, 72 percent of Americans said they believed there was solid evidence that average temperatures on Earth have been getting warmer over the past four decades.
The number fell to 65 percent in the fall of 2009 and tumbled to 58 percent a year later. But the most recent survey shows that in the fall of 2011, the number of climate-change believers rebounded to 62 percent.
A day earlier, the San Diego Regional Climate Education Partnership issued its own countywide survey on the same topic. It showed that the majority of San Diegans believe that:
• Gasoline engines and electricity generation emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (68 percent).
• Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a major cause of increased temperatures (54 percent).
• Worldwide annual temperatures between 1990 and 2010 have been the warmest in recorded history (55 percent).
The highest degree of specific concern (71 percent) was expressed for “future generations,” followed by “children” (69 percent) and “humanity” in general (65 percent) — what survey sponsors said indicated a strong connection between climate change impacts and people.
Good. I was getting bored with bashing Heartland Institute. Sent February 29:
Scientifically literate citizens are delighted to hear that more Americans are beginning to accept the ominous reality of global climate change. After all, you can’t fix a problem until you recognize that it exists. So a survey showing that almost two-thirds of Americans “believe in global warming” is good news — of a sort.
But before we break out the champagne, we should recognize that the greenhouse effect isn’t a philosophy, a theology, a credo, or a moral code; it’s as real as gravity — confirmed by experiment, observation and measurement — not something we can choose to “believe in” or not, but a fact. Extra CO2 in our atmosphere causes the greenhouse effect, which causes global warming, which in turn causes climate change. When politicians, pundits, and pollsters claim that science, like religion, is a matter of “belief,” it’s no surprise that public discussion of climate change has been so muddled and confused.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots Michael Mann Peter Gleick
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 5: Kill, Kill, Kill For Peace.
Time Magazine, on the war-on-science:
The climate war — the public opinion battle between skeptics of man-made global warming and those who believe in the scientific consensus — escalated to a new level of ferocity this past month. First a series of memos allegedly from the Heartland Institute — a libertarian think tank that has long supported climate skepticism — surfaced on the Internet, detailing the group’s previously anonymous corporate funding and outlining its plan to fight action on global warming. Then came the news last week that the Heartland memos had been fraudulently acquired by the environmental advocate and scientist Peter Gleick, who — after allegedly being sent an initial memo by a person he identified as a Heartland insider — impersonated as a Heartland board member via email in order to obtain several additional internal documents. Worse, Heartland now claims one of the memos was doctored — while nonetheless confirming that it plans to push global warming skepticism in the nation’s schools, opening up one more, very impressionable front in the seemingly endless climate war.
If there’s anyone who knows how nasty the climate fight can be, it’s Penn State climatologist Michael Mann. Mann, who has been involved with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for over a decade, gets regular death threats at his office. He’s been the target of a lengthy — and, critics say, politically motivated — investigation by the attorney general of Virginia. His private emails to colleagues have been hacked and published, and he’s become a major public target for Heartland and like-minded groups. “I guess over the years I’ve experienced quite a few adventures,” says Mann, who is about to publish book on his experiences, called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. “It’s given me not just a solid understanding of the problem of man-made climate change, but also the campaign — largely funded by the fossil fuel industry — to deny that science.”
They go on to talk more about Gleick. I’m very tired and this letter was interrupted by family stuff repeatedly during its composition….but I feel pretty good about it anyway. Sent February 28:
It’s very easy to deplore Peter Gleick’s ethical lapse. After all, even the MacArthur-winning climatologist himself agrees that impersonating a Heartland Institute employee in order to verify documents was a bad idea. And all over America and the world, pundits are chiming in that this misdemeanor will ruin the credibility of climate scientists everywhere.
Lost in the squabbling over Gleick’s actions is the fact that Heartland and similar organizations have worked for years to ruin the credibility of climate scientists everywhere. They have used ample sources of corporate funding to impugn the veracity of dedicated researchers and misrepresent a worldwide scientific consensus. Consider the consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect over the next century, and add to them the consequences of inaction today — a paralysis the Heartland Institute actively supports — and ask yourself: would you tell a lie to save a single life? A billion lives? A civilization?
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes denialists Heartland Institute idiots quacks
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 4: Goat Glands!
The Philadelphia Inquirer speaks sooth:
Recent revelations are highlighting the corrosive nature of our national dialogue about climate change.
Bloggers recently published what appear to be internal documents from the Heartland Institute, a group that has long sought to undermine public understanding of climate science. The documents detail the organization’s plan to introduce misleading information about climate change to science classrooms as part of a larger campaign to constrain the American response to the problem. And last week, a highly regarded climate scientist revealed that his frustration over continuing attacks on climate science led him to trick Heartland into sending him its documents.
Sadly, stolen documents and e-mails, opaque corporate financing of interest groups, and a simple lack of civility have come to define the public discourse on climate change.
There is a better way.
The truth is that the scientific community has reached a consensus on climate change. The buildup of heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels and clearing forests is changing the climate, posing significant risks to our well-being. Reducing emissions and preparing for unavoidable changes would greatly reduce those risks. That is the conclusion of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the world’s leading scientific societies, and the overwhelming majority of practicing climate scientists.
I’ve just been reading Pope Brock’s book on John Brinkley. Go ahead, read about him; I’ll wait. Sent February 27:
While fleecing the rubes is a long-standing American tradition, there’s a big difference between the Heartland Institute and old-fashioned con artists like “Doctor” John Brinkley, who crippled thousands and made millions selling “rejuvenation” treatments to the gullible and needy in the 1920s. Brinkley and others of his ilk peddled nostrums they knew to be spurious, and countless anxious individuals believed their lies.
While Heartland’s agenda is not so much about selling lies as it is about devaluing the truth, the charlatans and quacks who sold snake oil and goat glands would feel right at home with the Institute’s science-denying curriculum salesmen. Funded by corporate interests whose astronomical profit margins are threatened by any sort of regulatory action on climate change, this secretive conservative think tank distorts and denies the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, fostering public confusion and ignorance. And all for the basest of motives: money.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 3: Dumber-est-est-est…er.
The Washington Post wonders:
IS THE FIGHT against global warming hopeless? It can seem so. The long-term threat to the climate comes from carbon dioxide, which lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, locking in higher temperatures for generations. After decades of effort, only about one-tenth of America’s energy mix comes from renewable sources that don’t produce carbon dioxide.
But two policies can buy the world more time to allow carbon-free technologies to catch up. One is aimed at greenhouse substances that clear out of the atmosphere after a few years, months or even days. Cutting back the emission of soot and ozone gases such as methane would reduce the world’s warming by as much as a half degree Celsius over the next few decades, according to a study in last month’s Science. Adding hydrofluorocarbons — another class of short-lived pollutants — to the list would help even more to delay the approach of temperature thresholds beyond which global warming could be catastrophic.
Reducing these emissions is relatively cheap, especially when the benefits to health are factored in. For example, primitive cooking stoves in developing countries produce much of the world’s soot; using more efficient ones would prevent perhaps millions of deaths from respiratory illness. Methane, meanwhile, is the primary component of natural gas — a commodity that pipeline or coal-mine operators could sell if they kept it from escaping into the atmosphere. Researchers have even concluded that global crop yields would rise.
Global warming will be easy to conquer, compared to stupidity, against which the gods themselves contend in vain. Sent February 26:
While the struggle against runaway planetary warming is not completely hopeless, the outlook for the next few centuries can seem pretty bleak. The unifying thread in climatologists’ forecasts of the likely impact of climate change has been that they’re far too conservative; virtually without exception the environmental consequences have been worse, and earlier, than predicted. It’s hard to look at the accumulated evidence and remain cheerful — unless, of course, you’re a climate-change denialist, in which case all that extreme weather everywhere around the globe is proof of a giant conspiracy to bring about a New World Order (don’t forget compulsory re-education camps for SUV owners!).
It’s an unfortunate irony that those conspiracy theorists are the ones stymieing the revamped energy economy and upgraded infrastructure that would bring hope to the fight. The ignorance of climate-change deniers may be blissful, but it carries grave consequences for the rest of us.
Warren Senders
Education environment: denialists Heartland Institute idiots Peter Gleick
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 2: One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other
The Hudson Valley Media Group runs a piece from the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch with the title, “Heartland Institute: Not a think tank, just in the tank.”
Oh, my, yes:
The purported Heartland Institute internal documents leaked to media outlets last week were not exactly revelatory.
Collectively, the 100 or so pages describe an advocacy group going about the business of pushing its agenda and raising money to help it do so. Chicago-based Heartland has been doing that since it was created in 1984 “to discover, develop and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems,” according to its current mission statement.
Still, the leak and Heartland’s response to it are useful reminders to anyone seeking hard information about controversial issues: Words such as “institute,” “center” and “council” in an organization’s name do not necessarily signal impartial inquiry or dispassionate investigation. Any organization can call itself a “think tank,” but sometimes spin is just spin.
When the documents first appeared on the Internet last week, Heartland quickly confirmed that some of its materials had been “stolen.” On Wednesday, Heartland declared one two-page memo to be an outright fake but said the rest of the material had not yet been reviewed to see if anything had been altered.
By Thursday, Heartland chief executive Joseph Bast wrote in a blog post that the organization still didn’t know if any documents had been modified. And in a letter sent Saturday to some Internet sites that had posted the documents, Heartland’s general counsel said the group still was investigating whether the documents had been altered.
Authenticating the documents isn’t that difficult. Heartland created and possesses the originals, after all. If it could discredit them, it would.
The first comment triggered this letter, which was sent off on February 25:
When confronted with Heartland Institute’s plans to disseminate climate-science denialist curricula, conservatives quickly invoke the “climategate” emails. The disagreements over statistical methods between scientists at the University of East Anglia are somehow equated to a heavily funded anti-science program affecting public schools nationwide, presumably because both involved documents obtained outside normal channels.
Well, no.
Three separate independent inquiries completely exonerated the UEA scientists, and other climatologists all over the world support their conclusions. The hackers who obtained the “climategate” emails have never revealed themselves, let alone apologized.
Conversely, the Heartland Institute’s climate-change denial curricula are produced by someone with no training in the field. While Heartland’s position is disputed by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, their work is supported by corporations hoping to protect their profitability by delaying environmental regulation. The lone individual who obtained the Heartland documents almost immediately identified himself.
The two cases are emphatically not equivalent.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists Heartland Institute Peter Gleick
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Year 3, Month 3, Day 1: Remixed.
The Silicon Valley Mercury-News, on Gleick:
For the past two decades, Peter Gleick has earned a reputation as a nationally known expert on water and climate issues, winning a MacArthur “genius award,” penning a long list of scientific articles and testifying before Congress.
But over the past two days, the 55-year-old Berkeley resident has found himself at the center of a national maelstrom of his own making: using a false name to obtain confidential documents from a pro-industry think tank known for minimizing the risks of global warming.
The issue has riveted the environmental community and the energy industry, raising questions about whether the damage will extend past Gleick’s reputation and harm scientists’ efforts to convince the public that climate change is real and largely caused by humans.
Gleick, president of the nonprofit Pacific Institute, in Oakland, wasn’t talking Tuesday.
But Monday, he stunned the scientific community when he admitted — via his blog in the Huffington Post — that he obtained confidential fundraising and strategy documents from the libertarian Heartland Institute in Chicago by using someone else’s name, and distributed them on the Internet.
Heartland/Gleick — the gift that keeps on giving. Sent February 24 (putting me six days ahead of the game):
Yes, Dr. Peter Gleick was naughty. Misrepresenting himself to the Heartland Institute in order to verify the provenance of some documents was indeed an ethical lapse — but when measured against the wholesale mendacity of Heartland’s climate-change denialist curricula, Gleick’s offense is about as serious as a parking ticket.
But unlike Gleick, Heartland Institute didn’t have an “ethical lapse.” You can’t lose what you don’t have, and all the evidence suggests that this secretive right-wing think tank never had any ethics in the first place.
Misrepresenting the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change is bad enough when it’s done in politics and the media, for it fosters inaction in the face of a serious (and steadily worsening) global threat. But misrepresenting climate science in our nation’s classrooms is a form of intellectual child abuse; a gross violation of the public trust; a lie so big it beggars the imagination.
Warren Senders