environment Politics: assholes Bobby Jindal denialists idiots IPCC volcano monitoring
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 2: Eruptions of Ignorance
Missouri Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer is the guy who introduced the amendment to kill funding for the IPCC, which (given our all-new teabagger-friendly House) passed handily. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the story.
The guy’s a moron, but is that news? Anyway, I started remembering Bobby Jindal for some reason, and generated the following letter, sent 2/21:
Those of us who still recall Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s disparaging remarks about “something called ‘volcano monitoring,’ ” back in early 2009 will also remember that only a few weeks later, a real live volcano erupted in Alaska — and that the Government’s Volcano Monitoring service was credited with giving essential warnings that saved lives and property. Blaine Luetkemeyer is in a position analogous to Jindal’s; his hostility toward the I.P.C.C. has nothing to do with its essential work on the likely effects of global warming and everything to do with short-term political exigencies. As the scientific evidence mounts, climate-change deniers use multiply-debunked arguments to delay and weaken any action on the most significant threat humanity has faced in millennia. The smoke from Mount Redoubt made Governor Jindal’s mockery of volcano monitoring an embarrassment; one wonders: what sort of environmental catastrophe will bring Representative Luetkemeyer to regret his similarly ignorant grandstanding?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: false equivalency media irresponsibility scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 3, Day 1: We Need More Like This
The Aurora Sentinel (Aurora, CO) addresses the problem directly, in a very well-done and strongly-worded editorial.
How much more proof is needed to persuade skeptics that humans are warming the planet to dangerously high temperatures?
Scientists released not one, but two reports on Wednesday showing definitively that human-caused temperature hikes in Earth’s atmosphere are producing increasingly harsh, wet storms across the globe.
The studies should counter arguments by skeptics that climate change is a “victimless crime,” said Myles Allen of the University of Oxford, one of two authors of a study associating flooding and climate change in Britain. “Extreme weather is what actually hurts people.”
Can’t wait to see the comments in a couple of days…
Sent 2/21:
Your editorial hits the nail squarely on the head. The current inability of our major media outlets to address global warming without false equivalency would be hilarious if it were not tragic. By equating the expertise of thousands of climatologists with a few paid shills from the oil companies, the true nature of the climate crisis is disguised, and millions of people are lulled into a false sense of security. Add to that the constant stream of virulent anti-environment rhetoric from right-wing talk radio and you have a recipe for disaster — since we can’t deal with the problem without recognizing its existence. Not only is America the planet’s largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, its media pollute the public discourse with some of the most egregious and irresponsible mendacity the world has ever seen. And don’t even get me started on Republican politicians, who are appallingly ready to sacrifice the long-term future of their constituents on the altar of short-term political exigencies of the most cynical and willfully ignorant sort.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots mountain pine beetle
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 28: How Do You Handle A Hungry Man?
The Victoria Advocate (TX) runs an article on Joe Read,the loony in Montana who’s introduced a bill declaring global warming beneficial.
Imagine reading a few decades ago that a lawmaker had introduced a bill which not only designated tobacco as a foodstuff, but also defined lung cancer and emphysema as signs of overall health. It’d be pretty clear that the politician in question had either been paid off by the big tobacco firms, or had been fooled by them; looking back with the benefit of hindsight, we would have to choose: what motivated him — cupidity or stupidity? A few decades from now, exactly the same question will be asked about Rep. Joe Read, whose attempt to renegotiate the facts of climate change shows a similar unwillingness to remove ideological filters. A few seconds’ research on the phrase “mountain pine beetle” will demonstrate one of the many dangers posed to Montana by global warming. But perhaps Rep. Read is too busy eating a cigarette sandwich to care. Mmmmmm. Yummy.
Warren Senders
Education humor photoblogging Politics: snap
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Personal Politics: protests public action Wisconsin
by Warren
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Two Signs, Four Messages
Pictures of me at yesterday’s rally at the State House in support of the people of Wisconsin in their struggle against crazy governor Scott Walker are courtesy of Strategy And Pizza.
It was great to see hippies and hardhats on the same side of the issue.
Education environment Politics: denialists ignorance scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 23: Teach Your Children Well…
The San Francisco Chronicle describes the work of the Alliance for Climate Education, as they do workshops and assemblies for high-school students. It’s all a part of welcoming them to the reality-based community, you know, which is why the Republicans are so agin it.
The 200 engrossed students at Oakland Unity High School kept their eyes glued to the projector screen and hardly uttered a sound during the 45-minute presentation – the most striking exception coming at the part of the special school assembly that featured cow farts.
It turns out bovine flatulence contributes to greenhouse gases. That was just one of several topics covered in the assembly, which was offered by the Alliance for Climate Education, an Oakland nonprofit that is trying to educate students about climate change one school at a time.
Since fall 2009, Alliance for Climate Education has visited 1,100 high schools in the United States, putting on assemblies for nearly 700,000 teens.
This was sent on Valentine’s Day, with Love to the Alliance For Climate Education!
Despite the frenzied conspiracy theorizing of denialists obsessing over an imaginary Socialist New World Order, climate change is a very real and significant danger — not just to Americans, but to all the world’s people. A secondary danger is that the anti-science veriphobes in the Republican party will succeed in convincing the American public that this threat (one perhaps greater than anything humans have yet faced) isn’t real. In 2004, an anonymous Bush administration official told Ron Suskind that “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” By opposing any meaningful climate policy, the GOP is attempting to create its own reality — based not on verifiable facts, but on superstition, hubris and ignorance. Unfortunately for us all, even the most powerful empire cannot defeat the laws of physics. Which is why the work of the Alliance for Climate Education is so essential.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists EPA idiots James Inhofe Lisa Jackson
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 22: The Terrible Threat of تغير المناخ
The Newberg Graphic (OR) has a guest editorial with a good strong statement in favor of the EPA’s authority, and a good chastisement of the Republicans’ behavior.
I figured it would be a good idea to provide some additional moral support. This letter’s not as coherent as some; I’m just too damn tired. Sent Feb 13:
The intersection of coal and petroleum money with the electoral process has produced a breed of politicians far more cognizant of the short-term requirements of their cash suppliers than of the long-term well-being of their constituents. While West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller is a Democratic case in point, the majority of anti-environmental voices in Congress belong to Republicans. Less than two months into the 112th Congress, these GOP stalwarts have rejected decades of scientific evidence and publicly insulted EPA Chief Lisa Jackson. The coming decades of climate chaos will bring enormous disruptions to our agriculture, infrastructure, public health and political stability; when we face a threat far greater than any terrorist organization, we need thoughtful preparation and mitigation, not the GOP’s kindergarten-level squabbling. It’s too bad climate change wasn’t represented by a scary dictator and the possibility of an expensive war; the Republican caucus would have been beside themselves with enthusiasm.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes EPA idiots Lisa Jackson Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 21: Sock It To ’em!
The Las Vegas Sun quite elegantly takes the Republicans in the House to task for scientific illiteracy, bad manners and general douchebaggery. This editorial was a real pleasure to read.
Sent February 12:
The behavior of the Republican members of the House of Representatives is a disgrace to our country and to its institutions of governance. Their reflexive, ideologically-driven hostility to the facts of climate change is both foolish and perilous. While the GOP has routinely positioned itself on the side of industry, its current allegiance to the most extreme corporatist interests has led it to abandon even lip service to scientific expertise. It is quite evident that the Republican legislators who questioned EPA administrator Lisa Jackson not only couldn’t understand the science behind the policies she’s implementing — they brought no understanding to the discussion at all, and her testimony became an occasion for petty theatrics of the most immature sort. These modern-day “know-nothing” politicians would be comical if the threat posed by climate change was not so grave. As it is, their childish petulance poses a danger to us all.
Warren Senders
Politics: democracy rants Republicans righteous indignation
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On the floor of the Wisconsin House of Representatives
Republicans tried to pull some rotten business. I’ll let Representative Gordon Hintz tell you about it:
By all accounts the Tea-Party counter-demonstrators experienced EPIC FAIL today; the “support Walker” demonstrations were outnumbered 35:1.
environment Politics: assholes conspiracy theory denialism idiots royalty
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 19: Bonnie Prince Charlie
The UK Sun runs a brief piece on Prince Charles, who’s come out swinging at the climate deniers:
PRINCE Charles blasted climate change sceptics yesterday, accusing them of playing “a reckless game of roulette” with the planet.
The campaigning royal added that doubters are having a “corrosive effect” on public opinion.
He asked: “How are these people going to face their grandchildren?”
Charles hit out at claims people fighting climate change “are secretly conspiring to undermine and deliberately destroy the entire market-based capitalist system”.
This letter was sent on February 10. I used the British spelling of “sceptic.” I may be delusional, but I always feel a greater freedom to use big words and fancy allusions when I’m writing to the British press. Even the Sun, which ain’t no Times of London.
Prince Charles’ comments on those who deny the threat of climate change are entirely apropos. The petroleum-funded media and the politicians they enable (both in the UK and the USA) are playing a very dangerous game: whether fomenting paranoid delusions that the world’s climatologists have formed a giant cabal secretly planning a New World Order, attributing the dramatic uptick in extreme weather events across the globe to “sunspot activity,” or simply refusing to acknowledge the existence of a problem, these individuals and organizations are setting the future of their own descendants, and the rest of us, at risk. One has only to examine their rhetoric to recognize that the term “sceptic” is a terrible misnomer; far from being empiricists committed to the use of reason, logic and evidence, they are so determined to make the world fit their increasingly twisted conspiracy theories that they’ve left Occam’s razor far, far behind.
Warren Senders