environment Politics: assholes denialists EPA Fred Upton idiots
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 16: Dingleberries
The Wall Street Journal reports on Fred Upton’s (R-MI) change of position on climate, and notes his eagerness to kill the EPA. Unlike many WSJ pieces, this one allows a spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council to have the last word:
Mr. Upton’s draft proposal to block the EPA regulation has drawn criticism from environmentalists, some of whom have accused him of backtracking on past statements in which he described climate change as “a serious problem” and that the U.S. has a responsibility to reduce its emissions.
“The market is tilted in favor of the dirty energy sources, and we’re paying for it with our health,” said David Doniger, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, “Somehow you have to level the playing field so that public health and natural resources are protected from the pollution.”
This was sent on Tuesday, February 8.
Fred Upton’s reversal on the issue of climate change reveals the truth about this congressional power broker: he is, like the rest of his caucus, motivated entirely by political exigencies — which in the case of Republican legislators, translates as “fear of the Tea Party.” This group of anti-science, anti-reality agitators has so intimidated the entire GOP that even the most straightforward factual statements are no longer allowable in their public discourse. To set the record straight, Mr. Upton’s newly-fledged belief that climate change is “not necessarily man-made” is patently delusional. If ever there was a contemporary issue on which scientific consensus is overwhelming, it’s that of global warming. Mr. Upton’s support for crippling the Environmental Protection Agency is likewise a position based entirely on cynical, short-term political calculations; given the ludicrous dysfunctionality of the current Congress, EPA regulation of greenhouse gases is essential to bringing climate change under control.
Warren Senders
environment Personal Politics: assholes denialists idiots wingnuts Wisconsin
by Warren
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Happy Valentine’s Day: An Obscene Phone Call From A WIngnut
As part of my ongoing daily-letter-to-the-editor-on-climate-change resolution (now over 400 letters without missing a day!), I sent something recently to the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal. It was printed this morning and can be read here .
This evening I arrived home after spending much of the afternoon in a snowball fight with my daughter and one of her friends.
And the telephone rang.
And without further ado, the caller at the other end exploded into an obscenity-filled rant about “you Mother****ing liberals,” threatened to kick my ass, and continued in a single run-on sentence (that included a few words about how “it’s ‘weather,’ not ‘climate,’ you liberal P**ce of S**t” before hanging up.
*69 yielded a telephone number, and I did a reverse lookup on the number. Google is your friend.
The telephone number showed up on a bunch of those “who’s behind the unwanted call” websites (invariably delivering obscene screeds in response to something in the paper):
March 5, 2008:
called and left harassing vmail over letter to editor in milw journal
October 30, 2008:
Received a nasty four-letter studded screed from a male at this number after my opinion letter appeared in today’s Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel. Glad to know I’m in good company.
December 15, 2008:
Guy left a message in response to my wife’s editorial in Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel. He was excessively obscene, and he used derogatory sexual language when referring to my wife. Then he starts calling Obama the N-word, which was strange because the article had nothing to do with Obama. It was also not particularly political in content. The guy has issues.
June 25, 2010:
My wife picked up our home phone and inquired as to who was calling after finding a voice mail for myself. When she called back,a man with a very rough voice he started screaming at her, shouting epithets and profanities about my views expressedin a recent letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal.
I have reported this to the Village police department, visited the Distrct attorney’s office and after doinig a special google search, received a cell phone # and name. I urge anyone abused by this possible lunatic to immediately notify the phone cppmany and local law enforcement officers. Based on CCAP, a person with the same name was the subject of a violation of a domestic abuse injunction.domestic abuse injunction and could be dangerous.I will be sharing evidence of this with the Village police this afternoon.
If you value your rights of free speech, I urge you to do everything in your power to punish this political ticking time bomb for your own safety and the safety of our communities
Wow.
I looked further. Lo and behold, there was a real-estate listing for a house for sale by owner, with that number listed.
This 3100 square foot single family home has 4 bedrooms and 3.0 bathrooms. It is located at 6****** Ln N*********, Wisconsin.
Entering that address brought me a name, and the name was connected to a rant in a Wisconsin blog. Check this out :
Soglin you are a cut and run liberal piece of shit, from the 60’s to your mayorship of the peoples Republic of Madison in the 80’s and 90’s. Bush HAS never lied the 46 billon need for our valient war in Iraq is TOTALLY neccessary, and unlike your socialist mind would never be spent on socialized medicine, welfare programs etc, even if there were no war. That is the true disconnect of your clueless arguments. The only nightmare is that you continue to be a coward. The world is already in WW111 you cluesless idiots, we are in the beginning stages of a 100 years war on our fight on terrorism. We can not appease, listen, understand, feel there pain etc, terrorist must be hunted down, destroyed by whatever means possible, and Bush and patriotic Americans have a blank check to do it. Soglin, your like Neville chamberlain at the 1938 Munich Conference when Hitler was appeased, in the name of “peace” cowards like chaimberlain and your ilk were responsible for 10 of millons of murders, the holocust etc, because the world did not start WW11 in 1938, rather than September of 1939. Soglin, you and your liberal ilk are guiltu of treason.
T******** K********
(address redacted)New Berlin, city the supported Bush in 2004 by a 74-26% margin
This is definitely my guy. And tomorrow I’m going to the police in my town with all this information, and I’m filing a complaint against Mr. K*******.
Hope your Valentine’s Day was less eventful than mine!
environment Politics: CCC FDR good government Natural Resources Conservation Service
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 14: Personally, I Don’t Trust Market Forces To Do *Anything* Right
The San Francisco Chronicle discusses the role of the Natural Resources Conservation Service in helping various regions of the country prepare for the impact of climate change. Yeah, yeah, I know. SOSHALIZM!
The Natural Resources Conservation Service is an excellent demonstration of what good government should be about. Our economy and infrastructure depend on the long-term health of our environment. Note the word “long-term.” Market forces are by their nature unable to operate successfully outside the short-term universe of immediate profit or loss, which means that they cannot be trusted to oversee systems or processes that move significantly more slowly than the next business quarter or financial year. FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps planted millions of trees to help prevent another dust bowl; can you imagine a multinational corporation recognizing their value as anything except a source of lumber? As the effects of climate change are felt throughout the country and the world, it is obvious that our business sector is ill-prepared to undertake stewardship of the natural systems upon which our entire economy depends — which is why we need the NRCS.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialism EPA idiots scientific literacy
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 12: Raisin’ My Lonely Dental Floss
Sally Mauk, in the Montana Missoulian, writes about a climatologist who spoke recently at the University of Montana. Naturally, he’s plenty worried. Also naturally, the dimwits in the comment section are full of the usual crap.
After I wrote the letter, I located the LTE link and was informed that the paper only prints letters from within their print circulation area. So I sent it anyway, but registered as a commenter and posted this there. I assume that I’ll be shouted at and told I’m a brainwashed follower of algore.
The conundrum of climate change requires action and understanding on a variety of fronts. For us to realize the gravity of the situation requires re-calibrating our own thinking, focusing more on the long-term consequences of our actions than we’ve ever considered. Our industry and business sectors must accomplish the same transformation, moving from the pervasive paradigm of quarterly profits as indicators of corporate health to a value system that encourages generational continuity rather than growth for its own sake (which Edward Abbey rightly described as “the ideology of the cancer cell.”). And our government must provide a regulatory authority which makes these changes possible, which is why the current anti-EPA legislation is an exceptionally bad idea. Given that it’s riddled with “climate zombies” who reject science and the evidence of experts, it’s a fair bet that no law regulating atmospheric pollutants will emerge from the current Congress. Meanwhile, we all need to learn from the scientists who’ve been studying it for decades; our skepticism is better saved for the oil-industry apparatchiks who daily tell us that climate change isn’t happening.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Al Gore assholes Bill O'Reilly denialists false equivalency idiots media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 10: Just Stop It. Stop It. Right Now.
Under a snarky and dismissive headline (“Al Gore’s Snow Job”), Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun talks about Al Gore’s futile attempt to educate Bill “the tide goes in, the tide goes out” O’Reilly and his audience about how global warming is linked to all this f***ing snow. As snarky and dismissive pieces go, it’s not that bad, pointing out that all Gore’s claims are correct and all of O’Reilly’s statements are stupid…but it nevertheless treats the 2000 popular vote winner as a vaguely comic figure. Our media is so, so, so, so damned lazy.
Sent on February 3:
Lorrie Goldstein notes that Al Gore’s name now triggers reflexive skepticism among people who are anxious to dismiss the very real threat of global climate change as somehow chimerical. But her column inadequately addresses the reasons for this. The former vice-president and Nobel laureate has done his homework; his prescience on the issue of global warming is, or should be, a foregone conclusion by now. Instead, many media outlets dismiss his hard-won expertise, either through a simplistic Bill O’Reilly-style confusion of weather and climate, or through the marginally more sophisticated tactic of false equivalency, in which a statement by a genuinely worried climatologist (or a former VP) is “balanced” by pronunciamenti from petroleum industry mouthpieces. Yes, it’s true that the climate debate has become politically polarized — but environmentalists haven’t been doing the politicizing. That responsibility belongs to the Republican party and its sponsors, Big Oil and Big Coal.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots teapartiers
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 7: (facepalm)
Paul LePage, the new governor of Maine, is an asshole of the first order:
“I believe in real, strong environmental laws,” Gov. Paul LePage announced to a room full of environmentally-minded Mainers a little more than a week ago. “I would never challenge a strong environmental law that’s based in science.”
Four days later, LePage launched a broadside against Maine’s environmental protections, targeting for elimination virtually every state environmental law and regulation in existence, regardless of their scientific merit, importance to Maine’s economy and citizen health, or even their bipartisan support.
The changes he proposed to the regulatory reform committee would rezone 3 million acres of wilderness for development, allow toxic chemicals back into children’s toys and baby bottles, lower air and water pollution standards, reduce fines for polluters, eliminate the Board of Environmental Protection and shift the burden for recycling electronic waste away from manufacturers and onto the people of Maine.
Actually that’s probably an insult to assholes everywhere. My letter to the Sentinel:
Paul LePage’s proposed changes in Maine environmental protections are examples of the kind of nihilism that should have no place in politics. The Tea-Party governor apparently feels beholden only to his ideological allies, rather than to the long-term good of the state. Furthermore, the anti-government zealots who voted for him are themselves being manipulated by cynical and destructive big-business forces whose best interests are nowhere aligned with Maine’s. Unfortunately, ruined natural resources cannot be instantly remedied in the next election cycle; LePage is proposing to spend the state’s environmental capital for the benefit of his corporate sponsors rather than steward it wisely. One suspects that some part of the governor’s anti-nature crusade is simply gleeful “hippie-punching” — political maneuvers taken for no other reason than to offend people who actually give a damn about some of the most beautiful places in the country and the world.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: good advice
by Warren
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environment Politics: Ban ki-Moon corporatism Philippines
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 4: Actually, ALL Of Us Live On Islands
The Philippines Inquirer runs an article predicting that 2011 is going to have more weather anomalies — a prognostication that falls in the “utterly obvious” category. It’s a much better piece than you’ll find in the American media.
Of course, Filipinos and Filipinas are seeing climate change up close and personal:
Here at home, in Baguio City, millions worth of fruits and vegetables were ruined by heavy frost of an unseasonably cold weather.
More than a week of abnormally heavy rains left 33 dead last December. About 70,000 fled the flash floods and landslides in Davao del Norte, Compostela Valley and Albay.
Our people in those areas remain in turmoil—hundreds of hectares of rice lands, private property and infrastructure destroyed; a total of P431 million in newly planted crops and fertilized soil washed away; and contagious diseases and rat hordes added to their immense misery.
So the least I can do is add a voice in sympathy. As is all too often the case, finding the LTE link was an exercise in frustration.
Ban Ki-moon’s plea to the developed nations of the world is heartfelt and sincere. The unpredictable weather countless nations have experienced over the past year is only the beginning; the orchestra of chaos is only tuning up, and in the decades to come we are going to witness extreme weather events that are certain to shatter record after record. Unfortunately, the political system in the USA has been captured by (to use Theodore Roosevelt’s trenchant phrase) “malefactors of great wealth.” Operatives of the world’s biggest corporations wield almost unchecked power in the halls of American governance, and the notion of a national climate policy based on scientific fact now seems hopelessly unrealistic. The U.N. Secretary General is apparently now refocusing his attention and energy on an economic rationale for changes in the world’s energy economy. Let us hope that “profit” is a more effective motivator than “planet.”
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Ban ki-Moon Cancun copenhagen green economics sustainability
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 2, Day 1: Stupidity Rhymes With Cupidity
Ban Ki-moon is going to change his focus to “green economics” in the wake of repeated failures to get the world’s biggest contributors to the greenhouse effect to behave responsibly toward their neighbors.
The Guardian (UK):
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general who made global warming his personal mission, is ending his hands-on involvement with international climate change negotiations, the Guardian has learned.
In a strategic shift, Ban will redirect his efforts from trying to encourage movement in the international climate change negotiations to a broader agenda of promoting clean energy and sustainable development, senior UN officials said.
The officials said the change in focus reflected Ban’s realisation, after his deep involvement with the failed Copenhagen summit in 2009, that world leaders are not prepared to come together in a sweeping agreement on global warming – at least not for the next few years.
My letter to the Guardian:
One can only imagine Ban Ki-moon’s deep disappointment at the failure of the world’s nations to make any meaningful progress on combating climate change over the past several years. The climatological evidence for anthropogenic global warming has accumulated at dizzying rates; scientific consensus on the threat humanity confronts is essentially universal, if you subtract a few petroleum-funded naysayers from the mix. And yet some of the world’s largest countries seem politically paralyzed, unable to do anything in the face of this slow-motion disaster (although there is ample indication that its pace is quickening faster than most experts ever imagined possible).
Perhaps the new focus on “green growth” will succeed where a plea for human survival has failed; perhaps an appeal to our economic motivations will motivate our leaders to do the right thing, albeit for the wrong reasons. And our descendants, if descendants there be, will remember that our generation knew — but chose to ignore.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes idiots money in politics Oil Addiction petroleum
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 1, Day 30: I’ve Got To Learn To Dance If It Takes Me All Night And Day
USA Today ran an article on Carol Browner’s departure, and the diminished hopes for meaningful climate legislation from the WH. The comments, predictably, are dumb, dumb, dumb.
The departure of Carol Browner from the Obama administration is an unfortunate testimonial to the power of moneyed interests in our nation’s governance. Because changes in energy policy would be bad for the balance sheets of the world’s most profitable industry, politicians bankrolled by big oil and big coal made sure that even the 111th Congress’ relatively weak climate change legislation had no chance of passing. Lost in the fiscal and political maneuvering are the simple facts that our current petroleum dependence is unsustainable, and our planet’s atmosphere is warming faster than even the most pessimistic climate scientists predicted; catastrophic changes are on the horizon if we fail to act. Carol Browner’s mandate was to help us bring that action to pass; her failure is our failure, and the administration’s loss is a loss for all of us — and a victory for mendacity and cupidity in America’s politics.
Warren Senders