environment Politics: Cancun climatologists
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 28: A Race Between CO2 and Stupidity
The Observer (UK) runs a piece of shrill alarmism (that is to say, sober, accurate reporting on science). We need a lot more of this, and a lot less of the other. Note that I used British spellings on this one.
A rise of four degrees C within the next four or five decades is now all but assumed by climate scientists. But what we are likely to see at Cancun, despite the warnings of climatologists, is rhetorical posturing accompanying tiny incremental improvements in environmental policy. This disconnect between political exigency and the facts of the greenhouse effect spells tragedy for a huge percentage of the world’s population, who can expect to lose their homes, lands, hopes and lives as the seas rise and arable water supplies fail. If we are to avoid a climate catastrophe, our news media need to educate readers, listeners and viewers about the scientific reality of climate change. Otherwise, it is unlikely that the world’s wealthiest countries will manifest enlightened self-interest in time to redirect planetary resources towards the essential decarbonisation of our society and our atmosphere — and we will all be the losers thereby.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Cancun China European Union idiots Republicans U.S.A.
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 27: Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Mate!
The Sydney Morning Herald runs an article by Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Change, laying out the problems and prospects for any sort of agreement at Cancun. Grim.
Commissioner Hedegaard is correct in her analysis, however unfortunate its implications may be. Two of the world’s most significant greenhouse gas emitters are dragging their feet on a meaningful climate treaty. While China’s intransigence reasonably enough reflects its hopes of securing temporary economic advantages (a position it is well suited to exploit due to its recent expansion of investment in “green” energy resources), the United States’ paralysis is rooted in illogical political exigencies — the U.S. Republican party now considers it electorally fatal simply to acknowledge the existence of climate change, let alone consider doing something about it. The glorification of ignorance (and the dismissal of expertise) that began in earnest under Ronald Reagan has created a political party that is pathologically averse to facts and fact-based analysis. Schiller’s apothegm, “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain,” is well and truly applied to many members of America’s political culture.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Michael Moore
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 26: It’s “Buy Nothing Day”
Watched Moore’s interview with Wendell Potter. Realized once again that we need him. Thought I’d send him a letter.
Dear Mr. Moore,
I just finished watching your televised meeting with Mr. Wendell Potter. It is extraordinary how much is packed into your short encounter. Congratulations. You have enacted Gandhi’s dictum, “the objective is to bring your enemy not to his knees, but to his senses,” through your work as a documentarian.
But I’m not just writing a fan letter, here. I want to urge you to train your cinematic sights on the massive smear campaign waged against climatologists and climate science; it’s not just filmmakers that giant corporate interests would distract, discredit and destroy.
Climate change is the ultimate health care issue, and climate scientists are as close as we can come to planetary physicians. James Hansen, Michael Mann and countless others have reported clear and consistent findings for decades. Just as a cardiologist tells a coronary patient: change your habits or die, these scientists’ conclusions are unequivocal and their implications identical. And the campaign against their integrity and their message is eerily similar to that against you.
Climate change is also the ultimate capitalism issue. By overspending planetary environmental resources by a huge factor, the consumerist engine has become a self-destroying economic system that will cause massive tragedy as it goes down. Now that they’re “people,” giant corporations should be expected to understand that the long-term survival of our civilization, species and planet is essential to their own. Are they going to sacrifice all the rest of us to preserve their margins and bonuses?
Looks like it.
Thank you again for what you’ve done already to influence our world. If we make progress in building a government and a society that embodies genuine generosity and truthfulness, it will be in large part because of your efforts.
Please make a film on climate. Your voice could make a difference in this debate, and we (all of us) need all the help we can get.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment humor Personal Politics: hatemail POH
by Warren
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I’m Famous!
So back on November 12, I wrote a letter to the Newark Star-Ledger, pointing out Chris Christie’s utter idiocy when it came to the science of climate change.
They printed it, or at least ran it in their online edition.
What should appear in my mailbox a few days later but the following postcard:
I looked at the address side first, thinking, “WTF? I don’t know anyone in Dunellen, New Jersey, let alone someone named J. Alexander.” Then I turned it over.
My first hatemail.
Or is it?
As with POEs (Parodies of Evangelism), any sufficiently effective parody of hate mail will be indistinguishable from the real thing. What do you think? Is “Right-Wing Jim” spoofing Tea-party talk, or is he serious? I can’t decide.
environment Personal Politics: morale boost washington post
by Warren
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Heh.
The Washington Post prints my letter. Apparently my clever disguise worked!
If anyone in the DC area sees it in the paper, please let me know. I’d love to get a clipping.
environment Politics: United Nations
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 25: Curiouser and Curiouser
The Independent (UK) runs an article on the newly issued UN climate report. The comments are a huge pile of stupid.
When it comes to global climate change and the possibility of a genuinely robust treaty on carbon emissions, it is depressing to realize how hard we have to work to achieve — nothing. After months of international name-calling and internecine disputes, the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases seem locked in a Red Queen’s race in which any agreement will fall short of what is really needed. It’s easy to understand why; governments are set up to dampen the impulses of rapid change, since a society undergoing constant radical transformations would be difficult to live in. But climate change is different; what we hear from scientists is equivalent to a cardiologist’s unequivocal statement to a heart patient: change your habits immediately, or die. And from our climate negotiators? Denial and bargaining. Just as you can’t make a deal with coronary artery disease, there is no bargaining with the greenhouse effect.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama climate zombies
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 24: Climate Zombie Apocalypse Warning
Struggled to find an article to use as a hook for tomorrow’s letter. Finally gave up and wrote POTUS.
Dear President Obama,
As the 111th Congress enters its lame-duck phase, Republican legislators are already telling their supporters to expect hearings and inquiries. I imagine they’d probably subpoena your dog, Bo, if they could find a pretext.
It is folly to imagine that compromise is possible with this group of nihilists. While I applaud your bipartisan instincts, they are useless against the incoming GOP caucus.
There is no area in which a willingness to compromise is more dangerous than that of climate change. With “climate zombies” like Joe Barton, John Shimkus and Darryl Issa all eagerly anticipating opportunities to subject climate scientists to hostile questioning and intimidation, we can look forward to a profoundly depressing couple of years — years in which one climatic “tipping point” after another will come and go, leaving us as a nation and a species with fewer options for our survival.
There can be no “middle way” between species extinction and survival. The actions of the United States in the upcoming Cancun conference are of critical importance — and yet we hear over and over again that we shouldn’t expect too much.
My daughter will be six this coming January. She expects to live happily in a world filled with life and beauty. Is that too much?
These destructive, thoughtless, anti-science, anti-reality forces have declared war on you, and on all of us — please fight them with all the strength and resources you have. We are depending on you, and we’re getting pretty worried.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: assholes climate zombies idiots Michael Mann plagiarism
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 23: Surprise!
The 2006 report criticizing Michael Mann and his colleagues for methodological slip-ups was in large part plagiarized, reports USA Today.
Goodness. I’m shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
There are two important things to understand about the news that a 2006 report to Congress which fostered a Republican cottage industry of climate conspiracy theorizing was substantially plagiarized. Dan Vergano’s article correctly notes that plagiarized material in the report doesn’t necessarily invalidate its conclusion that the climate scientists whose work Dr. Wegman examined made methodological errors. But the corollary point is that such problems don’t necessarily invalidate the climatologists’ conclusions. Innumerable subsequent studies have validated their work; the world is indeed getting hotter exactly as Mann and his colleagues predicted. Not that this will make a difference to the “climate zombies” entering the House of Representatives, who are now poised to spend the next two years holding irrelevant hearing after irrelevant hearing, wasting the time of scientists who are struggling to address the most significant threat humanity has yet faced in its millennia of existence on this planet.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility corporations immigrants
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 22: Green Isn’t White
The LA Times reports on a poll which shows that immigrant groups are more likely than whites to be concerned about the environment.
It’s unsurprising that Latinos and Asians, among other statistical minorities, are more concerned about environmental destruction and the threats to the Earth than are whites. While these groups are more likely to be Democrats, that in itself is more a symptom than an explanation. Immigrant populations are by definition going to have more family and friends in other countries than those from groups that have been resident in the U.S. for generations. Consequently, they are far more likely to learn about environmental crimes committed outside our nation’s borders. Since many of those crimes are the responsibility of multinationals enabled by American legislative coddling, it’s natural for immigrants to be skeptical about the notion that pro-corporate environmental policies will actually benefit anyone other than the corporations themselves — a notion largely accepted by whites (despite mountains of evidence to the contrary), and actively touted by Republicans.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes climate zombie idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 21: Republicans Cause More Pollution Than Trees AND Automobiles
The Washington Post runs a column by former Republican congressman Sherwood Boehlert, decrying the outbreak of climate zombie-ism among the incoming GOP Congress.
Once these people are out of office, they show refreshing signs of independent thought and scientific awareness. Apparently, among Republicans, power stupidifies, and absolute power stupidifies absolutely. Or something.
Because the WaPo rules out letters that have been published online, I am going to make random changes to particular letters (replacing “s” with a dollar sign, for example). That may prevent them from finding this, should they deem it worthy of publication. After a few days have gone by, I’ll replace the text with the original, unaltered version.
$herw00d B0ehlert finds inc0mprehen$ible the 0b$tin@te @dherence t0 @ $cience-blind ide0l0gy 0n the p@rt 0f hi$ fell0w Republic@n$. Hi$ @ttempt to buck the prev@iling $entiment in the G0P i$ c0mmend@ble, f0r the f@ct$ 0f clim@te ch@nge @re inc0ntr0vertible @nd the thre@t it pre$ent$ i$ terrifyingly re@l. B0ehlert cite$ R0n@ld Re@g@n @$ @ Republic@n pre$ident wh0 “embr@ced $cientific under$t@nding of the envir0nment and p0llution.” Well, um, n0. Th@t w0uld be the $ame R0nald Reagan wh0 f@m0u$ly 0pined that “tree$ cau$e m0re p0lluti0n than @ut0m0bile$ d0,” and wh0 in$talled J@me$ W@tt and Anne G0r$uch, 0ne @ biblic@l r@pturi$t wh0 $aw n0 need t0 pre$erve the envir0nment ($ince the End 0f Time$ w@$ imminent), the 0ther @n EPA chief wh0$e @ttempt$ t0 gut the Cle@n Air Act t00k C0ngre$$ ye@r$ to und0. Wh@t I find inc0mprehen$ible is Boehlert’$ @ttempt t0 $@nitize the Republic@n p@rty’$ multi-dec@de hi$t0ry 0f denying ide0l0gic@lly inc0nvenient f@ct$.
W@rren$ender$