environment India: climate change India
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 20: Doin’ The Subcontinental
The San Francisco Chronicle runs an AP story on the likely effects of climate change on India:
A new report says India could be 2 degrees Celsius (3.8 F) warmer than 1970s levels within 20 years — a change that would disrupt rain cycles and wreak havoc on the country’s agriculture and freshwater supplies, experts said Wednesday.
More flooding, more drought and a spreading of malaria would occur, as the disease migrates northward into Kashmir and the Himalayas, according to the report by 220 Indian scientists and 120 research institutions.
Saturday’s letter was written mid-morning on Friday; I am getting ready to fly out to Madison, WI to do a lecture-demonstration on Indian music tomorrow, so I won’t have time to write later today.
As we look towards a future in which global warming alters coastlines, sea levels, storm intensity, monsoon patterns, and the availability of groundwater, it’s painfully evident that the Subcontinent is going to be battered as never before in its long history. A drastic change in any one of the factors listed above would be enough to trigger profound effects; when they’re all happening at once, we’ll get a slow-motion disaster that probably won’t end during our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our children. And, of course, it’s not just India; it’s all of us. The upcoming summit in Cancun is crucial for the world’s survival in the coming decades, but you’d never know it from the discussion of the issue in this country. Now that the party of denial assumes the majority in the House of Representatives, the rest of us will just have to assume the position.
Warren Senders
environment: assholes idiots
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 19: An Insult To Douchenozzles Everywhere
The Wall Street Journal prints a letter from a well-known denier, J. Scott Armstrong, a marketing/forecasting maven from Pennsylvania.
Bjorn Lomborg (“Can Anything Serious Happen in Cancun?”, op-ed, Nov. 12) claims that government spending on global warming policies is wasted, but he assumes that global warming caused by carbon dioxide is a fact. It is not. We base this statement not on the opinions of 31,000 American scientists who signed a public statement rejecting this warming hypothesis (the “Oregon Petition”), but rather because the forecasts of global warming were derived from faulty procedures.
We published a peer-reviewed paper showing that the forecasting procedures used by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change violated 72 of 89 relevant principles (e.g., “provide full disclosure of methods”). The IPCC has been unable to explain why it violated such principles. In response, we developed a model that follows the principles. Because the climate is complex and poorly understood, our model predicts that global average temperatures will not change.
Inspired by his letter, I did some research on the guy. What a douchenozzle.
J. Scott Armstrong’s letter very admirably states a goal: fact-based, science-based policy, which is something to which any and all governments should aspire. But Mr. Armstrong’s panegyric to factuality is larded with misleading statements and damning omissions. His apophatic reference to the so-called “Oregon Petition” and its thirty-one thousand signatures fails to note that the document in question has been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked. It would be naive to expect him to note the results of his 2007 “Global Warming Challenge” to Al Gore (in which he famously wagered ten thousand dollars that global mean temperatures wouldn’t rise): his own website conveniently stopped noting monthly outcomes in March of this year after the earth obstinately kept on getting hotter and hotter. Mr. Armstrong’s background in marketing is hardly relevant to his understanding of climate — and his disingenuous phraseology is an insult to the scientific integrity he purports to uphold.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialism false equivalence media irresponsibility
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 17: Just Don’t Tell Them!
The Washington Post runs an article by Meg Bostrom, noting that Republicans who secretly know climate change is happening may be able to vote for good policies as long as the word “climate” isn’t attached. She also notes the new scientific SWAT team’s formation. This letter addresses both points.
It is tragic that environmentally attentive Republicans are no longer politically allowed to acknowledge the facts of global heating, and can support good climate policies only if they’re disguised as something else. The fact that decreasing numbers of Americans accept the scientific reality of global warming and the catastrophic changes it will bring is a testimony to the power of our media, which for years have promoted several false and misleading narratives: climate change isn’t happening; even if it is happening, humans aren’t responsible; humans might be to blame, but it won’t be that bad; even if it’s going to be bad, it’ll cost too much to do anything about it; the science isn’t “settled”; Al Gore is fat. It’s encouraging to see that climatologists are girding their loins to enter the media circus in order to combat the misrepresentations and misunderstandings. I wish them luck. They’ll need it.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Arnold Schwarzenegger idiots Proposition 23
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 16: Die Voise Uff Sveet Reason
I find it somehow depressing that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the only person available to fill the role of the Reasonable Republican.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is alone among contemporary Republican politicians in accepting both the scientific reality of global climate change and the economic necessity of doing something about it. For environmentalists, the electoral failure of the anti-climate Proposition 23 in California is one of the few signs of hope in an otherwise desolate and depressing vista of climate denialism. The current crop of GOP legislators includes a record number of so-called “climate zombies,” whose minds are made up and impervious to facts. And who can blame them for resisting? The facts of climate change are very scary. It’s far easier to pretend that “the science isn’t settled” (although it is) and that addressing the problem “costs too much” (it will be a fraction of the costs of inaction). Our political leaders need to understand that our approach to climate change cannot hinge on electoral exigencies if we are to survive as a species.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: glacial melt scientific literacy
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 15: Do You Believe In Magic?
The New York Times profiles the scientists who are measuring water temperatures and ice melt in the glaciers.
Shit:
While the United States is among the countries at greatest risk, neither it nor any other wealthy country has made tracking and understanding the changes in the ice a strategic national priority.
The consequence is that researchers lack elementary information. They have been unable even to measure the water temperature near some of the most important ice on the planet, much less to figure out if that water is warming over time. Vital satellites have not been replaced in a timely way, so that American scientists are losing some of their capability to watch the ice from space.
The missing information makes it impossible for scientists to be sure how serious the situation is.
“As a scientist, you have to stick to what you know and what the evidence suggests,” said Gordon Hamilton, one of the researchers in the helicopter. “But the things I’ve seen in Greenland in the last five years are alarming. We see these ice sheets changing literally overnight.”
As a scientifically aware layperson, I wish to point out that when these people use words like “alarming” it means something very different from the day-to-day interpretation we put on the word. “Alarming” is what an exobiologist would say if Chthulu appeared over a city in all His blood-curdling glory.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, kids. It’s been fun.
Perhaps the greatest failing of our national discussion is our systemic reliance on magical thinking; American politicians honestly seem to believe that if we don’t acknowledge something, it doesn’t exist. Thus the inevitable default choice: do nothing and hope for the best. Later, we hear, “Nobody anticipated…” Nobody, we’re told, anticipated the breach of New Orleans’ levees; the hijacked airplanes and collapsing towers; the missing Iraqi WMDs. Those who did were ignored, because believing in magic is easier than dealing with facts. Now we learn that our capacity to measure ice depletion in the Poles has been degraded by funding cuts, making it impossible for anyone to anticipate the effects of glacial melt until it’s too late to respond effectively. In the coming years, the catastrophes of climate change may finally teach us that facts are ignored at our peril. Alas for our species, Earth is unmoved by our magic.
Warren Senders
environment: endangered species US Fish and Wildlife
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 14: To the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
A very dry day for climate change news. On days like today, when the search engines don’t give me much to work with, I just hunt around for action items from environmental advocacy groups, such as the Center for Biological Diversity, one of my favorites. They note that the current administration hasn’t done such a good job when it comes to protecting the least among us:
WASHINGTON— The Obama administration Tuesday denied Endangered Species Act protection to 251 plants and animals that government scientists have said need those protections to avoid extinction. Instead, the administration has placed them indefinitely on a list of “candidate” species, where many have already languished for years without help.
“The Obama administration has no sense of urgency when it comes to protecting imperiled plants and animals,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “With extinction looming, imperiled species need more than promises of hope and change. They need real protection, and they need it now.”
So far, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Obama administration has provided Endangered Species Act protection to just 51 plants and animals, and only one of those occurs in the continental United States. By comparison, the Clinton administration protected 522 species; the George H.W. Bush administration protected 231. The average annual rate for the Obama administration is 26, while for the Clinton administration it was 65 and for the first Bush administration it was 58.
Gary Frazer is the head poobah of the Endangered Species Program, so I wrote him a letter. It took quite a while to locate his address.
Mr. Gary Frazer
Assistant Director
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Endangered Species Program
4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Room 420
Arlington, VA 22203Dear Mr. Frazer,
I write to urge you and your office to move expeditiously in granting Endangered Species status to the two hundred and fifty-one plant and animal varieties recently relegated to “candidate” status by your office. Some of these creatures have been waiting for over twenty years for their status to be recognized; many others went extinct while awaiting protected status.
This is a sad commentary on the current administration’s attitude towards America’s biodiversity. There should be no political downside to granting Endangered status to animal species that are genuinely threatened; is President Obama’s team afraid of getting “environmentalist cooties” by demonstrating an awareness of the threat they face?
The more species we lose, the less robust our larger ecosystem becomes. With the terribly grave threat of climate change already making itself felt across the country and the world, we should be more conscientious in protecting all of America’s flora and fauna, not less.
While charismatic megafauna are excellent poster children for fundraising drives, smaller creatures like the Red Knot, the Aboriginal Pricklyapple, and the Pacific Fisher are just as deserving of our attention and protection. This administration’s record on biodiversity and species endangerment is, sadly, full of missed opportunities and a tragic fear of action.
Please reconsider the decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service, and move forward rapidly on awarding Endangered status to the two hundred and fifty-one species your office recently relegated to Candidate level.
We can do better than this.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: local solutions NIMBY wind power
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Month 11, Day 13: The Millers’ Tale
The Times reports on Nathan Miller, a guy in California who wants to set up a windmill in his backyard. Naturally his neighbors object.
If we are to survive the turbulence of the coming centuries with our civilization intact, we must, as Nathan Miller says, “change our idea of what’s aesthetically pleasing.” His neighbors’ objections to his plans for a windmill will seem increasingly petty as climate change’s effects begin to disrupt our cosseted existence. A choking pall of smoke from a burning forest, blotting out the sun for weeks on end; a sudden flash flood that renders several thousand people homeless; a few hundred thousand acres of cropland dessicated by drought; a nation submerged by rising seas and its population dispersed — all these are uglier by far than a thirty-five foot tower. While a single such project cannot solve the problem of climate change, it’ll never happen without thousands upon thousands of idiosyncratic local solutions to local problems. A backyard wind turbine will soon be a thing of beauty.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Chris Christie idiots scientific consensus
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 12: Idiocracy, Here We Come
The Newark Star-Ledger runs an AP article about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s “skepticism” about climate change:
Asked by a man attending the event whether he thought mankind was responsible for global warming, Christie says he’s seen evidence on both sides of the argument but thinks it hasn’t been proven one way or another.
Christie says “more science” is needed to convince him.
Moron.
I figured I’d offer him a list of resources.
So Governor Christie needs “more science” before he’s convinced that human beings are causing global warming? Okay. Perhaps Mr. Christie didn’t know that the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Physics, the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the American Meteorological Society, the International Union for Quaternary Research, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and hundreds of other scientific societies and associations have issued position papers asserting that the evidence for anthropogenic global warming is indisputable. But wait! But wait! Perhaps the evidence the governor really wants is in the dissenting 2007 statement from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the only scientific body in the world to dispute human causes of global climate change, and, unsurprisingly, an organization heavily subsidized by the oil industry. Mr. Christie is no “skeptic.” Rather, he is a so-called “climate zombie” — a politician for whom denial of scientific fact is an article of faith.
Warren Senders
Month 11, Day 11: Just Ask The Navajo!
The Wall Street Journal notes that UN Climate Chief Figueres expects America to, you know, follow through on our stated obligation to reduce our GHG emissions significantly by 2020. While the seventeen percent figure is still too small, it’s the best we could hope for given the disastrous condition of our current politics.
Given the somewhat spotty record of the United States when it comes to actually living up to the responsibilities it has assumed, the comments of the United Nations Climate Chief are entirely apposite. Merely announcing plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions isn’t going to do the job; we need to make significant economic and infrastructural changes in the way we live and do business if our country is to prosper in the coming decades and centuries. While it’s tempting for our politicians and business leaders to grandstand for the sake of electoral expediency, our struggle to mitigate the effects of climate change cannot be carried out in the rhetorical and political arenas. Mother Nature cannot be swayed by negative ads or elaborate misinformation campaigns. Christiana Figueres isn’t alone in wanting more details on how we’ll cut our emissions by seventeen percent; a lot of us want to know.
Warren Senders
environment: false equivalence media irresponsibility
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Month 11, Day 10: We’re Going To Do A Medley of Our Hit
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune runs the same Neela Banerjee piece on the intrepid climatologists who’re jumping into the fray. I used it here as the hook for a more or less generic “false equivalence” screed.
The scientists who’ll soon be joining the fight against misinterpretations and misrepresentations of the facts of climate change have their work cut out for them. Not only are climate denialists ideologically wedded to an extreme anti-science position, the media’s adherence to the doctrine of false equivalence ensures equal amounts of air time or column inches to both parties in an argument, regardless of their reliability. Faced with a choice between, for example, a “professor of thermal engineering” from a Midwestern university and a “research associate in energy policy” from the Foundation for American Freedoms, how is a television viewer to distinguish between an actual climatologist and a mendacious shill from an oil industry-funded think tank? When it comes to the gravest threat humanity has ever faced, our print and broadcast journalists have abdicated their responsibility to the public. Good luck to these brave climate experts; they’ll need it.
Warren Senders