The Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate recently released "Climate Patriots: A Military Perspective on Energy, Climate Change and American National Security." This five-minute feature video showcasing the inextricable links between climate change, our energy posture and our nation's security.
"Climate Patriots" addresses how America's dependence on foreign oil puts our armed forces in harm's way and how the effects of climate change could lead to more humanitarian missions and political instability. It features a number of military experts, including former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John Warner (R-VA). This video reinforces the recent Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review that declared "Climate change... may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world."
To learn more about the Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate go to www.pewclimatesecurity.com/ Pew National Security is distributing the "Climate Patriots" video throughout the nation, if your organization, school or program would like a DVD copy of this video please contact Matt Leow at mleow@mrss.com or 406-370-3183 to obtain your copy.
This post by Ed Morrissey highlighting a peer-reviewed article questioning the role of climate change in strength and frequency of hurricanes is emblematic with what's wrong with the conservative movement.
For starters, there's always been controversy within the scientific community about the effect of warming global temperatures on storms - especially hurricanes. And note that the article cited second-hand from a Murdoch-owned newspaper essentially reaffirms that climate change is real; all that's being questioned is the effect of warming on hurricane severity. There are similar peer-reviewed scientific articles taking the opposite view.
Additionally, Morrissey isn't challenging scientific consensus here (emphasis mine):
In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) activists insisted that the stronger storm systems resulted from the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, making hurricanes increasingly more severe. These claims made their way into the UN's IPCC report and have been a staple of AGW arguments for immediate and drastic action to limit energy production as part of the "settled science" attempt to shut down debate.
Note that it was the media who ran off with the hurricane-strength-influenced-by-climate-change meme after Hurricane Katrina. And so a conservative blogger uses a distorted opinion from a biased newspaper to argue against uninformed opinions formed by the mass media...and concluding that global warming isn't happening.
It's not a stance that represents any discernible ideology. Instead, it's simply contrarian, pernicious arguing intended to confuse for political gain.
Sound familiar? It's the same kind of rhetoric we hear against the stimulus package, denying that the infusion of money failed to create jobs. Or rhetoric against health care, where calls for a rethinking of reform don't actually mean Republicans would like to rethink reform, they're meant to confuse, obstruct.
Thoughtful, rational conservatives exist. Only they're drowned out by the crazies, the Glen Becks and Tea Baggers who cry "socialism" and frame opposing policies, not as ineffective or inefficient or expensive, but as a danger to the very body politic. Any policy put forward by a Democrat is a threat to the fabric of the nation.
In the past, the GOP has always seemed to let the crazies keen and gnash their teeth, while all along they put the adults in charge of policy. You saw that during the Reagan administration, when the president paid lip service to the tax-cut and big-government rhetoric that got him elected, all the while raising taxes and racking up enormous budget deficits.
But the problem is that the reasonable people are losing control. The worst of Bush Jr's administration happened as a result of sticking too close to the rhetoric. Deregulation, runaway spending, and tax cuts for the wealthy led to financial crisis and huge budget deficits. Delusional war game theories led to the "Bush Doctrine" -- preemptive invasion and perpetual war. And now it seems the rational people have gone away, driven off by the Roger Koopmans of the right.
It's too bad, especially during the time of crisis we're in now. Rampant unemployment...budget deficits, spurred largely by rising health care costs...potential global environmental catastrophe...and for each, the conservative response has been denial.
So what did happen? CRU took the raw data from various primary sources, aggregated it and then made adjustments. It is some of the aggregation that they threw out when they moved a few decades ago. This means that the original data still exists at the primary sources and can be reaggregated. In fact, CRU is busy doing that just now.
Where did I get this information? From one of the largest thorns in the AGW community's side, Roger Pielke Jr., who seems completely satisfied with their explanation.
Mikkal Fishman reminds us that scientific data is often jealously guarded by scientists when new discoveries are made, or hypotheses. "Climategate" may actually benefit climate change science by forcing climatologists to "develop a standardized way of disseminating their data and models to the public," which will be a good thing.
The NYTimes' Andrew Revkin notes that the controversy has, at least, caused CRU to make their data available. Still, as an Illinois climatologist notes, the exposed emails served as "a complete distraction from the body of evidence pointing to a human hand on the planet's thermostat." After all, even the harshest, "rational" critics make no bones about the substance of climatology's findings, just the style of scientists....
...which brings us back to yesterday's post, which noted that it's the kind of behavior you'd expect from folks who have been on the receiving end of a massive, years-long, corporate-funded disinformation campaign.
There's been some noise from the right about "climategate" - apparently some emails were hacked from an English university's climate scientists that showed...well, according to climate change deniers, a world-wide plot to "trick" everybody into believing that the Earth is heating up...but actually were angry emails blasting shoddy science and the periodicals that published it. Righties already convinced of the world-wide climate plot cherry-picked some phrases from the emails, and distorted their meaning to incite like-minded conspiracy theorists.
The sad news in all of this is that there is a real conspiracy surrounding climate science, but it's not scientists and environmentalists working for - what? One-world government? Bison running free on the Northern Plains? (It's never explained, really.) Instead, there's real conspiracy of big industry to muddy the water on science and to sow enough doubt in the minds of Americans and others so that passing real and effective climate change legislation - which would be harmful the profit margins of fossil fuel companies - will be difficult or impossible.
Never mind, you know, the catastrophic effects to our children and grandchildren.
As Jeff Masters points out, the campaign of misinformation is nothing new, but following the well-heeled trail that industry used to thwart or delay legislation on cigarettes, asbestos, and chlorofluorocarbons.
Masters:
You'll hear claims by some contrarians that the emails discovered invalidate the whole theory of human-caused global warming. Well, all I can say is, consider the source. We can trust the contrarians to say whatever is in the best interests of the fossil fuel industry. What I see when I read the various stolen emails and explanations posted at Realclimate.org is scientists acting as scientists--pursuing the truth. I can see no clear evidence that calls into question the scientific validity of the research done by the scientists victimized by the stolen emails. There is no sign of a conspiracy to alter data to fit a pre-conceived ideological view. Rather, I see dedicated scientists attempting to make the truth known in face of what is probably the world's most pervasive and best-funded disinformation campaign against science in history. Even if every bit of mud slung at these scientists were true, the body of scientific work supporting the theory of human-caused climate change--which spans hundreds of thousands of scientific papers written by tens of thousands of scientists in dozens of different scientific disciplines--is too vast to be budged by the flaws in the works of the three or four scientists being subject to the fiercest attacks.
The Senate Environment and Public Works committee today passed the Senate's version of the cap-and-trade climate-change legislation bill - Sens. Kerry and Boxer's "Clean Energy Jobs Act." The bill passed by a 10-1 margin...with Republicans boycotting the vote.
Ah, so who's the sole Democrat that voted against the legislation?
Max Baucus.
Not that it's much of a surprise. Baucus raised "concerns" with the bill last month, saying the 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 was too lofty a goal. Baucus' statement -- "we cannot afford a first step that takes us further away from a conceivable consensus on climate change" - hints that he'll stall the bill in the Tax and Finance committee, likely convening a "green" "Gang of Six" to gut the bill, or kill it altogether.
Frankly, Baucus should listen to Lindsey Graham, Republican:
The green economy is coming. We can either follow or lead. And those countries who follow will pay a price. Those nations who lead in creating the new green economy for the world will make money.
Or retired admiral Dennis McGinn, who reminded Montana's delegation that climate change is a national security issue.
Sadly, Dennis McDonald demonstrates how you can join Baucus in opposing climate change legislation while simultaneously keeping your enviro "cred," from his Facebook page:
Cap and trade has proven to be complex, inefficient, and an obstacle to investment in alternative energy. I think a straightforward carbon emissions tax would be a lot simpler and a more effective way of getting people to invest in alternative energy.
And the Waxman-Markey House cap-and-trade bill, with all of its faults, sets the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. That's huge.
In case you missed it, a lot of interesting things happened this week, a lot of them deserving their own posts. But, sadly, there's only so much time in the day...
Just when you thought the issues around the Flathead Lake Boat Crash couldn't get any more asinine, they do.
James Conner has the details of that night's incident - apparently Barkus thought he was heading in the opposite direction than he actually was, and was pulling a u-turn at 45 mph in the dark in treacherous waters when he struck the lake bank. Dan Testa, too, has a good roundup of that night's events - two scotches and an unknown amount of red and white wine for Barkus. Just the thing for a chilly night out on the lake.
Now Barkus' lawyer is challenging the .16 BAC results - which, I know, is his right to do and probably a smart legal maneuver. But Barkus is also planning on finishing out his Senate term, as if nothing's happened here, as if he hadn't just boozed up and almost killed himself and four others on Flathead Lake.
The crash was a good sign he's got a problem, eh? I mean, for most of us, this would be a kind of, I dunno, a wake-up call, wouldn't it?
That's the way I'd see it if it were me. I'd be apologizing my *ss off to the friends and family of those I injured through my loathsome behavior, I'd cooperate with the authorities and plea bargain my way into a just punishment, resign my public office because of the deficiency of my character, and I'd check myself into a rehab clinic, ASAP. I mean, wouldn't most people feel some remorse, and want to repent and work to rehabilitate themselves?
Instead, Barkus is still out there, still a drunk, and, probably as soon as he's walking again, back behind the wheel. And he'll be passing laws over you. So much for personal responsibility.
* * *
As always, there's plenty of news from Hardin.
The Billings Gazette got its hands on the "memorandum of understanding" between Hardin and the APF - which it had to get by court order, apparently because it's pretty embarrassing to Hardin officials - that revealed the city did have an agreement with Hilton's company to have the APF supply Hardin with a police force for $250K. The contract toned the language down, but the memo certainly explains the Hardin Police Force decals on APF SUVs.
Naturally, with all the furor over these SUVs, Hardin is looking to start its own police force.
But the American Police Force takeover of the Hardin jail only looks dead. While Hardin put the deal with APF on hold after revelations of Michael Hilton's checkered past, a mysterious APF investor stepped forward (anonymously, of course) and noted the firm would still pursue the Hardin jail contract, only without "Captain" Michael Hilton on board.
...Nike announced (pdf) that it is resigning from the board of directors because of the group's views on climate change policy. The Chamber was already in a tailspin this week, attempting to reclassify their position on climate policy following the departure of three major utilities.
"Nike believes US businesses must advocate for aggressive climate change legislation and that the United States needs to move rapidly into a sustainable economy to remain competitive and ensure continued economic growth," Nike said in a statement. "As we've stated, we fundamentally disagree with the US Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change and their recent action challenging the EPA is inconsistent with our view that climate change is an issue in need of urgent action."
(And wouldn't it be interesting to investigate whether similar splits exist in the Montana CoC?)
Meanwhile, in the wake of members abandoning the organization, the US Chamber of Commerce denies ever questioning the science behind global warming. Surprise! That is, of course, a lie.
Meanwhile, Sens. Kerry and Boxer unveiled their version of cap-and-trade legislation today. Its targeted carbon emissions levels are actually more aggressive than the House Waxman-Markey bill, which implies that some Democratic Senators, at least, learned lessons from how the healthcare reform strategy worked.
The split among the ranks of Chamber of Commerce members, too, makes the battle lines a bit murky. Will the bill pit the monolithic and anachronistic energy industry against the nation's more forward-thinking corporations? Who knows? I thought America's industries might push harder on public insurance in the healthcare debate - certainly our system's reliance on employer-provided insurance is a drag on most sectors of our economy - maybe folks should remember that these problems don't belong to a single economic sector, they belong to us all...
In their report, researchers at Headwaters Economics, an independent nonprofit research group in Bozeman, MT, predict that climate change and the accelerating movement of western residents to areas near or in undeveloped forests will likely prove to be a devastating combination. That 1-degree increase in spring and summer temperatures, they conclude, will increase the area burned by seasonal fires in Montana by more than 300 percent and more than double the cost of protecting homes threatened by fire.
Also mentioned in the article is the outbreak of mountain pine beetles, which is also the result of increasing temperatures.
Check out the Headwaters Economics' report (pdf). Here are the main conclusions:
-- Firefighting costs are highly correlated with the number of homes threatened by a fire.
- The pattern of development (dense vs. spread out) is an important contributing factor.
- When large forest fires burn near homes, costs related to housing usually exceed $1 million per fire.
- As few as 150 additional homes threatened by fire can result in a $13 million increase in suppression
costs in a single year.
- For all agencies involved in fire suppression in Montana, the estimated annual costs related to home
protection for 2006 and 2007 were approximately $55 million and $36 million, respectively.
- If current development trends continue, fires seasons similar to 2006 and 2007 could cost $15 to $23
million more by 2025, bringing total fire suppression costs associated with homes to between $51 and
$79 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation, future costs could be as high as $124 million in 2025.
- A conservative estimate is that 25% of all costs of protecting homes from wildfires within Montana
are paid for by the state. Therefore, Montana's costs for home protection in 2006 and 2007 are
estimated to have been $13.9 million and $9.2 million, respectively. By 2025, Montana's future
costs, adjusted for inflation, could be as high as $31 million.
If we're seriously worried about increasingly large wildfires, the escalating costs of fire suppression, the rapid spread of the mountain pine beetle infestation, and the necessary associated burden on the state and federal taxpayer, there are solutions.
For one, we should support and pass climate change legislation.
For another, Montana's state and local officials and lawmakers should consider and pass legislation that curbs, if not halts, rural development. Maybe we should consider creating "fire suppression zones," or the like, in private property will not be protected by fire suppression efforts, or protected at the landowner's expense.
Likewise, salvage logging should be encouraged, or even contracted, in and around communities and properties within protected zones, and in areas of massive beetle infestation to clear away dead timber. Of course, as Plum Creek's style of salvage logging around Seeley Lake has shown, there will need to be some regulatory oversight of the timber companies - bad salvage logging is worse for fires than congested forest tangled with dead timber.
CAP, again, on the consequences if we don't do anything:
Destruction of trees by the mountain pine beetle, combined with climate change and fire, makes for a dangerous feedback loop. Dead forests sequester less carbon dioxide. Burning forests release lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More carbon dioxide adds to climate change, which raises temperatures, stresses forests, and makes more and bigger fires more likely.
It's a frightening prospect, as British Columbia's Forests Minister Pat Bell told an International Energy Agency conference last week. "I am not a doomsayer," said Bell. "I am not one who wants to say we are beyond the tipping point. But I am afraid that we are getting close to that."
Logging, of course, is not the only answer to these problems. It's not even the primary solution. Instead, it should be a tool for managing forests in and around our communities.
Helena's city commission met last week to earnestly discuss something that three years ago would have been a sacrilege: logging Mount Helena city park.
The mountain park, as iconic to the capital as the Rims are to Billings or the "M" to Missoula, is now streaked with ribbons of dead, red pine trees, the victims of a fast-moving epidemic of pine bark beetles that is visible from every house in town.
Helena and Butte are in the epicenter of the infestation, but the tiny killers have also been found in the Beartooth Mountains and other Montana and Wyoming forests. The dead trees they leave behind have changed more than the landscape, say loggers, mill operators and politicians. They've changed the way people think about cutting down trees.
Question: given the epidemic is a result of climate change, why isn't the bark beetle epidemic reshaping the debate on global warming legislation?
When New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called upon "young Americans" to "get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon," another columnist, Mark Steyn, responded: "If you're 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you're graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade."
Which could explain why the Mall does not reverberate with youthful clamors about carbon. And why, regarding climate change, the U.S. government, rushing to impose unilateral cap-and-trade burdens on the sagging U.S. economy, looks increasingly like someone who bought a closetful of platform shoes and bell-bottom slacks just as disco was dying.
Global temps have been trending up for over a century, but in any particular year they can spike up and down quite a bit. In 1998 they spiked up far above the trend line and last year they spiked below the trend line. So 2008 was cooler than 1998.
Of course, you can prove anything you want if you cherry pick your starting and ending points carefully enough. For example: The year 2000 was below the trend line and 2005 was above it. Temps were up 0.4°C in only five years! The seas will be boiling by 2050!
So...is George Will an idiot? Does he really not understand these simple concepts? Or is he purposefully disingenuous? What stuns me is that these people are toying with a planetary catastrophe.
...if the consensus of the economic experts is grim, the consensus of the climate experts is utterly terrifying. At this point, the central forecast of leading climate models - not the worst-case scenario but the most likely outcome - is utter catastrophe, a rise in temperatures that will totally disrupt life as we know it, if we continue along our present path. How to head off that catastrophe should be the dominant policy issue of our time.
American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.
There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.
The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.
Gasp! Shades of Bush, suppressing science at the EPA for political reasons! Are they all the same???
Don't worry, citizens! Senator James Inhofe is there, and demands an investigation!
"It's clear that the data EPA used were outdated and inconsistent, as the report's authors have revealed," Senator Inhofe said. "Making scientific decisions while ignoring key data politicizes the scientific process and shows that important policy decisions are being made in a black box. The Agency's actions fail to meet the Administrator's commitment to transparency and openness."
"The Agency's commitment to transparency must be more than just words. The EPA cannot put a gag order on sound science," Barrasso said. "Folks' livelihoods are on the line."
...the emails reveal little more than a rather tedious employee-management dispute. Carlin's boss, Al McGartland, tells Carlin that his report won't be included in the EPA's official findings and asks him to get back to work on other issues. EPA Press Secretary Adora Andy noted that Carlin's education and work expertise are largely in economics, not climatology. That's why his comments on climate science were not included.
Apparently the economist was given lots of opportunity to voice his opinion and sit in on various committees that dealt with climate change. So why was his opinion suppressed? Because of politics?
If you read the story of how the emails came about in the first place - an economist, with climate change science as his "hobby" submitted an unsolicited opinion that took four days to research and write, and cited, among others, an astrologer - and you realize who"leaked" the emails to the media, the whole story looks ridiculous. CBS News should skulk offstage, shame faced.
Unbelievable. I'll never understand how someone could actually work for an organization like CEI. Maybe they belong the race of shape-shifting lizard men from outer space, or something, because I don't understand how you do work like this, manipulate the media with what are clear lies, when so much is at stake...
Ezra Klein recently noted that 1 in 4 coal-state Democrats voted against the recent cap-and-trade bill in the House, and saw that as a reason for optimism:
Even so, that means only one-in-four of the coal state Democrats voted no. I'd like to see those results drilled down to coal-dependent districts, but still, that's quite a bit less parochial defection than one might imagine. Indeed, hailing from a coal state wasn't nearly as strong a predictor of a given representative's vote than whether his district voted for Barack Obama. While one in four Democrats in coal states voted against cap-and-trade, three in five Democrats in districts that McCain carried voted against the bill. Similarly, seven of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill hailed from districts that Obama carried.
Another way of putting this is that the evidence suggests that this vote was less about parochial interests than partisanship and ideology. Plenty of Democrats from coal states made the judgment that they could defend this legislation to their constituents.
What's more interesting is that a quarter of the coal state Dems voted against the bill even though it had already been massively watered down to reflect coal state interests. In its current state, Waxman-Markey has very little effect on coal state interests for at least the next decade, and possibly for more like 20 years. But even so, lots of coal state Dems voted against it despite the fact that passage is a major goal of the party leadership, it's a major goal of the president, and it's the right thing to do. I'd call that pretty damn parochial.
But it may not be pressure from the coal industry that decides this thing in the Senate; instead, according to a New York Times report, it may be agricultural interests that does it in. And consider this insight from public policy professor, Barry Rabe:
[Agriculture] organizations wield greater clout in the Senate, because members there must be protective of an entire state, rather than a small congressional district, he said. With a huge swath of the country containing farmland, the complaints raise the possibility that a group will gain the ear of a sympathetic member of Congress with the power to filibuster, he said.
Sens. Baucus and Tester were singled out as especially vulnerable to the beef industry on the topic.
I'd also assume that energy lobbies would enjoy the same advantages over their states' Senators, and that coal-state defection would be at a higher rate than 1-in-4. And given that Montana is both a coal and agricultural state...I'd say we're not going to see support from Jon and Max on a cap-and-trade bill...unless we let them know anything else would be unacceptable.
...we're facing a clear and present danger to our way of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify failing to act?
Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking - if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided - they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.
But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn't see people who've thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don't like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they've decided not to believe in it - and they'll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.
Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday's debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a "hoax" that has been "perpetrated out of the scientific community." I'd call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists - a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.
Yet Mr. Broun's declaration was met with applause....
Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn't it politics as usual?
Yes, it is - and that's why it's unforgivable.
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an "existential threat" to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole - but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Of course, not quite understanding that Krugman was turning the right-wingers' use of the word "treason" against them - pointing out the hypocrisy of an earlier, hyperbolic use of the term for a threat that wasn't quite all that it was made out to be, by contrasting it with the same folks' laconic attitude towards an all-too real and present catastrophic threat - naturally the usual people went completely bath*t.
Mac: "...how can you look at a plan to save the planet and decide that it's too expensive?"
And Dan Savage has a d*mn good point as he mulls Kristof's column on the increasing number of male genital deformities and the ever-decreasing sperm cell count for which scientists think a certain class of chemicals found in "agriculture, industry, and consumer products" may be responsible. Savage:
Sperm counts are falling and birth defects in boys are increasing... and to address these problems we're going to need to change the way we grow food and eliminate certain chemicals used in tens of thousands of industrial and consumer products. These kinds of big systemic changes seem unlikely when you consider that making the simplest and most obvious changes to benefit the environment-things like banning plastic shopping bags-are nearly impossible, to say nothing of taking action on climate change. We're fucked. The planet is going to roast and our sons' penises are going to fall off.
And it's because of the selfish intransigence of consumers who threaten rebellion over sparkly dishes and the politicians that feed their ignorance and misdirect their anger. I mean, shouldn't these people be p*ssed at the corporations that put the poison into our environment, the businesses and ad agencies that conned consumers into believing that easy livin' was theirs for the low, low price...? Well, it turns out easy livin' does have a price. And the long-term payment plan is a b*tch.
Man watching the global-warming deniers contort reason to sow doubt among the public is painful to watch. Yesterday the meme was that cap-and-trade legislation is expensive, it'll mean jobs and taxes. (Not so much.) Today, it's that global warming is a big, fat hoax.
Here we go again.
All you need to know is that there's near unanimity that the climate is warming, and that human activity is contributing to the warming. Among those scientific institutes that say global warming is real and supported by science include NASA, NOAA, National Academy of Sciences, American Meteorological Society, EPA, The Royal Society of the UK, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Royal Academy of Canada, Russian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Australian Academy of Sciences, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Academy of Sciences...
BP and Shell acknowledged that global warming is real. Even Exxon - the big baddie that orchestrated and funded the climate-change-denial movement - admits global warming is real and something should be done about it.
So if you're like Senator James Inhofe and believe climate change is the "greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people," you've got to set aside reason to do so. After all, what manner of hoax could so infiltrate nearly all of the major scientific organizations throughout he world? And even include the energy companies to stand to benefit the most financially from climate change skepticism? Inhofe attacks those that insist climate change is real as members of a "religion" - yet it's only faith that supports the paranoia of the denial movement in the face of so much overwhelming evidence, faith that nearly all of the scientific community and government leaders from around the world would work in concert to achieve...what, exactly? Sadly, the duplicitous goal these people have is never explicitly stated.
(And does anyone else find it ironic that, in his speech shortly after he calls for the debate on climate change to be based on the "fundamental principles of science," he recommends Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" as an appropriate reference text? Which is, you know, fiction?)
To me, it reeks of politics. Like health-care reform, it appears that Republicans are set to block any and all Democratic legislation. And to do so in this case - the cap-and-trade bill up for vote in the House today - they're essentially sowing doubt as to the very existence of climate change.
Which seems incredibly short-sighted, if you ask me.
Whoa! It looks like the Republican party fax was busy this morning sending out marching orders to the rank-and-file. Today's topic? Cap and trade!
First, I saw this bit of Eric-Cantor-inspired agitprop on Dennis Rehberg's Facebook page, claiming a cap-and-trade system would cause job losses and be, in effect, a tax on middle-class households. George Will lays it on, too, citing a study from a Spanish libertarian (and paid commenter for a US energy industry front group) claiming Spain's unemployment rate stems from its commitment to green energy projects. (Odd, no mention of investment banks.) Michelle Malkin, naturally, can't stand being left behind, and piles on with a gratuitous sliming of Al Gore, comparing him to a pig.
In response, I present you with a pair of Ezra Klein posts.
First, the CBO scored the current cap-and-trade bill in the House, and found it would cost households about $165 for the average household per year.
Which is cheap if you consider the CBO's analysis of climate change literature, and the projected change in temperature to the end of the 21st century...and you realize how much economic damage climate change would do, if unchecked.
I haven't really looked into the present cap-and-trade bill. (I will.) I admit there may be problems with it. (Is it being rushed?) But in a sense, this issue is even more crucial than health-care reform. After all, if climate change science is correct, we're headed towards eco-disaster.
So, yeah. The GOPers and their minions are trotting out the "taxes" line - but, again, it's a very selfish, very self-centered philosophy, isn't it? And it's grossly irresponsible. When you hear some conservative spout off about morals being the root cause of American decline, just nod and say, yeah, there's too much short-sighted selfishness and greed.
The U.S. House is moving pretty quickly on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as Waxman-Markey). This bill is the primary vehicle for a carbon cap in Congress, which is to say it is the primary vehicle to stop global warming.
New modeling shows a 9 degree rise in global temperatures is a highly probably outcome of global warming at this point. This is what trained scientists refer to as a "Holy Fuck!" scenario, because it is really, really bad news.
So the next question, obviously, would be, "What can we do to get this shit under control?" And the answer, so far, is that the Clean Energy and Security Act is our starting point, but unlikely to be the final answer.
Here's some details:
The original draft [...] was a mixed bag: its "complementary policies" (the 75% of the bill devoted to energy stuff unrelated to cap-and-trade) were excellent, and its targets for climate pollution reduction were bolder than anticipated, but it allowed for far too many carbon offsets and left unsettled the key issue of how the pollution permits under cap-and-trade would be allocated.
Since then, the decision has apparently been made to give away permits rather than auctioning them (a net loser for most of us AND for the environment since auctions would raise revenue to rebate to offset costs to the low-income and also to build out things like mass transit and since auctions would put additional downward pressure on carbon).
And the bill probably just doesn't go far enough in attempts to limit carbon output. Now, I'm seen as a jerk in some corners because I think global warming is a big enough environmental problem that I'm open to nuclear or clean coal technology to avoid our planet frying alive. It ain't my goal, of course, but I've found the Gods have yet to issue me fiat power over our government, so I'm open to carbon sequestration and other things.
But all that said, what is fascinating to me is watching how the carbon debate mirrors the health care debate:
It comes down to how you see the big picture and the larger forces of history-that Rorschach blot. Those who have turned against the bill think there will be one chance to do this; they cite the Clean Air Act to show how crappy compromises get cemented in place in legislation and become very, very difficult to reopen. They're worried that if a weak bill is put in place, by the time the country seriously revisits it it could well be too late. It blows the one chance.
The bill's supporters think history is on their side. They see the most important goals as establishing a long-term declining cap on CO2 (the 2030 and 2050 targets remain strong in W-M), getting a carbon trading system up and running, and above all shifting off the status quo trajectory. They also point out that the U.S. desperately needs something to take to the international climate talks in Copenhagen in December. Only a show of good faith will get the rusty gears of multilateral negotiation turning again, and that process, too, cannot wait. As time passes, they say, climate change will hit harder, increasing political pressure to strengthen the system. States will accelerate their own programs; clean businesses will gain size and lobbying muscle; everyone will get much more serious about the problem and cognizant of the opportunities. This is the beginning of a journey that will only gain, not lose, momentum.
That's the single-payer folks and the HCAN team spelled out right there. It's the one-fell-swoop crowd v the incrementalists.
I had a fairly long conversation last evening with one of my favorite local conservation leaders. This discussion was at the very heart of it. When you're a principled incrementalist, the question is always what you're willing to settle for, because the reality is: if we pass major health care or global warming legislation in 2009, it will not be on the agenda again for at least several years in the same way.
Conversely, what we know from history is that when the issue dies in Congress, politicians back off their support for it, the media finds different stories, and the issue does not return again until a champion finds it once more.
Health care reform is very likely to occur this year before we move on to considering the carbon pollution caps (I don't coordinate the ball, I'm just reading the program they gave me), but this issue is going to be even tougher to navigate. It is nearly impossible to convince Americans that our healthcare system isn't broken. In the realm of climate science, disinformation still has sway.
Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real conclusions of science and how to distinguish them from scientific-sounding spin or misinformation?
Congress will soon consider global-warming legislation, and the debate comes as contradictory claims about climate science abound. Partisans of this issue often wield vastly different facts and sometimes seem to even live in different realities.
In this context, finding common ground will be very difficult.
Mooney's solution?
Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science itself.
Yeah, and the newspaper publishing the new, more rigorous commentaries will be delivered by a fleet of flying pigs.
Seriously, if we want to take action on climate change, we can't wait around for utopian journalistic ethics to kick in. Right now, the very existence of climate change has warped into a political issue and calls for a political solution. But what? A massive grassrootscampaign to educate voters and pressure lawmakers to respond to the science?
Local action? Of course, local action doesn't help when the neighboring town installs a coal-burning electricity plant while you're spending municipal dollars weatherizing city buildings, does it? At some point, we need federally-enforced standards for carbon dioxide pollution.
What have you got? Do you know of any other grassroots orgs tackling this problem? Possible solutions to the current political morass?
So...George Will's op-ed today "debunked" global warming, largely by referring to a belief in the 1970s that "a major cooling of the planet was inevitable." You know, first they say it's cooling! Now they say it's warming! Make up your mind already, and spare us the hysteria!
A number of folksquickly and thoroughly dismantled Will's claim about the 1970s scientific community and global cooling. (Not to mention his claim about arctic ice levels in 1979 -- and that rebuttal came from his supposed source.) In short, Will -- besides cherry-picking, misinterpreting, and inventing data -- based his column today on a dumbed-down, out-of-context re-telling by Newsweek of a 1970s scientific study about long-term climate forecasts.
In short, Will is writing a piece that misinforms the public about science based on a news report that misinformed the public about science.
And hasn't that been one of the inanities of this "debate," how the media has almost crimanally fumbled the topic? Unable -- either from lack of ability or lack of funds -- to research the issue and discern good from bad argument, the media has generally placed the scientific community's consensus on the issue against a handful of denier groups in an attempt to "balance" the "debate." Worse still, many of the data and groups that claim global warming are financed by industries that stand to benefit financially if global warming is thought to be a hoax -- and we also know that, for some energy corporations, exploiting the media to spread doubt about global warming was a condoned strategy.
Essentially, global warming has become just another talking point in a long and growing list of talking points that the conservative movement uses to keep apostates out of their fold (shrinking that big tent) and to berate liberals with, rather than viewing warming as both a real cause for worry, and as an opportunity to demonstrate honest governance. Apparently obstructionism and denial are better tactics.
...Conservatives should be reading these pieces and paying heed to the vast consensus on global warming. Even if there areome holes in the larger argument, that's still no excuse to ignore what very well may be the global crisis of the coming century. Conservatives ought to be conserving things, and the environment should be at the top of the list-even above rugged individulaism and the "right" to low taxes.
That's the thing, we're stuck debating whether global warming even exists. And that's exactly how conservatives -- weirdly beholden to the short-term interest of a small segment of the big business community -- wants it. And the media, always attuned to the insider echo chamber, presents this as a viable alternative...
Putting aside the environmental concerns, this news is somewhat ironic because the Emperor penguin, of course, was the star of "March of the Penguins," a documentary about the animals' incredible and complex lifecycle in a harsh climate and, as a result, became the poster animal for many conservative Christians:
The movie goes on to follow the penguins as they trek back and forth over 70 miles of ice to their breeding ground and huddle together to protect their eggs in temperatures that average 70 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
To Andrew Coffin, writing in the widely circulated Christian publication World Magazine, that is a winning argument for the theory that life is too complex to have arisen through random selection.
"That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat - and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design," he wrote. "It's sad that acknowledgment of a creator is absent in the examination of such strange and wonderful animals. But it's also a gap easily filled by family discussion after the film."
Many conservatives also viewed the movie as the triumph of monogamy, family, and faith.
Of course, the movie and the penguins were just symbols of Christian faith. (In reality, the penguins' mating habits are a stellar example of how evolution works -- the Emperor penguin's march and rearing strategy exploit an unused niche at the edge of a habitable ecosystem, a classic evolutionary strategy.) So, one wonders, what symbolic meaning of the penguins' eventual extinction provides? That monogomy, family, and faith failed? Given that the changes to our environment -- through habit destruction, pollution, and climate change -- favors the world's weed species -- rats, knapweed, and cockroaches -- what symbolic message does that send? That God prefers filth, disease, and lurid extravagance in creating progeny?
What's certain is that the penguins' design doesn't look so "intelligent" from where I'm sitting.
And certainly the Emperor penguins' precarious position posits some uncomfortable questions for the faithful friends of the Antarctic fowl: is global warming -- and the pigeon -- key to His Great Design? Or maybe, just maybe, man in his hubris and with billion upon billions of tons of carbon dioxide is cooking God's creation...?
