Running Gamak: Warren Senders' Blog

Year 4, Month 4, Day 6: I’m Not The Only One

Elisabeth Rosenthal has an excellent piece in the NYT on our visions for a future energy economy:

WE will need fossil fuels like oil and gas for the foreseeable future. So there’s really little choice (sigh). We have to press ahead with fracking for natural gas. We must approve the Keystone XL pipeline to get Canadian oil.

This mantra, repeated on TV ads and in political debates, is punctuated with a tinge of inevitability and regret. But, increasingly, scientific research and the experience of other countries should prompt us to ask: To what extent will we really “need” fossil fuel in the years to come? To what extent is it a choice?

As renewable energy gets cheaper and machines and buildings become more energy efficient, a number of countries that two decades ago ran on a fuel mix much like America’s are successfully dialing down their fossil fuel habits. Thirteen countries got more than 30 percent of their electricity from renewable energy in 2011, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, and many are aiming still higher.

Could we? Should we?

Waxing epistemological here for a minute. March 24:

Resistance to social and technological advances is always rooted in a poverty of imagination. American conservatism’s failure to entertain hypotheticals ensures that their anticipated futures are merely copies of the past — thinking vividly on display in our political and media culture as the necessity of shifting rapidly away from fossil fuels becomes obvious in the light of the climate crisis.

Actually, two mutually reinforcing failures of imagination are at work here. On one hand, the resistance to renewable energy sources, while partly explained by the undeniable cupidity of corporate interests, is at its core a refusal to allow any alternative to the approved vision of a future energy economy. On the other hand is the incapacity to imagine the terrifying realities of the present moment, in which a runaway greenhouse effect is dessicating farmlands, breaking the Arctic, and casting in doubt the future of our civilization and our species.

Warren Senders

Year 4, Month 1, Day 4: Because The Wind Is High…

The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel thinks there is No Denying Climate Change:

Earth is growing warmer; the records prove that. Some still doubt human activity has anything to do with it, but it’s past time for the rest of us to face reality.

We need, first, good leadership. The United States should provide it, as it has repeatedly promised but failed to do. And Florida should be a leader among the states, because it is among those most threatened with ecological problems and rising sea levels.

Tallahassee should take its cues from South Florida, where local governments have long recognized the dangers associated with climate change. Raising seawall heights, moving drinking-water wellfields farther inland and imposing tougher development regulations for particularly vulnerable areas — ideas once unthinkable — are now part of a regional climate-change plan designed to help local communities address a changing environment.

While the flooding and saltwater intrusion now seen in South Florida occur regularly, far more devastating effects are happening in other parts of the world. According to the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a 20-nation consortium of developing countries, failure to act will result in about 100 million deaths worldwide by 2030 from mega-droughts, floods, disease, crop failure and major water shortages. The forum puts the economic costs of climate change at $1.2 trillion a year now, and says it will double by 2030. Some nations could lose 11 percent of GDP. Oxfam, an anti-poverty group, puts potential agricultural and fishery losses alone at $500 billion a year by 2030.

Skeptics may pooh-pooh the climate forum’s report as commissioned by those nations most at risk, which makes them most in need of help. But its findings are consistent with those from the world’s most important climate-change organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

A generic let’s-get-our-shit-together-soon letter, sent December 29:

There would be no significant climate change denial in America were it not for the egregious irresponsibility of our news media and their financial co-conspirators. Over the past several decades, conservative “think tanks” heavily funded by the oil and coal industries have created a denialist cottage industry, supplying our broadcast and print media with authoritative pundits whose voices have stridently rejected the findings of climate scientists in favor of the convenience of continued consumption (which, by an odd coincidence, result in the highest corporate profit margins in history).

While geographical serendipity has kept the US off the “front lines” of our rapidly transforming climate for years, 2012′s massive storms and devastating droughts make it clear that we can no longer avoid the impacts of our century-long fossil-fuel binge. A drastically warming Earth is inevitable, but acknowledging climatic reality now may make a profound difference to the lives of our descendants.

Warren Senders

Year 3, Month 11, Day 9: Fair And Balanced: 50% Truth, 50% Lies

The Arizona Daily Star reprints Eugene Robinson’s column from the Washington Post, in which he wonders:

We’ve had two once-in-a-century storms within the span of a decade. Hurricane Sandy seems likely to be the second-costliest storm in U.S. history, behind Hurricane Katrina. Lower Manhattan is struggling to recover from an unprecedented flood and the New Jersey coast is smashed beyond recognition.

Will we finally get the message?

How, at this point, can anyone deny the scientific consensus about climate change? The traditional dodge – that no one weather event can definitively be attributed to global warming – doesn’t work anymore. If something looks, walks and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Especially if the waterfowl in question is floating through your living room.

For decades now, researchers have been telling us that one of the effects of climate change would be to make the weather more volatile and violent. Well, here we are.

And here we will remain, perhaps for the rest of our lives. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began burning fossil fuels in earnest, the concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by an incredible 40 percent. We have altered the composition of the air.

Rupert Murdoch has a lot to answer for. He’s not the only one, but he’s a biggie on the list of climate criminals. Sent November 3:

Hurricane Sandy’s devastation has indeed brought the metastasizing greenhouse effect back in the national spotlight. But is our chronically distracted American media up to the challenge of addressing a long-term issue fraught with compounded interdependencies and complex variables? Because this country’s politicians are for the most part creatures of the media, taking their cues from the opinions of well-paid professional pundits, this is a crucial question.

Any scientist who’s experienced media coverage of his or her work can attest that the standard of scientific literacy in our print and broadcast media is shockingly low. Statistics are misunderstood, misrepresented and misreported; tentative conclusions are broadcast as breathless fact; robust correlations are dismissed; false equivalencies are rampant.

Can an accelerating planetary crisis motivate our news establishment to handle climate change with higher standards of reportorial accuracy and integrity? Far beyond Tuesday’s election, this is the crucial question of our time.

Warren Senders

Year 3, Month 11, Day 6: Because…Freedom!

The Erie Times-News is one of a number of papers featuring this article about the scientific perspective on our recent FrankenStorm:

WASHINGTON — Climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer stood along the Hudson River and watched his research come to life as Hurricane Sandy blew through New York.

Just eight months earlier, the Princeton University professor reported that what used to be once-in-a-century devastating floods in New York City would soon happen every three to 20 years. He blamed global warming for pushing up sea levels and changing hurricane patterns.

New York “is now highly vulnerable to extreme hurricane-surge flooding,” he wrote.

For more than a dozen years, Oppenheimer and other climate scientists have been warning about the risk for big storms and serious flooding in New York.

Still, they say it’s unfair to blame climate change for Sandy and the destruction it left behind. They cautioned that they cannot yet conclusively link a single storm to global warming, and any connection is not as clear and simple as environmental activists might contend.

It would be a good thing to learn about systemic causation. Sent October 31:

When it comes to climate change and the increasing likelihood of catastrophic storms like Hurricane Sandy, we need a new way of discussing causation. It is absurd to say that global warming “caused” Sandy — but it’s also absurd to say that a particular cigarette “caused” a case of lung cancer. There are direct causes (the baseball that caused your broken window), and there are “systemic” causes, which are no less real for being harder to isolate. The relationship between smoking and lung cancer is one example of systemic causation, as is that between drunk driving and auto accidents, and that between increased atmospheric CO2 and the likelihood of extreme weather.

While precise scientific language won’t allow responsible climatologists to claim direct causation, hardly any doubt that global heating systemically causes events like Hurricane Sandy.

Here’s another example of systemic causation: the relationship between statistical ignorance and climate-change denialism.

Warren Senders

Year 3, Month 10, Day 23: As Dry As An Elephant’s Sigh…

The San Antonio Express-News notes that there is a developing problem out there in flyover country:

WASHINGTON — Joe Waldman is saying goodbye to corn after yet another hot, dry summer convinced him that rainfall won’t be there when he needs it anymore.

“I finally just said uncle,” said Waldman, 52, surveying his stunted crop about 100 miles north of Dodge City, Kansas.

Instead, he will expand sorghum, which requires less rain; let some fields remain fallow; and restrict corn to irrigated fields.

While farmers nationwide planted the most corn this year since 1937, growers in Kansas sowed the fewest acres in three years, instead turning to less-thirsty crops such as wheat, sorghum and even triticale, a wheat-rye mix popular in Poland.

Meanwhile, corn acreage in Manitoba, a Canadian province about 700 miles north of Kansas, has nearly doubled over the past decade because of weather changes and higher prices.

Shifts such as these reflect a view among food producers that this summer’s drought in the United States, the worst in half a century, isn’t a random disaster. It’s a glimpse of a future altered by climate change that will affect worldwide production.

But we don’t need to do anything, because Al Gore is fat. And besides, FREEDOM! Sent October 16:

Scientists have estimated that for each 1 degree Celsius increase in global temperature, we’ll experience a 10 percent drop in agricultural productivity. International climate conferences have produced position papers and draft agreements predicated on a 2-degree rise, but this number is already looking absurdly low; experts warn that we’re on track for triple that by the end of the century.

Aside from drastically boosting the number of storms and extreme weather events, such a temperature increase will cripple agriculture throughout the world. Are we ready for the food shortages and refugee crises that inevitably follow crop failures? When these geopolitical and environmental pressures collide with the American conservative strategy of politicized ignorance and obstruction, horrifying results are guaranteed.

Deny-and-delay ceases to be effective political strategy when millions of human lives hang in the balance. We must address the climate catastrophe before it forces us into what biologists coyly call an “evolutionary bottleneck.”

Warren Senders

Year 3, Month 10, Day 13: Fever!

Charlie Pierce normally writes about politics for Esquire, but he noticed that Hantavirus was showing up in a place it wasn’t expected. You should read the whole piece:

Just to get your weekend off to a happy start, there seems to be an outbreak of the hantavirus in Yosemite, and folks aren’t entirely sure that it will stay there, or that it will be the only little biological horror to visit these shores.

Sent October 6:

The news that climate change has triggered outbreaks of Hantavirus in Yosemite National Park should surprise no one; it is common epidemiological knowledge that a major illness brings minor ones in its wake. The metastasizing greenhouse effect is such an illness, crippling the planetary “immune system” that has allowed both an effulgent biodiversity and a richly complex human civilization to flourish over the past few tens of thousands of years.

Look around carefully and you’ll find similar “sicknesses” at different levels of scale throughout Earth’s interdependent ecologies. Whether it’s acidified oceans, beetle-infested forests, tropical diseases in New England, droughts in Iowa, floods in Pakistan, or methane bubbling from the surface of the Arctic ocean, these manifestations of a grave underlying condition can no longer be denied or ignored.

The widespread rejection of scientific reality in American society is a symptom of another sort, for major illness is often accompanied by cognitive impairment and disorientation. Is not the climate-change denial pervading our media and politics just such a systemic delirium?

Warren Senders

Year 3, Month 8, Day 14: The Horns Of A Dilemma

The Coshocton Tribune (Arkansas) runs a column by Gene Lyons, noting that while humans may still be pretty clueless, cows have it all figured out:

Of all the ways nature has to kill you, drought might be the cruelest. The desiccation proceeds day after punishing day. The afternoon sun pounds the earth like a brazen hammer. As I write, the temperature here in Perry County, Ark., has reached 108 degrees.

The countryside is dying. There’s nothing green in my pastures except inedible weeds. Even pigweed is drooping. Our pond dried up six weeks ago. The ground beneath is bare and cracked. Up on the ridge, some hardwoods are shedding leaves and going dormant; oaks are simply dying.

When I’d turned my cows into their new pasture last year, they kicked up their heels and frolicked like calves. So much fresh grass! Last week, they tore down a low-hanging limb from the persimmon tree they rest under most afternoons. They herded in and stripped the leathery leaves within an hour, the first green thing they’d eaten in weeks.

Lucky cows. Mine is basically a hobby farm, so I can afford to keep my small herd intact. Because spring came a month early, I had enough hay left over to see them through the summer. Neighbors who operate close to the margin have hauled thousands of cows to the sale barn — animals they’d planned on breeding. Pastures stand barren and empty throughout the region.

I don’t know about Buddha nature, but they’re smart enough to come in out of the drought. Sent August 3:

When the vast majority of people are totally disconnected from the food they eat, it’s unsurprising that many still can’t find a reason for concern about global climate change. After all, milk and corn both come from the supermarket, right? Eventually, of course, the reality will start hitting home; once our grocery bills go up to reflect the destructive droughts and heatwaves that have devastated American agriculture, we’ll have no choice but to acknowledge that the consequences of a century’s consumption of fossil fuels may well include an end to the abundance we have long taken for granted.

Or will we? We shouldn’t underestimate the strength of denial. The corporations whose profits hinge on our continued use of fossil fuels are working hard with a complaisant news media to ensure that Americans and their elected representatives never learn what a herd of cows already know: climate change is real.

Warren Senders

Year 3, Month 8, Day 13: Coming Up: More On That Runaway Squirrel Story!

The Santa Cruz Sentinel (CA) regrets that the public is so uninterested in the problem:

Maybe the lack of substance in the presidential campaign reflects a perception by President Barack Obama and Republican erstwhile nominee Mitt Romney that voters aren’t really that plugged in.

If so, that would explain why issues such as climate change seem lost in the ether as the candidates seem content to trade daily attacks.

An illustration: Despite years of gloomy prognostications by scientists and California’s efforts to get out in front on global warming, most people in this state know absolutely nothing about the controversial cap-and-trade program, which is due to be rolled out in November, the same month as the presidential election.

According to new polling by the Public Policy Institute of California, 57 percent of likely voters say they haven’t heard anything about the program, in which the state will be auctioning off emissions permits. Cap and trade is a central part of California’s AB32, signed into law by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. AB32 sets limits on companies’ greenhouse gas emissions, while allowing non-polluters to sell permits to companies that exceed the new limits.

The state will get money from these auctions — with estimates as high as $1 billion annually. Gov. Jerry Brown is already eyeing this revenue to help pay for another controversial project — high speed rail, which might explain why two of three Californians say they have little or no confidence the state will spend the auction money wisely.

Yadda yadda yadda. Sent August 2:

Our species’ survival is absolutely the most important issue of the century — indeed, the most important issue in our entire history on the planet. Right? Right. When surveys show that citizens aren’t that worried about climate change, our media reliably poses the same old question: why not?

The answer is pretty simple: because that same media has for years been hewing to an irresponsible approach that “balances” every genuinely worried climatologist with a petroleum-funded denialist — thus presenting “both sides of the argument.” Our politicians take their cues from the media, so it’s hardly surprising that all but a few of our elected representatives won’t spend any more time on climate change than they have to.

If we want more people to be concerned about this very genuine and very terrifying threat, it is incumbent on our news media to inform them about it without equivocation or false equivalency.

Warren Senders

Published

Year 3, Month 8, Day 9: Evolutionary Koch-Bottleneck Edition…

The New York Times prints Richard Muller’s acknowledgement that everybody else was right all along:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

He’ll disappear down the memory hole. Or will he? Sent July 29:

Now that Richard Muller’s examination of the data has brought him into agreement with the majority opinion that climate change is of human origin, one wonders how the Koch brothers, who funded much of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, will respond. While Dr. Muller is now nicely aligned with the climatological consensus of the 1990s, if the Kochs’ position simply joined the twentieth century, it would be a major advance.

Those notorious global warming denialists will probably shift their opinions from denialism to adaptationism, following the lead of Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, who recently acknowledged the reality of climate change while blithely asserting that humanity will “adapt,” an ominous euphemism for gigadeaths. While our species will surely change in response to climatic transformations, the question is whether these fossil fuel profiteers will help our civilization avoid catastrophe if it negatively impacts their quarterly returns. The available evidence isn’t encouraging.

Warren Senders

Year 3, Month 7, Day 29: (Facepalm)

The Greenville Online (NC) notes that young conservatives are sad:

On the Facebook page for the group Young Evangelicals for Climate Change, there’s a classic satirical “LOLchart,” except in this case the numbers are real.

A map of the United States is supposed to be colored blue wherever temperatures have been cooler than normal, and orange wherever they’ve been warmer than usual.

It’s a useless distinction, because the entire map is orange — June capped the country’s warmest 12 months on record.

This, of course, doesn’t itself prove that humans have provoked profound global climate change, and in the political football that often erupts over the subject, the skeptics tend to discount such maps, while believers note them with alarm.

Some younger conservatives, however, have grown increasingly uneasy with the presumption that they hew to the skeptical line of the Republican Party, and some evangelicals in particular are looking for ways to embrace the science and steward the planet.

As far as political representation goes, they’re mostly on their own.

What happens, in Paul Greene’s observation, is that many of the loudest voices drawing a bead on climate change come off as world-is-crumbling alarmists, which is a turn-off to many conservatives.

What’s missing is the calmer, conservative voice of reason. Some Republicans have tried it, but without much success: Voters hear a leftist/screaming/Al Gore point of view, he says.

For Greene, an attorney, former intern for a Republican congressman and board member for TreesGreenville, the party’s sprint to the right is exasperating.

“That hasn’t made me vote Democratic yet, but that certainly isn’t pushing the electoral options into my worldview,” Greene said.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Grow up, why don’cha? Sent July 18:

As global warming intensifies and America bakes under anomalous heat waves, young conservatives who are paying attention to environmental issues will need to reject the stereotypes exemplified in Paul Greene’s pat dismissal of a “leftist/screaming/Al Gore point of view.” Given that scientists’ predictions of climate change have generally erred by underestimating the likely extent of the problem, those so-called “climate alarmists” are rapidly emerging as the people who had it right all along.

Al Gore is an American politician with enough understanding of basic science to recognize that the country he loves is in for a world of hurt as the greenhouse effect intensifies, and enough sense of responsibility to take the initiative and do something about it. It wasn’t environmental activists who cast the former VP as a “screaming leftist”, but right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, who’s as wrong on climate as he is on countless other issues.

Warren Senders