environment: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference scientific consensus
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 3: You Kids Think Money Grows On Trees?
The Christian Science Monitor has done quite a bit of pretty solid analysis:
As this year’s round of global climate talks begin in Durban, South Africa, negotiators once again try to tackle an elusive goal: Trimming nations’ greenhouse gas emissions enough to meet the target of limiting global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) before the end of the century.
This target is expected to reduce the potentially devastating effects of climate change, but, so far, it appears a long way off.
Last year, negotiators in Cancún, Mexico, agreed to the goal of limiting warming of the Earth’s average surface temperature to 3.6 degrees F above pre-Industrial Revolution levels. Their agreement notes, however, that a ceiling of 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) might be warranted.
A world 2 degrees warmer is not an ideal scenario. Even if nations are successful, the planet can still expect increasing heat spells, drought, flood damage and certain other severe weather events, along with elevated rates of extinctions and shifts in species’ ranges, including those of disease-spreading insects, and many other potentially problematic changes, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report. Their severity grows along with increasing projected temperature rise, according to the report.
A scold. That’s me. Sent November 29:
With mountains of conclusive evidence attesting to both the reality and the danger of runaway climate change, the failure of the world’s industrialized nations to address the issue in any meaningful way cannot be ascribed to ignorance. Rather, the developed world’s unwillingness to take responsibility for the looming threat of catastrophe is essentially a failure of imagination — a failure to think beyond the shared assumptions of an energy economy based on fossil-fuels, a failure to evaluate human progress by measures other than quarterly profit reports, and a failure of empathy with the people whose lives will be devastated.
We’ve taken out an enormous advance on our Bank of Earth credit card. Like irresponsible youngsters on a spending spree, we conveniently forget that when the bill arrives, all humanity will have to pay it. Genuine fiscal responsibility requires aggressive and immediate action on climate change, rather than penny-wise, pound-foolish intransigence.
Warren Senders
Education environment music: cultural survival
by Warren
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The Sonic Casualties of Climate Change, Pt. 1
Africa is an entire musical universe; I could (and no doubt will) show you stuff for hours. But some of the most beautiful and emotionally affecting singing I know of comes from the B’aka Pygmies of Cameroon, who yodel polyrhythmic songs of love and respect for the forest that gives them life:
DAKAR (AlertNet) – An increase in sea level and a drop in the quantity of rainfall linked to climate change could destroy Cameroon’s biodiversity, disrupt businesses and uproot hundreds of thousands of people in the west-central African nation, Cameroon Tribune newspaper reported on Thursday.
environment: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference
by Warren
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 2: He’s Dead, Jim.
Forbes Magazine runs an article called “Climate Treaty Would Actually Be Good For Business.” Yup. But business would be bad for a climate treaty, apparently.
Businesses pay an additional price for these disturbances. In June the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) found that even normal weather variation harms the U.S. economy, to the tune of $485 billion annually in 2008 dollars, or as much as 3.4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. The study was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Every so often, I feel compelled to send a missive off to the belly of the beast. The bloated corpse of global capitalism is still capable of doing damage as it runs amok in full headless-chicken mode. Sent November 28:
For decades, the “can-do” attitude of American entrepreneurship was an inspiration to the world. Combining polymathic creativity with a healthy disrespect for established modes of operation, the nation’s inventors transformed first this country, then the planet. It seemed our collective heritage was one that transformed every obstacle into an opportunity for greater achievement; the greater the difficulty, the more likely we were to respond with paradigm-shattering innovation.
Contemporary American business leaders, by contrast, often ignore the troublesome realities of global climate change and the difficult choices which face the world’s people, treating physical laws as subordinate to market forces, and ethics as irrelevant. Their lack of confidence in our country’s R&D and manufacturing is profoundly troubling; their protests that a transformed energy system might be bad for business show contempt for the scientific and moral facts confronting our species. And they forget: an “evolutionary bottleneck” is bad for business, too.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: analogies denialists Durban Conference scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 1: Maybe We Could Get A Carbon Patch?
This sounds depressingly familiar. NYT:
WASHINGTON — With intensifying climate disasters and global economic turmoil as the backdrop, delegates from 194 nations gather in Durban, South Africa, this week to try to advance, if only incrementally, the world’s response to dangerous climate change.
To those who have followed the negotiations of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change over their nearly 20-year history, the conflicts and controversies to be taken up in Durban are monotonously familiar — the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests, the need to develop and deploy clean energy technology rapidly.
I used the cancer analogy yesterday, and I’m using it again today. Sent November 27:
The United States, one of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, is acting like a five-pack-a-day man trying to wish away a negative biopsy. Scientists the world over, with increasing urgency, are saying that genuine action on climate change must be taken soon to avoid a metastasizing catastrophe — and America’s politicians are equivocating, because…well, because they’re scared.
Like someone who’s just come out of the oncologist’s office, they’re scared of change, scared of an uncertain and dangerous future, and scared of what it’s all likely to cost. And just as a heavy smoker unequivocally “needs” a cigarette to stay calm while he contemplates his diagnosis, the industrialized carbon-burning nations “need” another hit of carbon energy before they give it up.
We know it’s bad for us, that it’s very expensive, that it has drastic long-term health consequences. And we swear to quit, soon. Maybe next year. We promise!
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Andreas Schmittner denialists IPCC scientific methodology
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 30: I Feel A Tingle…
Look, everybody! Actual, unambiguous good news:
A new study in the journal Science suggests that the global climate may be less sensitive to carbon dioxide fluctuations than predicted by the most extreme projections, and maybe slightly less than the best estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Andreas Schmittner, a climate scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore., and lead author on the new study, notes that, while man-made global warming is happening and tiny changes in global average temperatures can have huge and deleterious effects, the atmosphere may not be as sensitive to carbon dioxide change as has been reported.
“We used paleoclimate data to look at climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling in the atmosphere, and we are coming up with a somewhat lower value,” says Schmittner.
How long before James Inhofe suddenly discovers that science is cool and groovy? Sent November 26:
The authors of the newly released study on climate sensitivity very carefully note that while their conclusions suggest lower values than the IPCC’s more extreme projections, this does not diminish either the reality of global climate change or the importance of a robust policy on greenhouse emissions. But since the precise, reality-based language of scientists is incomprehensible to politicians desperately seeking excuses to avoid confronting inconvenient choices in an election season, we can anticipate a chorus of conservative legislators eagerly ignoring their cautionary words.
Andreas Schmittner’s historically grounded examination of paleoclimate data should not be used to bolster the usual denialist shibboleths. Employing these hopeful findings as an argument for inaction on the gravest existential threat our species has yet faced is the twisted logic of a cancer patient who, when told that the progress of the disease is slower than doctors’ worst-case projections, resumes smoking five packs a day.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Durban Conference scientific consensus
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 29: Puttin’ On The Hair-Shirt
The UK Guardian runs an optimistic take on Durban (NOT):
The will to act on climate change is out of political energy, running on empty. The problem is (relatively) distant, complex and intractable. The solution is costly, immediate, and the gains uncertain. It is the kind of slow-burn crisis that democratic politicians only tackle under sustained popular pressure and right now western voters have other things on their minds. Here, the government that promised to be the greenest ever is allowing emission-cutting policies to appear an indulgent hangover from a more prosperous age. Starting on Monday, when the 17th climate change conference opens in Durban, Africa has the opportunity to remind the rest of us why inaction is not an option.
Writing letters to the UK press always makes me want to use fancy words and allusions. To the best of my recollection, Saint Augustine has never before manifested in one of my climate letters. Sent November 25:
The yawning chasm between scientific reality and political exigency is swallowing up any hope for a meaningful agreement from the upcoming Durban climate conference.
Ultimately, the world’s nations are negotiating not with one another, but with a party whose inflexibility and intransigence would be the envy of any tinpot dictator. The laws of physics and chemistry are unmoved by arguments of economic survival, of market imperatives, of global justice — and their demands are simple: stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Immediately. And all of us (nearly seven billion humans along with the rest of Earthly life) are the hostages.
The industrialized world’s leaders aspire to climatic chastity and carbon continence, but (like Saint Augustine) not yet. Their hope is that at some unspecified future date, some unspecified future politicians will do the right thing, an outcome depressingly less likely than the ravages of a runaway greenhouse effect.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Citizens United corporate irresponsibilty corporate personhood idiots
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 28: Gooooooood Morning!
Why am I not surprised? USA Today:
As prospects for a major global accord on climate change look dim, ensuring that negotiations continue may be the most a United Nations climate summit will achieve next week.
Beginning Monday in Durban, South Africa, the 12-day U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change picks up where last year’s meeting in Cancun left off.
What eluded negotiators then, and still does today, is a grand bargain in which 194 nations commit to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions that most scientists contend are contributing to a warmer climate.
“Almost everyone agrees that some kind of big deal is unlikely,” says international negotiations expert David Victor of the University of California-San Diego. Economically, he says, “these are dark times and we have made that choice already in past meetings.”
Sheesh. Sent November 24:
In theory, our democratic government is supposed to be ever-active on behalf of the people. But in practice, it looks like America’s political system defines “people” rather more narrowly. Perhaps in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision affirming the “personhood” of corporations, our representatives mistakenly concluded that since corporations are now “people”, ordinary citizens aren’t.
How else to interpret America’s inability to take significant action on the profound threat of climate change? When the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are “unlikely” to come to any kind of meaningful accord at the upcoming Durban conference, there is only one interpretation: “corporate persons” believe themselves invulnerable to the runaway greenhouse effect scientists say is is now all but inevitable.
Maybe so. If climate change brings an “evolutionary bottleneck” for humanity, Earth may indeed eventually be ruled by mindless, consumption-driven corporate intelligences. Cockroaches, after all, are the ultimate survivors.
Warren Senders
environment: Climategate idiots media irresponsibility Michael Mann Phil Jones
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 27: Fool Me Twice…
The Washington Post addresses the new attempt to cobble together another “Climategate” from another batch of the same damn emails:
LONDON — The British climatologist ensnared in a major new email leak took his case to the public Wednesday, arguing that he and his colleagues’ comments have again been taken out of context.
The University of East Anglia’s Phil Jones was one of the major players in the controversy that erupted two years ago over the publication of emails which caught prominent scientists stonewalling critics and attacking them in sometimes vitriolic terms.
The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit is one of the world’s leading centers for the study of how world temperatures have varied over time, and Jones came under particular scrutiny following the 2009 disclosures — even receiving death threats over allegations that he was a leading a conspiracy to hype the dangers of climate change.
Sarcasm isn’t usually going to make it into print, but it felt good. Sent November 23:
Goodness! What a coincidence that another batch of hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s climatology team should be released just in time for this year’s Durban Climate Conference. One wonders if our nation’s journalists have learned anything from the last time this happened. The fortunate few who have access to the series of tubes known as the “internet” will discover that climatologists Phil Jones, Michael Mann and their collaborators were cleared of any wrongdoing by no fewer than six independent investigations.
Perhaps one or two reporters may sense a bigger story at work here: why are stolen communications from 2009 being released in the build-up for another important conference on global warming? Who’s behind the subterfuge? Who will benefit should these inconvenient scientists be discredited? Who gains from confusing the discussion, from delaying action on the climate crisis?
The losers, of course, are the rest of the world’s people.
Warren Senders
Education humor Personal photoblogging: costumes dinosaurs kids
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What We Did On Halloween…
…Ta-daa!
My daughter stood out from the menage of Harry Potters, Cinderellas, Fairies, Ghosts and Goblins.
My daughter was a Parasauralophus.
For purposes of comparison, here is an image of an actual Parasauralophus:
Our Parasauralophus was made with plaster-impregnated gauze wrapped around two balloons. The whole head was mounted on a Sono-Tube with slots cut for her arms. The eyes are rubber bouncy balls. Looks pretty good to me.