Running Gamak: Warren Senders' Blog

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

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

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

Published.

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

Published.

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

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.

Published.

Year 4, Month 5, Day 17: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

Radical economist Winona LaDuke, in the Duluth News-Tribune:

The problems facing our nation can’t be solved in Washington, D.C., said Winona LaDuke, economist, author and two-time vice presidential candidate for the Green Party. The solution starts at home.

“You’re either at the table or on the menu,” LaDuke, a member of the White Earth band of Ojibwe, said in a speech Thursday at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.

She focused on three main issues: climate change, extreme energy addiction and the rising cost to transport food.

“I’d really like to get people to hang around another thousand years,” LaDuke said. “And so the question is how are we going to do that?”

People today have two paths in front of them, one well-worn and scorched, the other green and less traveled.

“We’re the ones who can keep them from putting a mine in … our watershed, which is the wrong thing to do,” she said. “We’re the ones that can keep them from combusting the planet to oblivion. We’re the ones that can keep them from changing the direction of any more rivers or blowing off the top of mountains, yeah. Or genetically engineering the world’s food chain … what a great spiritual opportunity that is, to be those people, to do the right thing.”

I like Winona LaDuke; I think she’d probably agree with the gist of this letter. May 4:

It’s indisputable that the struggle to address global heating and its devastating consequences must be waged on the home front, and Winona LaDuke is correct in her assertion that for the most part, useful approaches to the climate crisis will probably not emerge from Washington, DC. But this simplistic formulation ignores the role that our notoriously dysfunctional Congress plays in making it exponentially more difficult for individual, local, and regional solutions to develop and flourish.

When Republican Representatives and Senators demonize science and block even the most eminently sensible legislation for patently political motivations, this sets them in opposition to the American people’s natural impulse to action and innovation. When conservative media downplay the danger of climate change and instead assert bizarre conspiracy theories, they corrupt the national conversation and make it harder for ordinary citizens to stay well-informed about the grave threat posed by a runaway greenhouse effect.

Warren Senders

Published.

Year 4, Month 5, Day 14: An Inconvenient Tooth

The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot (VA) reports on what a bunch of shrill tree-hugging hippies had to say:

A panel of speakers laid out a grim scenario for Hampton Roads’ future Monday night, predicting devastating effects if the region fails to adapt to escalating climate change.

It is a scenario that is particularly troubling to the Navy because of its enormous footprint in the area, said Rear Adm. Philip Hart Cullom, deputy chief of naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics.

Cullom was one of five speakers at a town hall meeting at Nauticus organized by Operation Free, a national coalition of veterans and security experts that portrays climate change as a threat to national security.

“We have to figure out how we’re going to adapt,” Cullom said. “There are good futures. There are bad futures. It depends on what path we choose.”

Hampton Roads is threatened by rising sea level, increased flooding and more frequent natural disasters, said Joe Bouchard, a retired Navy captain and a former commanding officer of Norfolk Naval Station.

Taking another opportunity to mock Teapublicans. May 2:

If Virginia wants to prepare for the rising seas and increasingly severe weather that is certain to accompany Earth’s climbing atmospheric temperatures, the state’s politicians must recognize that they cannot legislate climate change out of existence. All over America, Republican lawmakers have declared open hostility to scientific method, in which hypotheses are tested, experiments analyzed, and false results rejected. Instead, these legislators have chosen to exalt a kind of politicized wishful thinking, in which inconvenient facts are either erased from the record or not allowed in the first place. South Carolina’s recently enacted law requiring the use inaccurate projections of sea-level rise is one of many examples.

When it comes to climate, ideology trumps reality in the minds of conservative politicians. This is the worst sort of magical thinking, endangering the lives and livelihoods of millions of people through deliberate and cynical pandering to the forces of ignorance and denial.

Warren Senders

Year 4, Month 5, Day 11: Headless Body In Topless Bar

The Denver Post runs an AP story on the Human Interest angle:

MANTOLOKING, n.j. — The 9-year-old girl who got New Jersey’s tough-guy governor to shed a tear as he comforted her after her home was destroyed is bummed because she now lives far from her best friend and has nowhere to hang her One Direction posters.

A New Jersey woman whose home was overtaken by mold still cries when she drives through the area. A New York City man whose home burned can’t wait to build a new one.

Six months after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Jersey shore and New York City and pounded coastal areas of New England, the region is dealing with a slow and frustrating recovery.

Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. Housing, business, tourism and coastal protection remain major issues with the summer vacation — and hurricane — seasons almost here.

“Some families and some lives have come back together quickly and well, and some people are up and running almost as if nothing ever happened, and for them it’s been fine,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a news conference Thursday. “Some people are still very much in the midst of recovery. You still have people in hotel rooms, you still have people doubled up, you still have people fighting with insurance companies, and for them it’s been terrible and horrendous.”

Getting your life destroyed has gotta suck big time. April 29:

People will still be reeling from the devastation of Superstorm Sandy for years to come. Losing a home, a business, or a cherished community to the impersonal forces of extreme weather can’t be healed with an insurance payment or a renovation plan. As we rebuild, let us recognize that as climate change intensifies, so too will the number of dislocated and traumatized individuals and families. The future will bring even more sad and disturbing stories as the consequences of our planetary greenhouse emergency make themselves felt, not just on our storm-battered coastlines, but in forests turned to tinder by invasive insect pests, in shrinking and algae-choked lakes, and in the drought-cracked farmlands whose yields once fed millions.

State and federal governments must develop and implement reality-based climate and energy policies, including initiatives to end our dependence on the fossil fuels that started the problem in the first place, infrastructure projects to mitigate the climate change that’s already inevitable, and, finally, humanitarian programs to ensure that those whose lives are shattered can again be part of a vibrant and generous civil society.

Warren Senders

Year 4, Month 5, Day 4: Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries

The San Angelo Standard-Times runs a column by one Bonnie Erbe, purporting to offer good news:

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Finally, there’s some good news on reducing climate change, which is great news as far as I’m concerned.

I’m a climate skeptic. It’s not that I’m skeptical about the existence of climate change, but I’m extremely skeptical about mankind’s collective willingness to do anything about it in a timely manner.

Late last year, the Global Carbon Project issued a report showing global emissions of carbon dioxide rose to record levels in 2011 and were on track to rise even higher in 2012. Carbon dioxide is produced most often by the burning of coal, the largest global source of energy used to generate electricity.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes glaciers and ice sheets to melt and warming oceans to expand. But a new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Scripps Institution for Oceanography, and Climate Central shows that by limiting four other pollutants that might be easier to control, scientists can make significant progress toward stemming rising sea levels.

For a host of reasons, international policy makers have been unable to agree on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide or CO2, the main greenhouse gas created by human activity. The new study shows that by limiting emissions of four substances — methane, soot, refrigerants and gases that lead to the formation of ground-level ozone — progress could still be made, possibly even more quickly.

Ignoring the elephant in the room, as always. April 22:

As the planetary greenhouse effect accelerates, making catastrophic climate change all but inevitable, any good news is welcome. Certainly, regulating and reducing our emissions of four other pollutants can help slow our headlong rush to disaster, although this cannot be a substitute for the real work of eliminating fossil fuels from our energy economy — ultimately the only approach to a meaningful and lasting solution to the climate crisis.

But it’s disingenuous to assert that there is a “host of reasons” for the world community’s failure to make this happen. Ultimately, there is only one reason: money. Big oil and coal corporations reap huge profits from processing and selling the fossilized solar energy of the Carboniferous Era, but they can’t make similar margins from sunlight when it’s fresh. The sums involved are staggeringly huge; buying a few politicians or a few governments is cost-effective for these corporate malefactors, if it can delay a global shift to renewables for even a few more years.

Warren Senders