environment Politics: denialists IPCC media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 13: The Germ Of An Idea Blossoms In My Fevered Brain
McClatchey’s Eric Pooley discusses the IPCC report, in the Fresno Bee (CA):
The people who are paid to spread doubt and confusion about our changing climate have been working overtime this week, because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body that includes thousands of the world’s best climate scientists, has just issued its latest assessment. The IPCC report is the Olympics of climate change – once every few years the best in the world show us the results of thousands of the most recent research studies. Inevitably, it brings out the peddlers of doubt, people who do their best to muddy the waters about our changing climate. It’s so predictable you could write a book about it.
In fact, I did write one. Six years ago, when the last IPCC assessment came out, I left my day job in journalism and started work on “The Climate War.” I thought it would be a book about how we finally started to get serious about climate change – I figured we had to, because that report declared that global warming was “unequivocal” and that most of the observed warming was “very likely” caused by human activity.
Instead, it became a book about how we didn’t get serious. The peddlers of doubt won that round and, in 2010, they defeated climate action in the U.S. Senate.
Now the IPCC is back with a new report. Basically, the scientists are as sure that human activity is warming the planet as they are that cigarettes cause cancer.
Miley Cyrus! October 5:
If the greenhouse effect was a nubile starlet offending our sensibilities on national television, newspapers, TV pundits, and Facebook would be full of discussion about the implications for our children, and the future of our civilization. If oceanic acidification was the newborn scion of a hereditary dynasty, we’d be able to read about it in every supermarket checkout line in the nation. Our collective ignorance of the single largest threat our species has yet faced in its time on Earth is enabled by our mass media’s obsession with trivial scandals and irrelevancies.
This, then, is the central challenge of our time. All humanity’s other struggles — the fight to end slavery, to spread democracy, to empower women, to stop the exploitation of children, to curb epidemic diseases — require a stable environment. Earth’s climate is the stage upon which history’s greatest ideas are realized, upon which the dreams of a better future are shared.
If this is destroyed because of the irresponsible consumption of fossil fuels, our aspirations will be replaced by a grim fight for survival on a newly hostile planet. Fail to address climate change, and we fail at everything.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility economics media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 7: May The Wind Always Be At Your Back
The Economist weighs in on the IPCC report – far more responsibly than American business outlets, needless to say:
IT HAS been a long time coming. But then the fifth assessment of the state of the global climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body, was a behemoth of an undertaking. It runs to thousands of pages, involved hundreds of scientists and was exhaustively checked and triple-checked by hundredds of other boffins and government officials to whom they report—and whose policies are often based on what they read. The first tranche of the multi-volume report—an executive summary of the physical science—was released in Stockholm on September 27th. And it is categorical in its conclusion: climate change has not stopped and man is the main cause.
It may be the last report of its kind: a growing chorus of experts thinks a more frequent, less bally-hooed and more up-to-date assessments would be more useful. It is certainly the first since negotiations for a global treaty reining in carbon emissions collapsed in Copenhagen in 2009; the first since questions were raised about the integrity of the IPCC itself following mistaken claims about the speed of glacier melt in the Himalayas and, most important, the first since evidence became incontrovertible that global surface air temperatures have risen much less quickly in the past 15 years than the IPCC had expected. A lot is riding on its findings, from the public credibility of climate science to the chances of a new global treaty.
Gack. September 29:
For too long, the business community’s discussion of climate change has been mistakenly conceived as a competition between different economic viewpoints, and environmentalists have often been vilified for pointing out the obvious truth that when we exceed Earth’s carrying capacity, we put ourselves in very grave danger. As the recently released IPCC report makes clear, industrialized civilization has stressed the planet’s resources to the breaking point; dealing honestly and comprehensively with the climate crisis is not an issue of ideology, but of survival.
Our carbon dioxide emissions linger in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years, causing rising sea levels, oceanic acidification, and incidences of extreme weather all over the globe. “Emit now, pay later” has been our approach for the decades since the problems of global warming were first identified in the 1950s. Now the bills for our accumulated greenhouse emissions coming due, and the longer we wait to take care of our environmental debt, the more it’s going to cost — in money, in infrastructure, and in the shattered lives we will bequeath to our posterity.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists heroes media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 6: Thank You, Sir — May I Have Another?
PennLive – The Patriot-News – runs a great interview with Michael Mann:
To all the climate-change deniers out there, Penn State meteorology professor Michael Mann has this suggestion:
Stop arguing about whether the globe is warming and whether human pollution from greenhouse gases plays a major role in it. The science on those counts is settled.
Instead, he said, join the debate about what, if anything, the world can — or should — do about it. Is taking action against climate change simply too expensive? Why should we sacrifice given what China and India are doing?
Some critics are asking those questions, he said when interviewed Wednesday in Harrisburg for an event sponsored by PennFuture. And that approach would bring the discussion to “a legitimate level where it’s possible to have a policy debate,” he said. In some ways, I welcome that. We can talk about efficacy, fairness” and other issues.
“If that’s where we really were, we’d be in really good shape,” he said.
Alas, we are not, as a flood of commenters on this article will surely demonstrate. Denialists will bring up out-of-context data points and cite the handful of academically-credentialed dissenters who dispute the overwhelming scientific consensus on the subject.
“There are always devil’s advocates and contrarians in science,” said Mann.
Always a pleasure to stand up for a stand-up guy. September 28:
Even since Dr. Michael Mann first published his findings on the accelerating pace of climate change, he’s come under steady attack from anti-science conservatives. Despite the fact that they’ve come up empty in their search for incriminating evidence of academic malfeasance, these anti-science zealots aren’t abandoning their fruitless crusade.
The recent IPCC report once again demonstrates that the specialists who’ve dedicated their lives to understanding Earth’s climate agree that there is a very serious problem, and that we — all of us — need to talk about it. Unable to refute the rapidly accumulating evidence of the climate crisis, denialist pundits and politicians instead resort to misrepresentations, ad hominem attacks, and statistical cherrypicking.
In the face of a rapidly accelerating crisis, Michael Mann and other climatologists exemplify not just good scientific practice, but the broader virtues of responsible citizenship. They deserve our thanks and respectful attention, not calumnies and abuse.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: IPCC media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 5: A Fine Roll Of Honour
The Hattiesburg American (MS) reprints a USA Today article on the IPCC report:
The panel releases reports every few years that synthesize the latest in peer-reviewed research, and its fifth assessment – to be released in several parts over the coming year – is the first since 2007.
This assessment is likely to paint a dire portrait of climate change. Yet some scientists say it actually underestimates the problem. Kevin Schaefer of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., says it doesn’t, for example, include the increasing greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, which is perennially frozen ground in Alaska and other Arctic regions.
The State Department’s Climate Action Report, updated every four years as part of the U.N.’s monitoring of global efforts, agrees that the challenges ahead are formidable. “Climate change represents one of the greatest challenges of our time,” it says.
Nobody wants to talk about it, but it’s all there is to talk about. September 27:
There are more than enough inadequacies to go around when it comes to our collective response to climate change. When the best the most powerful nation on Earth can offer is a “dent” in its emissions goals, that’s pathetic. And when the IPCC report, hailed as a “blockbuster,” turns out to understate multiple aspects of the problem (Arctic methane release being the most terrifying of a very bad lot), that’s a sobering realization. But the capper comes in the State Department’s polite characterization of the climate crisis as representing “…one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
What a sadly tentative statement. All other challenges — ending slavery, expanding the franchise, empowering women, addressing income inequality, stopping child labor, wiping out epidemic diseases — are contingent on a stable environment. Our climate is the canvas upon which great humanitarians throughout history have painted their visions of a better future; destroy that through the irresponsible consumption of fossil fuels, and all our species’ aspirations will be replaced by the grim imperatives of survival on a planet turned hostile.
If we fail to address climate change, we fail at everything.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists droughts idiots media irresponsibility sustainability
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 4: Love You To
Crater Lake in Oregon is drying up:
Almost 2,000 feet deep, Crater Lake is the deepest body of water in the United States, a beautiful gem of southern Oregon. Fed by overhead snow and rain, the lake is one of the cleanest and purest in the world. Gazing upon the breathtakingly bright blue waters of the lake is something you never forget.
But there is trouble in paradise. During the past 21 years, I have spent my summers living in Crater Lake National Park. Looking out my bedroom window, I noticed winters are becoming shorter, warmer and less snowy. It looks to me like it has been raining more and snowing less in the months of May, June, September, and October. This change in the weather has led me to become very worried about climate change.
The science confirms my observation. In 1931, rangers first began keeping track of the average annual snowfall at Crater Lake. Since then, the totals have been trending downward by decade from an average of 614 inches in the 1930s to about 455 inches last decade. Even more alarming, this last winter, 2012-13, Crater Lake received about 355 inches.
Climate researchers expect the trend to continue. They predict the Pacific Northwest will experience even less snow and warmer temperatures in the decades to come.
I gather it’s a lovely place. September 25:
When it comes to confronting global climate change, Oregon’s not alone. Everywhere on Earth, people are discovering that the bill for a century-long carbon binge is coming due. Whether it’s devastated agriculture, rising sea levels and oceanic acidification, extreme and unpredictable weather, or the kind of droughts that are disrupting ecosystems at Crater Lake, we can no longer ignore the warning signs.
There’s a lot of argument about how to prepare for the greenhouse effect’s consequences — but one thing is certain: we will never successfully address climate change if we cannot accept its existence, its causes, and its potential to harm our neighborhoods, our regions, our states, our nation, and our world. The time is past for denial; politicians and media figures who continue to hide their heads in the sand on this planetary crisis are sacrificing the happiness of future generations for a few minutes in the limelight.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists IPCC media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 10, Day 1: They All Lived Happily Ever After
The Border Mail (Australia) talks about the IPCC report in unambiguous language:
Early next week, hundreds of scientists will meet in Stockholm’s Brewery Conference Centre to put the finishing touches on the world’s most important climate change document. It is unlikely the beer will be flowing.
By Friday the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will have released the results of its labour – the first part of its fifth major assessment of climate science.
Its last report, released six years ago, delivered a stark message: the climate is warming mostly because of human activity and poses a major threat – especially if global temperatures increase by more than two degrees.
Go beyond two degrees and the planet faces dangerously rising seas, larger drought-affected areas and more frequent extreme weather events, amid other dire projections.
That report won the group the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which the panel’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, observed would ”be seen as a clarion call for the protection of the Earth as it faces the widespread impacts of climate change”.
Six years on, the fifth report’s core findings remain largely the same, only now there is even greater scientific certainty. But already, it is clear the fanfare that greeted the last report is unlikely to be repeated. And so far it is the areas of uncertainty in the report – inevitable when dealing with scientific predictions – that are creating headlines.
To prepare the report, scientists from throughout the world volunteer years of their lives to collate and assess data and modelling results to pull together the report’s 3000 or so pages. The report is split into three sections: the first dealing with the physical science, the second and third – due out next year – looking at impacts and ways to cut emissions.
The IPCC does no research of its own, but calls on the expertise of about 830 scientists to draw together evidence from thousands of sources – from ice-core samples drilled out of Antarctica, to ocean temperature records sampled kilometres below the surface – to form the most comprehensive picture of the Earth’s climate system.
Scientists who were lead authors on the report gave Fairfax Media a consistent message: the evidence of a warming planet caused by human activity – such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests – is stronger than six years ago.
Dire. September 23:
As the new IPCC report shows, the scientific evidence both for climate change’s human causes and the profound danger it represents is now overwhelming. As their political power ebbs and flows, climate-change deniers are finding it harder and harder to keep up the pretense of objectivity.
There are five stages of climate denial: 1 – it’s not happening; 2 – it’s happening but humans don’t cause it; 3 – humans cause it but it’s not so bad, really; 4 – it’s really bad, but it’s too expensive to fix; 5 – it’s too late to do anything, so let’s have a party instead. Wholly controlled by their petroleum paymasters and aided and abetted by a complaisant media, the titular leaders of the industrialized world have spent decades begrudgingly working their way to stage two.
Assuming the IPCC report pushes them along to stage three, expect to see cheerful talking heads on television telling us that a warmer planet will mean millions of new jobs manufacturing air conditioners. Plants will grow taller, food will be more nourishing, and economies worldwide will boom. Our children will be smarter and more beautiful, and everyone will be above average.
No, they won’t.
Such fairy tales are beneath contempt. All five stages of denial represent intellectual and moral abdications of our responsibilities to our posterity, our species, and to the planetary web of life of which we are a part.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes denialists idiots media irresponsibility scientific consensus scientific method
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 18: That Thesis Has Been Proven Invalid
The Press-Enterprise (CA) editorializes mendaciously:
Taking the temperature of climate scientists provides no useful information about the Earth’s climate. Yet the claim that “97 percent of scientists agree!” has become the anti-carbon-dioxide crowd’s No. 1 argument for why climate action can wait no longer. Those who set policy would do better to follow the facts than succumb to red herrings and peer pressure.
Environmental Research Letters, an electronic journal of environmental science, in May published a paper by two climate bloggers. The paper, by, Dana Nuccitelli and John Cook, purported to “quantify the consensus” on climate change in scientific literature. They reviewed 12,000 published papers and concluded that 97 percent of the abstracts that took a position “endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
But the “consensus view” into which the survey pigeonholes papers is extremely broad. And given the buzz the paper has generated, the climate czars in Washington should have had a few follow-up questions: “What does this tell us about the role of humans versus natural variability?” “How severe is the phenomenon you identify and what do you recommend that we do about it?” “What data lead you to that conclusion?” And maybe even, “Who are you guys?”
But no. President Obama — or those who fill his Twitter feed — immediately took up the cause, not only accepting the findings uncritically but exaggerating them: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climate change is real, man-made and dangerous.”
It makes me sooooo tired. September 11:
The editorial purporting to demonstrate methodological flaws in a recent study of the consensus among climate scientists is, ironically, far more factually-challenged than the research it tries to criticize. To begin with, the study wasn’t produced by a pair of “bloggers”, but by nine separate authors, all practicing professional scientists. Furthermore, this particular paper was deliberately confined to examining a significant discrepancy between popular perception and scientific opinion on climate change; it is inherent in the nature of such research to tackle one problem at a time.
More significantly, while there are many aspects of climate change which remain still uncertain, human causation isn’t one of them.
In politics and media, pre-existing political orientations often influence “factuality,” as was tragically demonstrated by the buildup to the Iraq war. But science doesn’t work that way: scientific method requires stringent self-correction as a way of getting at the truth. When climatologists all over the planet agree that humans are causing the greenhouse effect, this consensus arises from decades of steady examination and analysis of multiple types of evidence. Widespread agreement doesn’t prove that global warming is anthropogenic; rather, the evidence has created the agreement.
Your column was ill-conceived, irresponsible and without foundation.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: 350 analogies heroes media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 9, Day 2: Remember That Stuff We Had Back In The Old Days? That Was Good Stuff, Man.
South Coast Today (MA) talks about these excellent specimens of humanity:
NEW BEDFORD — Eighty people rallied for green jobs and wind energy Thursday as the six-day long Energy Exodus march from Brayton Point Power Station stopped in both New Bedford and Fairhaven on the way to a Hyannis rally for Cape Wind.
“Today we’re celebrating the construction of (South Terminal) behind us here, showing that there are already jobs coming to the SouthCoast because of the wind industry,” said Craig Altemose, executive director of Better Future Project, which is organizing the 66-mile march to build momentum for clean energy.
“This is not some idealistic dream — there are real, good jobs and there’s a lot more where those came.”
With the hurricane barrier on one side, old mill buildings behind and the Fairhaven turbines off in the distance, the crew of marchers stood at South Terminal cheering New Bedford for its move towards green energy.
No sarcasm here. Only admiration. Wish I was out there with ’em. August 29:
Almost two hundred and forty years ago, courageous patriots responded to a midnight call, and their actions are not only an indelible part of our nation’s history, but an eloquent argument for heeding early-warning systems.
Today’s Paul Reveres are the world’s climatologists, who have been sounding the alarm for decades, in the face of a complacent citizenry and a complaisant political establishment. And today’s “Minutemen”? They’re the people who recognize the urgency of the warning, and the need for action, whether it’s “positive” (pressing for new sources of renewable energy instead of carbon-polluting fossil fuels) or “negative” (working to block destructive initiatives like the disastrous Keystone XL pipeline).
In a media environment where the majority of the world’s eyes are focused on the latest pop-tart’s scandal du jour, environmentalists face marginalization, hostility, and ridicule as they strive to make possible a world in which our energy consumption no longer imperils our species’ future. The members of the Energy Exodus march are the true patriots of our time.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture corporate irresponsibility denialists media irresponsibility
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Year 4, Month 8, Day 25: Eat. Eat. We’re Paying For You Like An Adult!
Under an overcast Saturday morning sky July 27, bright blue and red signs proclaiming “Climate Action: It’s Our Obligation” and “It’s Time to Cut Carbon” were taped to a table boasting equally eye-catching mounds of ripe tomatoes. A cluster of Boise Farmers Market shoppers paused to listen as local-food advocates discussed the intersection of local farming and climate change at a rally dubbed Producing Food, Reducing Carbon: An Event for People Who Grow and Eat Food.
“Probably nobody in our community deals with weather more than farmers; we are always checking the forecast,” said Meadowlark Farm owner Janie Burns. “Is it going to be good for planting? Is it going to rain? Is it going to snow? What’s the wind going to do? And so, when we think about the weather that’s just what’s happening today, sometimes we don’t pay attention much to those very small changes, those insidious changes that are happening in our climate.”
The farmer is the one who feeds us all. July 31:
Climatic transformations are happening everywhere around the planet, affecting local ecosystems and regional agriculture in profound and unpredictable ways. While farmers are always aware of weather conditions, it is a sad fact that many are still prone to rejecting the reality of the climate crisis, even as it unfolds around them.
This tendency to denial stems from several factors. First and foremost is the simple fact that nobody likes to contemplate bad news. And when it’s bad news set at some indefinite point in the future, it’s all too easy to put off responding to another day (a strategy employed by our government on climate issues since the likely consequences of the greenhouse effect were first discussed in the late 1950s).
But there is another element in the equation which is far less forgivable. Fossil-fuel corporations, eager to maintain their mind-bending profitability, have invested millions of dollars in “think tanks” and “institutes” which provide the print and broadcast media with handsome, telegenic, and authoritative-sounding “consultants,” “analysts,” and “research associates.” These people are amply paid to recite misinformation as a counter to the words of increasingly worried climate scientists. By confusing the public discussion, these corporate miscreants ensure their continued profitability, pitting their greed against the planet’s need.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility island nations media irresponsibility rising seas
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Year 4, Month 8, Day 22: Skerble Wop Derp, Herp Wing Derblewop!
The Manila Standard (Philippines) notes the 2012 World Risk Report:
Just recently, the Alliance Development Works, United Nations University and The Nature Conservancy released the 2012 World Risk Report, which ranked the all countries according to their vulnerability to risk. In this report, the Philippines was identified as the third highest disaster risk hotspot in the world, the result of combining a high exposure to natural hazards and climate change with a very vulnerable society. The Philippines comes after Vanuatu and Tonga, which were ranked first and second, respectively.
That the Philippines is ranked so high in the World Risk Index may actually seem both fitting and ironic. It is fitting because given the country’s high exposure to the risks brought about by climate change, the government responded quickly by putting in place policies aimed at addressing these risks. The Philippines is one of the first few countries that came out with definite climate change policies, and actually enacted laws on climate change. At the same time however, it may seem ironic because despite such an acknowledgement of these risks, there still seems to be a rather raw understanding of climate change in general, and what is needed to address it.
The Climate Change Act established the Climate Change Commission in 2009, and gave it the task of coordinating climate change-related actions and policies. As part of its mandate, the CCC produced the National Framework Strategy on Climate Change, and the National Climate Change Action Plan. The even more recent establishment of the People’s Survival Fund, meanwhile, provides an avenue for the management of climate financing at the national level.
Calling out the lying liars is always appropriate. July 30:
That there is still widespread ignorance of the causes and consequences of planetary climate change in this day and age is no longer something that can be attributed to chance. The effects of an intensifying greenhouse effect triggered by increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are all around us. It is a sad irony that the Philippines and other island nations are most at risk from these phenomena, despite contributing essentially nothing to the problem.
For some decades there has been active collusion between multinational fossil-fuel corporations and the majority of the world’s print and broadcast news outlets. The American journalist A.J. Liebling’s quip, “Freedom of the press is only guaranteed to those who own one,” tells almost the whole story. Equipped with unimaginable sums of money and the respectful attention of the world’s leaders, these corporate miscreants have corrupted and diluted public discussion of an environmental crisis from the worst possible motivation: to protect their already grotesquely large profits. It’s their greed versus humanity’s need.
Warren Senders