A MUST-READ ARTICLE ABOUT CLIMATE AND OUR FUTURE

A friend alerted me to a superb and extremely sobering article by Bill McKibben in the November 26, 2018 edition of the New Yorker. Entitled "How Extreme Weather is Shrinking the Planet," the piece lays out in detail the depth of the climate crisis we're in, and how we got here with the help of Exxon, the Koch brothers, Rex Tillerson and decades of dithering or deluded politicians. 

McKibben offers a ray of hope, if we the people, worldwide, can come together and fight against disinformation and special interests for our own survival and the survival of the biosphere that supports us.

The future is here--Southern California wildfire

Credit: FEMA

WILL CLIMATE-CHANGE DENIERS LEARN FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE?

Having followed and written about climate change and the science behind it for decades, I've also had to think a lot about climate-change denial. I've come to realize, ruefully, that science, starting with the most basic physics and including the most powerful supercomputer based climate models, has failed to convince many people who, for one reason or another, are wedded to climate-change denial. Neither have appeals to the health and safety of future generations, nor to the plight of the increasing millions of people whose lives are currently being disrupted by climate change (many of whom become the refugees and migrants whom many climate-change deniers fear).

 More of western US forests are burning every year

Credit: INICIWEB

Through all that I've clung to the idea that when climate change comes home, as it inevitably will, when residents of Florida find their homes flooded because of rising sea levels, when Midwest corn farmers lose ten percent of their crop to extreme heat, when Texas see-saws between drought and floods, or when, as happened to my home town of Santa Rosa, California last year, wildfire sweeps through like a blowtorch, it can no longer be denied. Surely, I've thought, first-hand, life-changing personal experience will break through those layers of denial.

But I'm starting to realize that my faith in personal experience to slap people awake, like my earlier faith in the persuasive effect of science and empathy, is simply naive.

What brought this home to me was an article in the Guardian based on interviews with people who have been impacted by the deadly Northern California Carr fire, which happened to hit a staunchly conservative, Republican, Trump-supporting and climate-change-denying area. The Guardian reporter had no trouble finding people, from politicians to men and women on the street, whose ideas were unchanged even in the midst of the smoke and embers of this deadly fire. "It's bull," said one respondent. And even the one respondent who accepted that climate change was real clung to the meme that we humans are too puny to deal with it, leaving how to fix the problem in the hands of "the good Lord."

There's more evidence in a Guardian story speaking to residents of North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which climate scientists tell us was 50 miles wider and dropped 50 percent more rain than it would have under pre-industrial conditions. Once again, the reporter found plenty of people still in full climate-change-denial mode.

Scholars who study the history of science often point out that for a new paradigm such as plate tectonics or quantum dynamics to replace an older set of ideas, the old guard simply have to be replaced by a new generation. If scientists, who after all are committed to experiment, hard data and putting every idea to the test, are unwilling or unable to let go of outmoded ways of thinking, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised if everyday people also refuse to learn, even if the lesson is right in front of their eyes.

 Perhaps young people will see more clearly than their elders

Credit: TAKVER

There's still room for hope, if younger generations realize that climate change is real, dangerous, and, can only be dealt with through concerted action. Perhaps Greta Thunberg can be the role model. She's a 15-year-old Swedish girl who is staying out of school and sitting in front of the Swedish Parliament to bring the urgency of the climate crisis home to her elders. Given the feeble steps we've managed to take to date, young people like her may be our last, best hope.

REA
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Here's a related story involving people who have become committed to the idea that vaccination is some kind of dangerous, evil-minded plot. This couple almost lost their six-year-old son to tetanus, a terrible and potentially deadly disease to which most of us are immune because we've been inoculated against it. Doctors were able to save the boy's life, but only through radical interventions and weeks of intensive care, which racked up a bill of over $800,000. Despite this horrifying experience, the parents refused further vaccinations. It used to be said that there's no force on Earth more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Maybe we need to modify that to reflect that, for many people, there's no force on Earth more powerful than an idea that perfectly matches their preconceived view of the world.

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MOUNTAINTOP COAL MINING FROM SPACE

In case you believe or argue that we humans are too puny and insignificant to change the Earth--a position sometimes advocated by those who find it congenial for one reason or another to deny the reality of  human-caused climate disruption--please take a look at this video. In 30 seconds you can see the impact of 30 years of mountaintop coal mining over a 10,000-square-mile chunk of Appalachia. See for yourself:

Click here for video

Credit: Christian Thomas, Sky Truth

REA

WELCOME ABOARD THE TITANIC

I'm not sure which of Trump's never-ending stream of tweets, fiats, provocations, sadistic put-downs and flip-flopping decisions finally gave me that unmistakable sinking feeling. But I think it was the announcement in his National Security Speech of December 18, that he is cutting climate change out of America's national security strategy. This marks a major shift away from the Obama administration's security strategy, which recognized climate change as one of the major risks facing the nation and the world, and put international cooperation to minimize that threat high on the national security to-do list. As Trump said in his speech, “We are charting a new and very different course.”

 "Full speed ahead"--The RMS Titanic--the greatest ship of its day
Credit:  F.G.O. Stuart/Wikimedia Commons

It's been clear for a long time that climate-change denial has been the price of admission to the current Republican Party regardless of the real-world consequences. A saving grace, however, has been that the US Department of Defense and the intelligence agencies responsible for the security of the nation have generally resisted this politically convenient untruth and have made plans and deployed resources in response to such “risk or threat multipliers” as “livelihood devastation, state fragility, human displacement, and mass death,” not to mention extreme weather, coastal flooding, environmental degradation, threats to infrastructure, forced migration, and what James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence characterized as “unpredictable instability”caused by climate change.

Now, thanks to Trump, and as reflected in the accompanying 55-page document, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, by choice and design, climate change and its impacts are not to be found. Instead, there's a lot of focus on accelerated economic growth, bigger and better armaments, “fairer” trade and “energy dominance,” all of which, in the absence of a recognition of climate change and environmental degradation and destabilization, will only increase the threats and impacts we will be encountering.

This stance is all too reminiscent of the first (and last) voyage of the RMS Titanic, the greatest ship of its day, carrying the cream of international society as well as hundreds of ordinary people, and believed at the time to be unsinkable. Despite warnings from other ships about sea ice, Captain Edward Smith ordered the Titanic to steam full speed ahead through the north Atlantic night.

Everyone knows the result—nature in the form of an iceberg proved mightier than the great ship; the "unsinkable" vessel sank at 5:18 in the morning of April 15, 1912, and 1500 lives were lost, including that of Captain Smith himself. The Titanic, broken in two, is now slowly disintegrating 12,415 feet beneath the Atlantic.

The bow of the Titanic, in the depths of the North Atlantic
Credit: NOAA/ University of Rhode Island

Like the 2,224 souls aboard the Titanic on that ill-starred night, we are now shoveling on the coal and steaming full speed ahead across a treacherous sea with our captain and crew willfully blind to one of the gravest risks we face. That's making it a bit hard for me to just sit back and enjoy the glittering company, the fine food and drink, and theband's lovely music. I can't get the image of the dark, icy waters just ahead out of my mind.

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ORWELL STRIKES AGAIN, THIS TIME AT THE US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

In his prescient novel, 1984, George Orwell introduced the world to Newspeak, a minimized and simplified revision of English designed to make nuanced, reasoned, independent thought impossible.

Inspired by our current president and his climate-change denial, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)--the agency whose mission is to guide and enhance American agriculture, conserve and improve the rural environment, and help feed America and the world--has decided to outlaw phrases such as "climate change," "climate change adaptation," "reduce greenhouse gases," and "sequester carbon." Newspeak is alive and well at the USDA.

Flooding in New Orleans--yet again

Credit: www.goodfreephotos.com

Those now-forbidden terms are to be replaced in official communication by what Orwell would call "goodthink"--terms approved by the all-powerful Party. "Climate change" becomes "weather extremes" or "intense weather events," "climate change adaptation" becomes "resilience to weather extremes," while "reduce greenhouse gases" and "sequester carbon" become "build soil organic matter" or the mind-numbing "increase nutrient use efficiency."

Wildfire, Black Forest, Colorado, June 12, 2013
Credit: DoD--photo by Master Sgt. Christopher DeWitt, U.S. Air Force

In Oldspeak--plain old English--it's at least possible to think and speak clearly about the global problem of climate change and ways to minimize or adapt to it. But, in Newspeak, in Trump's Department of Agriculture, that's now a thoughtcrime, or, better yet, simply unthinkable.

The flash drought that's currently decimating the high plains' wheat crop is simply an isolated weather extreme. It can't be linked to the raging wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, flooding in New Orleans, the fact that Virginia's Tangier Island is washing away or that Death Valley just experienced the hottest month ever measured anywhere on Earth. The concept that ties these "weather extremes" together no longer exists, at least at the USDA.

You can see this in action at the EPA, where scientists explaining how climate change has added to the destructive power of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey are being accused of politicizing the storm. In other words, understanding is politicizing. Remaining ignorant is the right thing to do.

 Credit: Stephen Bettany

One of the three guiding slogans of the Party in 1984 was "Ignorance is Strength." If that's true, Trump's USDA is certainly flexing its muscles.

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You can read environmentalist Bill McKibben's comments  on this issue here.

You can read about an outbreak of Trump-mandated Newspeak at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) here, or at this URL.Newly banned words and phrases include "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based," and "science-based." I, for one, start to feel pretty vulnerable when concepts like "evidence-based" and "science-based" are banned. What will replace them? The Republican party line? Trump's latest whim?

Part of the CDC's "Pledge to the American People" is to "Base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively." They should amend that to read, "Base all public health decisions on the current political directives from the President and his appointees, derived behind closed doors to advance a partisan agenda."

And you can see how far this fascist penchant for censoring words and ideas can go in this recent news item about the censorship of words, phrases and internet search terms in China. Just to put the cork in the bottle, they've banned references to George Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm.

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COULD $82 MILLION HELP EXPLAIN WHY THE US CONGRESS IS FULL OF CLIMATE-CHANGE DENIERS?

American author Upton Sinclair once quipped, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Pump "salary" up to $82 million in contributions from the fossil fuel industry to climate-change deniers in the US Senate and House of Representatives, and you can start to understand why so many of the people we've elected to represent us spout so much nonsense about climate change.

$ 1 Million on display in Las Vegas

(multiply this by 82 and give to your favorite politicians)

Credit: mmarchin/CreativeCommons

According to Ryan Koronowsky at ThinkProgress, there are 180 climate deniers in the US Congress, not to mention the one in the oval office. Of those, 142 are in the House and 38 in the Senate. That represents a hefty 59 percent of the Republicans in the House, and a truly impressive 73 percent of the Republicans in the Senate. Remarkable figures given that the American public overwhelmingly recognizes that human-caused climate change is real and supports government action to mitigate it.

It appears that something is causing our senators and representatives to oppose not just the scientific consensus on climate change but the desires of their own constituents. It could be superior intelligence, greater knowledge or perhaps a more highly developed sense of responsibility and stewardship.

Or it could be money. Money that pays for the market research and ads that keep getting them elected.

What do you think?

Me, I'm betting on the money.

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Here's a list of who and how much.

You can read Koronowsky's detailed article, with maps and charts, here.

You can read an interesting piece about parallels between the Soviet embrace of Lysenkoism under Stalin and the Republican embrace of climate change denial here.

Note: To be fair, Democrats are probably just as likely to be "influenced" by contributions. This essay by Lauren McCauley at Common Dreams presents data showing that for a mere $100,000, the odds of a Democrat representative flipping on a key financial regulation issue rose by 14 percent. With millions or billions of dollars of profits at stake, political contributions are clearly a terrific investment.

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THE BASIC PHYSICS BEHIND GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY

Just a quick link to a great piece by engineering professor John Abraham entitled, "150 Years Ago, Scientists Understood the Climate Better than the EPA Head Does Today."

Here's the URL to click on.

It's worth reading the whole article, in which Abraham vividly reminds us that climate-change deniers such as Scott Pruitt, the current head of the EPA, are basically living in the 1800s, at least as far as their acceptance of the basic science of Earth's radiation balance, the greenhouse effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide and water vapor, and the impact of increased greenhouse gases on Earth's climate, all of which were well known before the turn of the century on New Year's Eve, 1899!

The basic science behind climate change was understood before this car hit the road

Credit: National Motor Museum

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GREAT SCOT! IN MARCH, WIND POWER ALONE EXCEEDED THE NEEDS OF EVERY HOME IN SCOTLAND

While the U.S. government remains mired in climate-change denial, and hopes to boost employment by deregulating the moribund coal-mining industry, other countries are forging into the future by boosting their alternative-energy infrastructure.

One such success story is Scotland, part of the United Kingdom and home to 5.3 million people. In March, their rapidly growing wind farms generated more than 1.2 million megawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power all 2.4 million Scottish households with plenty of energy left over. At a current value of around 100 British Pounds ($123 dollars) per megawatt hour, that wind-produced, carbon-free power was worth about $150 million dollars.

Scottish windfarm

Credit: Rosser1954-English Wikipedia

It's well known that the alternative energy industry produces a lot of jobs, so it's not surprising that the wind power industry has put thousands of Scots to work, along with millions worldwide.

It's also striking how quickly a country can increase its capacity to generate alternative energy. The figures for March, 2017 in Scotland represent an 81% increase over March of 2016.

Lang Banks, the director of WWF in Scotland, summarizes:

“As well as helping to power our homes and businesses, wind power supports thousands of jobs and continues to play an important role in Scotland’s efforts to address global climate change by avoiding millions of tonnes of carbon emissions every year.”

So let me get this straight. An entire country can generate all the power it needs, at a competitive price, put a lot of people to work, maintain a very high standard of living and help protect all of us from climate disruption.  Sounds like a win-win solution to me.

At the same time, our current leader doesn't like the way wind turbines look, has put a climate-change denier, Scott Pruitt, in charge of the EPA, and another one, Rick Perry, in charge of the Department of Energy. While other countries are rapidly advancing towards what seems to be an inevitable and highly desirable clean-energy future, we seem to be retreating into a coal-and-oil fueled past.

Syncrude Aurora oil sands mine, Canada

Credit: Elias Schewel

What's wrong with this picture?

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GOOD NEWS FOR ONCE--HOLLAND'S TRAINS NOW RUN 100% ON RENEWABLE ENERGY

While the US marches ever deeper into the swamp of climate-change denial, led by Donald Trump and his appointees, much of the rest of the world is surging ahead into a sustainable future.

One case in point--since January 1 of this year, every train in Holland has been running on 100% renewable energy, almost all of it generated by wind. Dutch trains carry 438 million passengers and haul 36.5 million tons of freight every year.

Dutch train, now 100% wind-powered/Credit I, Maurits90

This remarkable accomplishment only took two years, starting with an agreement between the train companies and energy company ENENCO in 2015. The goal was 100% renewable energy by 2018, but the project was completed a year early, in part because of the early completion of wind farms in the Netherlands, Belgium and Finland.

While Trump rails against wind energy, seemingly because it offends him to see the turbines from his Scottish golf course, the Dutch, who have a long tradition of windmills, don't seem to mind at all. Especially when they know that they are doing their best to fight climate change and, of particular threat to them, rising sea levels.

Dutch windmills--old and new--Eemshaven, the Netherlands
Credit Wikipedia

OF BOATS AND BUOYS--OCEAN WARMING "HIATUS" MYSTERY SOLVED

Climate-change deniers were thrilled to report about an apparent slow-down in ocean warming noted in a 2013 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. For once, it appeared that they had some actual data on their side. They will now have to switch back to denying the data, demeaning the researchers (or following Trump and blaming China for making up the whole concept of climate change), since first NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and now an independent consortium of researchers from the US and the UK have shown that the slowdown didn't happen.

It turns out that the slowdown or "hiatus" was largely the result of inappropriately combining temperature readings from satellites, ships and buoys. Buoys tend to give cooler readings than measurements made aboard ships, so as more buoys came on line in recent years, they produced a false cooling signal.

An ARGO float at work--one way scientists measure ocean temperatures/Credit: UCSD

When the three data sets--from ships, buoys and satellites--are analyzed separately, each shows continuous warming of the oceans averaging 0.12 degrees C (0.22 degrees F) per decade over the past 75 years.

"Our results mean that essentially NOAA got it right, that they were not cooking the books," said Zeke Hausfather, a graduate student in UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group and the lead author of the new study, published today in the open-access journal Science Advances.

Note, 1/11/17: It didn't take long for the denial to kick in. A story in the conservative UK Spectator argues that "their case rests on the El Nino temperature increase and will be destroyed when the El Nino subsides, as it is currently doing. A temporary victory over the ‘pause’."

Environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli promptly destroys that argument by pointing out that if the El Nino years are analyzed separately, they show warming of 0.18 degrees C (0.32 degrees F) per decade over the past fifty years, as do the La Nina years taken separately, with neutral years averaging 0.16 degrees C (0.29 degrees f) per decade.

If you wonder why climate change denial persists in the face of basic physics, decades of research, and a now visibly destabilized climate, please read Naomi Klein's 2014 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. Klein makes the case that conservatives, representatives of the neoliberal market-fundamentalist consensus realized long ago that acceptance of the reality of human-caused climate change would threaten the foundations of the current global economic system. To preserve the system, they have no choice but to deny the reality as long as they can.

The Lysenko Affair

Truthout has just published an op-ed by us, entitled The Lysenko Affair. 

Here's the summary:

The Republican Party's embrace of climate-change denial is reminiscent of the Soviet Union's three-decade-long endorsement of Lysenkoism, which likewise was based on denial of basic science. Both represent politically convenient untruths with dangerous real-world consequences.

You can read the piece at: http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/25078-the-lysenko-affair

Denial runs deep


How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.
--Frank Herbert

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.
--Mark Twain

Whether or not Twain or Herbert ever read Freud, both writers would have seen and understood the inability or unwillingness to face reality or admit obvious truths that so characterizes the angry tone of our current debates.

More than just an “inconvenient truth” as Al Gore describes it, human-driven climate change challenges some of the most basic Western assumptions about progress and purpose. Not only does it threaten the dominance of deeply rooted and interrelated economic and political interests but the psychic structures and societal self-images which sustain them as well.

What will we become if our carbon-based economy in its multiple manifestations has to be phased out? What will be left of our identity if the glories of expansion, conquest and mastery have to give way to humble sustainability?

The confluence between powerful vested interests and psychologically driven denial and anger powers the regressive counter-reformation being mounted by climate skeptics, ideologues and their paid media flacks aimed at undermining and discrediting both the science of climate change and its scientific proponents.

Politicians like Sarah Palin and Jim Inhofe are adept at both fomenting and cashing in on this reservoir of frustration and anger, and so are savvy advertisers.

A telling twist to the anti-limits crusade is captured in a recent TV ad for the Mazda3. At the conclusion of the ad, a self-confident, slightly rebellious male voice vows, “I will not sacrifice fun at the altar of practicality.” The Canadian version runs, “Between fun and practicality there are victors and victims.”

The ad captures perfectly the anger aimed at public figures like Al Gore or Bill McKibben when they warn that because of climate change, environmental degradation, peak oil, or other limiting factors, we need to cut back now on our lavish, high consumption lifestyles.

Emotionally, which one do you want to be—fun-loving rebel or drab do-gooder, victor or victim?

Not surprisingly the dominant reaction seems to be to let someone else throttle back. It’s zoom-zoom-zoom for me. Fun as usual. Business as usual. CO2 as usual. Oil guzzling as usual. Environmental catastrophes as usual. And defiant anger at anyone who says otherwise.

What lies under the denial, beyond the anger? Just the quiet voice of that inner self. Hopefully, it will be heard.

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