When Did You Leave Heaven?
Big Bill Broonzy sings sooooo beautifully. Enjoy his careful phrasing and subtle guitar accompaniment on this film clip from “Low Lights and Blue Smoke.”
And on these songs, from the film “A Musical Journey: The Films of Pete, Toshi and Dan Seeger.”
Pete Seeger: “This is the last time Big Bill Broonzy ever sang. The following day he got operated on for cancer, and he didn’t have a voice from then on. This was a little place called Circle Pines Camp in Western Michigan, and that’s his own guitar he’s playing, he brought it with him. He said to me, ‘Pete, you got that camera with you?’ I had told him I wanted to film him sometime. I said, ‘Yeah, I have it with me.’ He says, ‘Well, you better film me now, I’m going to go under the knife tomorrow.’ ”
Irrelevant aside: I was at an LRY conference at Circle Pines Camp in August of 1975. Amazing.
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 denialists idiots Republicans Richard Lindzen
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 9: Silver Bells Mounted On A String…
Hey, gang! Wanna meet an asshole? Here’s the Las Vegas Journal-Review’s Vin Suprynowicz. What a tool:
Too many “are still calling climate change a liberal hoax,” declared U.S. Sen. Harry Reid as he opened his fifth annual National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas on Aug. 7. “They falsely claim scientists are still debating whether carbon pollution is warming the planet.”
“This year alone, the United States has seen unparalleled extreme weather events – events scientists say are exactly what is expected as the Earth’s climate changes. The Midwest is experiencing its most crushing drought in more than half a century – or maybe ever. … Corn crops are withering and livestock are dying. …
“Our nation’s infrastructure is literally falling apart because it wasn’t designed to withstand these conditions,” Sen. Reid continued, just getting warmed up. “Runways are melting, trapping planes. Train tracks are bending, derailing subways. Highways are cracking, buckling and breaking open. … Yet despite having overwhelming evidence and public opinion on our side, deniers still exist, fueled and funded by dirty energy profits. These people aren’t just on the other side of this debate. They’re on the other side of reality.”
Good heavens. And I’ve even left out Harry’s chilling account of the monsoons of Bangladesh. Who ever heard of a monsoon hitting Bangladesh before?
“In the words of one respected climate scientist: ‘This is what global warming looks like,’ ” the senator reported. “Dozens of new reports from scientists around the globe link extreme weather to climate change.”
Responding to this rhetorical version of a Godzilla movie, Norman Rogers, Ph.D. in physics from the University of Hawaii, member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society, and senior policy adviser at the Heartland Institute, posted the following Friday:
“The advocates of global warming are beginning to have the classic doomsday cult problem. The Earth hasn’t been warming for 16 years, and that’s starting to get very embarrassing. The first adjustment to the dogma was to stop talking about global warming and start talking about climate change. The latest version of the party line is that we are going to have more extreme weather. The reality is that the weather is not any more variable or extreme than in the past. But with suitable fishing in the data, it is easy to make a case that this or that weather phenomenon has become more extreme.
“The scientist Richard Lindzen has pointed out that the extreme weather theme is inconsistent with the global warmers’ own theories,” Mr. Rogers continues. “The global warmers have long claimed that the poles will warm faster than the tropics. One of their key scary claims is that vast amounts of ice at the poles will melt and raise sea level. So, according to warmer theory, the temperature difference between the poles and the equator will lessen. But it is that very temperature difference that drives weather, particularly extreme weather. … So the warmers’ claims are fundamentally contradictory.”
(facepalm). Sent September 2, very early in the morning:
Skepticism FAIL.
The science, the source, and the threat of global climate change are very real, and Vin Suprynowicz’ op-ed mocking those who are justifiably concerned about climate change is a gold mine of half-, quarter-, and un-truths. One powerful “tell” is his reliance on Richard Lindzen — the only remaining climatologist of any repute who maintains a contrarian position on the issue, and also one of the only scientists still disputing the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Similarly, the analyses of Norman Rogers, Suprynowicz’ other cited authority, have been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked, as a few moments’ research will demonstrate.
Ridiculing the change in nomenclature from “global warming” to “climate change” as a sign of liberal desperation is another standard denialist argument, but nothing could be further from the truth. The term “climate change” was first proposed by Republican strategist Frank Luntz during the Bush administration — as a “less frightening” alternative to “global warming”. It’s a peculiar irony that Luntz’ attempt at deceiving the public is a more accurate way of describing the complex phenomena that so profoundly alarm scientists and environmentalists — perhaps one of the only times that Bush-speak told the truth.
Mr. Suprynowicz’ paper gets an F.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots indigenous cultures Republican obstructionism
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 8: It’s After The End Of The World. Don’t You Know That Yet?
Steve Stajich offers a caustic assessment of the GOP’s resistance to reality, in the Santa Monica Mirror (CA):
At some point years ago, an exhausted demonstrator warning of global warming probably set down his or her protest sign and sighed heavily, adding, “Those who think we’re kidding won’t believe us until they’re knee-deep in flood waters at their own picnic.”
CUT TO: Tampa, Florida. Exterior GOP Convention. Sign on door reads, “Monday is canceled because of violent weather caused by altered climate. The Oil and Coal Lobby Cocktail Hour will be moved to higher ground.”
For those in the GOP, or anywhere, who are still in denial about climate change and global warming I guess the next question is, “I’m sorry but what, exactly, will it take?”
Romney-Ryan (or as I’m starting to think of it, the Kraken…) believes that there is a jackpot of jobs waiting for unemployed Americans in the “development” of domestic energy supplies. Drill, baby, drill. Coal interests tout a “clean coal” that, so far, does not actually exist. “Energy security” trumps any concerns we might have that the weather we’re creating with our use of fossil fuels could ultimately destroy us… for $5 a gallon.
Go ahead. Have your armageddon; let’s just get it over with. Sent September 1:
While the customs of many indigenous peoples are far from infallible (tribal views on medicine, causality and gender are often spectacularly wrong), there’s one area where we post-industrial humans could learn a crucial lesson. The whole world over, traditional cultures recognize the close interdependent relationship between their own survival and the planetary ecosystems surrounding them — an awareness placing a higher priority on societal than individual survival. Our media-saturated culture, by contrast, offers only the fleeting thrills of the moment.
The climate crisis is a profound indictment of a cultural inability to think in the long term. Our political system offers us only Hobson’s choice: whether we select complete denial (the Republican option) or platitudes coupled with inaction (the Democratic approach) the end result is the same. The tribal wisdom reminding us to consider the next seven generations in our decision-making? Now buried beneath a mountain of titillating trash.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots Republicans
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 7: Rock And Roll Is Here To Stay
The Washington Post notices that the “GOP platform highlights the party’s abrupt shift on energy, climate”:
This language didn’t just come out of nowhere. At the time, a handful of prominent Republican politicians appeared genuinely interested in tackling climate change. Then-Senator John Warner (R-Va.) was co-sponsoring legislation to reduce the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions. On the presidential campaign trail, John McCain was talking up his cap-and-trade program that would put a price on carbon. (McCain, for his part, was one of the earliest members of Congress to endorse this idea.)
The 2008 GOP platform certainly didn’t agree with liberals and environmentalists on everything. Far from it. The document put a heavy emphasis on nuclear power, which tends to cause some green groups to bristle (although many Democrats softened their opposition to atomic energy in the years that followed, in a failed effort to woo conservatives on climate policy). The platform also had harsh words for “doomsday climate change scenarios” and “no-growth radicalism.” Yet the 2008 GOP platform was, essentially, taking part in a debate over how best to tackle greenhouse gases—not about whether the climate was changing at all.
Skip ahead to 2012, and the GOP platform takes a markedly different tone. That section devoted to climate change? Gone. Instead, the platform flatly opposes ”any and all cap and trade legislation” to curtail greenhouse gases. It demands that Congress “take quick action to prohibit the EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations.” It criticizes the Obama administration’s National Security Strategy for ”elevat[ing] ‘climate change’ to the level of a ‘severe threat’ equivalent to foreign aggression.” The platform even tosses in what appears to be a subtle swipe at climate scientists:
Moreover, the advance of science and technology advances environmentalism as well. Science allows us to weigh the costs and benefits of a policy so that we can prudently deal with our resources. This is especially important when the causes and long-range effects of a phenomenon are uncertain. We must restore scientific integrity to our public research institutions and remove political incentives from publicly funded research.
The language echoes an op-ed written by Paul Ryan in December of 2009, which accused climatologists of using “statistical tricks to distort their findings and intentionally mislead the public on the issue of climate change.” Ryan’s charges were untrue; a number of subsequent investigations into the leaked Climate Research Unit e-mails found no evidence of wrongdoing by the scientists involved. Nevertheless, the insistence that research institutions lack “scientific integrity” remains intact.
We just got one thing to say to you fuckin’ hippies.
Sent August 31:
It isn’t just Paul Ryan accusing climatologists of cherrypicking scientific data in order to increase their funding. Conservative politicians and media figures across the country level the same charges, evidence or no. It might be Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, James Inhofe, Michelle Bachmann, or dozens of other climate-change denialists — but the substance of the calumny is identical: scientists are guilty of manipulating the facts for personal and political gain.
And who better to make such assertions than the people who’ve made data-mining and math-massaging into a political art form? After all, Republicans ignored intelligence reports on Iraq’s non-involvement in 9/11 and started a war on utterly specious grounds, support photo ID laws to protect against nonexistent voter fraud, and claim tax cuts for the wealthy will rebuild our economy. Intellectual dishonesty is the preferred modus cogitandi for conservatives, who assume that everyone, including scientists, is as mendacious as they are.
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 Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists idiots Republicans sociopaths theocracy
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 5: Water, Water Everywhere…
Boston Magazine asks, “Why Does The GOP Still Ignore Climate Change?”
Heh:
With Hurricane Isaac hammering Louisiana with 80 mile-per-hour winds, you would think the Republican Party might pause to consider: “Hey, what’s with all this crazy weather?” New Orleans, after all, is just a short trip around the Gulf of Mexico from Tampa, where the GOP is holding their Republican National Convention. And it’s clear they’re aware that Isaac actually exists, since they shortened the convention from four days to three—not necessarily because Tampa was going to get hit, but just to avoid the “optics” of a big Republican party occurring while New Orleans floods. After all, George W. Bush didn’t avail himself too well during Katrina.
But instead of acknowledging the fact that climate change exists and is responsible for the increasing weather extremes—more hurricanes, more snowstorms, more tornadoes, more scorching-drought-filled summers—the Republicans continue to not just ignore climate change, but mock President Obama for being concerned about it. The only mention of climate change in the entire 2012 Republican Platform isn’t in the environmental/energy section, but in a critique of Obama’s national security strategy:
“The current Administration’s most recent National Security Strategy reflects the extreme elements in its liberal domestic coalition…the strategy subordinates our national security interests to environmental, energy, and international health issues, and elevates “climate change” to the level of a “severe threat” equivalent to foreign aggression.”
Boston Magazine didn’t tell me a word limit, and this one took me just below 250. Sent August 30:
Explaining why Republicans ignore the facts of climate change is impossible without understanding that there are several separate types of Republicans, each with their own reasons for rejecting the conclusions of the world’s scientists. Let’s look at them each in turn.
First: the Theocrats. Christian fundamentalists almost exclusively, politicians from this group reject all science for ideological reasons (although they’re happy enough to fly in airplanes, receive state-of-the-art medical treatment, and use contemporary technology). Climatology is conflated with evolution as a “secular religion” and denounced on these grounds. And since many of these folk eagerly anticipate the Book of Revelations’ promised Armageddon, the thought of a secular end-of-the-world triggered by CO2 emissions is an affront. Think Michelle Bachmann.
Second: the Corporatists. Owing allegiance entirely to the quarterly report, these politicians receive staggering sums of fossil fuel money, and do their masters’ bidding — delaying and blocking any action towards addressing climate change, which would necessarily reduce the profitability of Big Oil and Big Coal. Think Paul Ryan.
Third: the Bullies. These guys would walk ten miles in pouring rain to punch a hippie. They’re just in it because…well, I can recognize sociopaths even if I don’t understand them, and they congregate in today’s GOP. Think Mitt Romney.
Of course, some inhabit two or even three of these categories, making them even more dangerous. Think James Inhofe.
Of course, today’s Republican party doesn’t do all that much thinking — even as the world around them keeps getting hotter.
Warren Senders
environment music: benefit concert shakuhachi
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A Solo Shakuhachi Against Climate Change
Here is the complete May 19 set by Elizabeth Reian Bennett. It’s taken a long time to get this up…but it’s worth it.
Enjoy:
Honte Jyoshi / Shizu No Kyoki
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Oshu Sashi
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Six George Street Melodies
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Tsuki No Kyoku
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If you enjoy this music, please consider making a donation to www.350.org
India Indian music music vocalists: genius
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It really doesn’t…
…get any better than this.
A full-length performance of Kesarbai Kerkar singing Raga Malkauns.
Wow.
environment: corporate irresponsibility Koch Brothers Natural Gas Richard Muller sustainability
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Year 3, Month 9, Day 4: Naked Self-Interest Edition
Another Canadian paper, the Melfort Journal (where? Here.) runs a version of the David Suzuki article used for yesterday’s letter:
Faced with the evidence, many deniers have started to admit that global warming is real, but argue that humans have little or nothing to do with it. Muller’s study was just one of many to demolish that theory.
Our climate has always changed, and natural variation is part of that. But scientists have long known that carbon dioxide and other gases trap heat in the atmosphere. Recent warming is occurring at an unprecedented rate that corresponds to burning fossil fuels. According to NASA, global average temperatures have been rising significantly since the 1970s, “with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years.” North America just experienced the hottest July on record, and the first seven months of 2012 were the warmest, on average, in more than 100 years.
This evidence has caused some deniers to change their tune again. Yes, the Earth is warming, they say, but whether it’s from natural or human causes, we can’t do anything about it, so we might as well continue with business as usual, maybe employing technological fixes to help us adapt.
The truth is, as most of us know, that global warming is real and humans are major contributors, mainly because we wastefully burn fossil fuels. We also know solutions lie in energy conservation, shifting to renewable sources, and changing our patterns of energy and fuel use, for example, by improving public transit and moving away from personal vehicles.
Scientists have been warning about global warming for decades. It’s too late to stop it now, but we can lessen its severity and impacts. The side benefits are numerous: less pollution and environmental destruction, better human health, stronger and more diversified economies, and a likely reduction in global conflicts fuelled by the rapacious drive to exploit finite resources.
We can all work to reduce our individual impacts. But we must also convince our political and business leaders that it’s time to put people – especially our children, grandchildren, and generations yet to come – before profits.
I was glad enough that Muller changed his mind a bit, but he’s not being much help in the aftermath. Sent August 29:
Yes, Richard Muller, once a “skeptic,” is raising eyebrows among political conservatives with his recent conversion to the accepted consensus on global climate change. The erstwhile doubter finally laid his reservations to rest with his own Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study, confirming that the planet is warming significantly and that humans are responsible. But it’s still a good idea to keep adding a pinch of salt to Dr. Muller’s public statements, even as his research brings him in line with the climatological wisdom of the 1990s.
Muller’s enthusiastic advocacy of natural gas as an alternative energy source demonstrates that exceptional intellectual powers offer no protection from self-delusion. Natural gas is only cheap when you don’t count externalities like huge infrastructural costs for delivery and extraction technology, and the virtual certainty of groundwater contamination in the aftermath of the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) process. Once all these factors are accounted for, it’s neither cheap nor clean, contributing almost as much to greenhouse emissions as do oil and coal.
While it may displease the arch-conservative Koch brothers (Richard Muller’s sponsors), the truth is simple: to survive and prosper in the coming centuries, the world’s civilizations must shift as rapidly as possible to renewable sources of energy. There is no time left to waste.
Warren Senders