What the heck is all this garbage?

There once was a social media platform called Google Plus, or G+. It had a very different flavor from other social media: it was a platform for nerds. Small wonder it folded.

I ran a page there for a couple of years called There is no Planet B -- a name which seemed clever at the time. It somehow attracted more than 30,000 followers, even though I made no particular effort to promote it, just babbled into the void.

Before Google pulled the plug on its platform, I copied a few of my more substantive posts and stashed them here. This is just raw copy, and it's all ephemera. I've made no effort to fix formatting errors or chase down lost illustrations.

Take it for what it is. It seemed to make sense at the time.

It's so bad that even the introverts are marching

It was heatstroke weather for the Climate March, and I went with trepidation, fretting about how ironic it would be to be done in by the unseasonal weather. But it was a good march and made, I hope, a powerful statement about how much people care about climate.

The same day, the New York Times printed the first column by its new columnist, Bret Stephens, and its topic was climate. Stephens used his debut column to dig in on climate denial.

It was a dumb column, heavy on indignation and devoid of evidence (you can read about that here: https://thinkprogress.org/the-ny-times-promised-to-fact-check-their-new-climate-denier-columnist-they-lied-72ad9bdf6019) , but the saddest thing, for me, was that the nation's most important newspaper* would use its public position to spread climate denial on the day of the Climate March. But the editorial page staff of the NYT has always been alarmingly ignorant when it comes to science.

And yet, there's hope! At the same time, The Intercept has given us a jaw-dropping interview with a former professional propagandist, Jerry Taylor, who worked at the highest levels in the climate-denial machinery (at ALEC and the Cato Institute), who saw the light, got woke, and now works to lobby conservatives and Republicans to take climate change seriously.

His personal transformation is an inspiring story -- basically, he accepted a challenge to actually look at the facts -- but the best part is his assessment of how many Republicans are chafing under their party's climate denial orthodoxy.

"The wall of denial in the GOP looks awful frightening from afar but it is crumbling. And it can change quickly," says Taylor. (Full interview here: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/28/how-a-professional-climate-change-denier-discovered-the-lies-and-decided-to-fight-for-science/)

[The photo below is taken in front of the Newseum, which celebrates the First Amendment, which guarantees the right of assembly and the right to petition the government, as well as freedom of the press.]

*a position that The Washington Post may be well-positioned to assume.

Being stupid in the pages of the New York Times

Is the New York Times getting stupider? Why do they keep publishing pieces that lack even the most basic understanding about how ecosystems work? Granted, this is an opinion piece, but it's a foolish opinion.

First, the author mocks entomologist Douglas Tallamy for pointing out that a native oak in his yard supported as many as 19 species of caterpillars, while his neighbor's Bradford Pear hosted just one. "Birds, Dr. Tallamy notes, nourish themselves on these native caterpillars. To follow his logic, planting a Bradford pear would be tantamount to avicide," writes the author, Gabriel Popkin.

No logic for Mr. Popkin, though. Instead, he turns to an emotional appeal on behalf of Bradford pears, because (a) they are alive and breathing, (b) they cast a shadow, and (c) they are better than concrete. (Seriously! This is what he argues.)

Bradford pears are out-of-control invasives. When they crowd out native plants, they take food out of the mouths of baby birds. No food for the babies now means no adult birds later. Same with those caterpillars: if the caterpillars of 19 different species can't find food they're capable of eating, 19 different kinds of butterflies and moths will disappear from the landscape.

This is basic stuff. I don't think Mr. Popkin would try to defend Bradford pears if he understood it.

Beware the age of loneliness

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Mar 29, 2016

I was at the back of a classroom yesterday, listening as the kids at the first meeting of a middle-school ecology class tried to define the characteristics of an ecosystem. One bright young man piped up and told the teacher that ecosystems in ocean trenches were especially interesting because they are unexplored, unlike all the terrestrial ecosystems around us "which we already know all about."

So I don't think we can fault E.O. Wilson for writing another book about the importance of biodiversity, and how we little we really know about life on this planet.

http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Half-Earth/

For a book in defense of an audacious agenda, a lot of Half-Earth makes familiar arguments: the urgent need to try to minimize the Sixth Extinction, the menace of invasive species, and the need for more resources for field biology, so that the planet's living things can be identified, described, and named while they're still with us. You've read this before (see the link below), although Wilson supplies some breathtaking new information to strengthen his arguments.

But maybe the most important part of this (rather uneven) book is how little ecologists actually know.

"Ecosystem studies remain an undeveloped science, with few answers to pass on that solve even the simplest problems of conservation.... Let us ask ecologists, over and over again, how can we understand the deep principles of sustainability of a forest or river is we still do not know even the identity of most of the insects, nematodes, and other small animals that run the finely tuned engines of the energy and materials cycles?... At least two-thirds of the species on Earth remain unknown and unnamed, and of the one-third known, fewer than one in a thousand have been subject to intensive biological research."

Wilson's argument, of course, is that the traditional conservation goals of saving wild places, in as wild a state as possible, is still valid and, indeed, crucial for saving the largest number of species.

With the authority that only a naturalist of his stature could muster, Wilson also offers up some nice zingers to roast the "new conservationists," who argue for a post-Nature paradigm in which enlightened humans use a hands-on approach to manage all of Spaceship Earth:

"Writers and spokespeople favoring Anthropocene philosophy ... seem innocent of the nature and meaning of biodiversity at the species level. Researchers in species-level biology are the equivalent of neurobiologists in their finely detailed study of the brain, while those Anthropocene enthusiasts who see species as interchangeable parts that fill up ecosystems are little more than nineteenth century phrenologists, who studied mind by the shape of the skull."

Which is to say, don't kill the patient, you quacks.

Maybe Wilson is pushing back hard because the amount of popular nonsense out there demands it, and I was happy to see it. (Yes, the hubris of Stewart Brand's "we are as Gods" comment is irritating, isn't it? Strangely, it makes me think of Winona Rider's dismissal of Christian Slater at the end of the movie "Heathers": "What I want is cool guys like you out of my life.")

But the book's conclusion, including the tantalizingly-entitled final chapter, "What Must Be Done," didn't satisfy. Yes, save as many species as possible, and keep as many ecosystems alive as possible. But even if we set aside half the planet as biological reserves, the impact of the people living on the other half is going to affect the whole planet, even if no human ever sets foot on the wild side again. How do we fix that? I guess that's just one more thing we know far too little about.

What do we mean when we say Anthropocene?

Turns out I'm not the only one who wonders what sort of flavors and associations are attached to that unlovely word. I've been getting some help with this issue over the last week.

My hero E.O. Wilson, in his latest book, Half-Earth, startled me with his almost-vitriolic criticism of people he categorizes as having an "extreme Anthropocene worldview." I thought Anthropocene was a fairly neutral term describing the geological era in which the dominant feature of the Earth system was the presence of the World's Most Invasive Primate Species, us.

Turns out there are good, bad, and ugly Anthropocene thinkers, as Simon Dalby describes in detail in the April 2016 issue of the Anthropocene Review.

http://anr.sagepub.com/content/3/1/33.full.pdf+html

In "Framing the Anthropocene," Dalby points out that the word has crossed over into popular usage, so we had better figure out what we mean when we use it -- and not allow it to become a sloppy shorthand for shallow thinking.

"The Anthropocene ...provides a formulation for rethinking _
_many ... things, not least transcending the human/nature dichotomy that bedevils intelligent political discussion of the options in decades ahead and is, as such, a profoundly useful category for both political and academic thinking across the divide between sciences and humanities....But if it is to live up to its political and pedagogic potential care has to be taken that existing conceptual frameworks invoking post-modernity, globalization, the dangers of technology or the nuclear age, or as this paper emphasizes optimism or pessimism about the future, do not simply coopt the language of the Anthropocene without thinking through the transformative potential inherent in the term. If it is simply assumed to be a neologism for environmental degradation, a trendy word for well-understood declensionist phenomena, a euphemism for imminent civilizational demise, or an apology for maintaining the profoundly unjust political economy of the present, then an intellectual and political opportunity will be missed."

It's a good article, and well worth reading in its entirety. I found it particularly useful helping me pin down my inchoate squirmy discomfort with the Ecomodernists and their manifesto. http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto-english/

In a related article from a different angle, Robert Macfarlane writes in The Guardian about how literature, art, and pop culture are absorbing and reacting to the idea of the Anthropocene. It's also well worth a read in its entirety.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/01/generation-anthropocene-altered-planet-for-ever

Coming at the question from a different direction, Macfarlane reaches a similar conclusion, suggesting that, as it is being used in popular discourse, the word points to ideas that are "arrogant, universalist and capitalist-technocratic." And that carries with it some unwanted political baggage.

"[T]the dominant narrative of the Anthropocene has technology as its driver: recent Earth history reduced to a succession of inventions (fire, the combustion engine, the synthesis of plastic, nuclear weaponry). The monolithic concept bulk of this scientific Anthropocene can crush the subtleties out of both past and future, disregarding the roles of ideology, empire and political economy. Such a technocratic narrative will also tend to encourage technocratic solutions: geoengineering as a quick-fix for climate change, say, or the Anthropocene imagined as a pragmatic problem to be managed, such that “Anthropocene science” is translated smoothly into “Anthropocene policy” within existing structures of governance."

In a world where liberal arts colleges teach Timothy Morton in literature classes on Dark Ecology (+Elena M), it's important to define your terms, and to keep neutral descriptive words from attracting political agendas. Like burrs clinging to your socks, ideas might attach to your words and spread in ways you never intended.

On reading Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, by Paul Kingsnorth

Let's say someone close to you gets a new car. It's a make and model you weren't familiar with -- a Toyota Solara, say. Suddenly, you can't drive anywhere without seeing Solaras. Did a fleet of Solaras suddenly flood the highways? No. You just learned to recognize them.

Reality didn't change, but your perception of it did.

And that's the essence of what Paul Kingsnorth is arguing. Grown and bred in a culture that believes in "progress" and worships the supposed cleverness of our species, people have trouble seeing what is in front of their noses.

What is in front of our noses is not a cheerful view, but neither is the view in the mirror: the planet's most invasive primate species, chewing through the landscape, displacing the planet's other inhabitants at an astonishing rate, spewing waste, all while some monkeys crow about how we're gods now and had better get good at it.

If you know in your bones that we are not gods and not going to get good at it, you'll find good company with Kingsnorth and his fellow-travelers at the Dark Mountain Project. Kingsnorth's Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist is well worth reading in its entirety, and I can't begin to do it justice here.

The more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger analysis of where the environmental movement took the wrong road is alone worth the price of the book. The take-downs of technocratic neo-environmentalists are delicious fun. But that's not the end of the story.

The obvious criticism of the Dark Mountain writers is that they are giving up, retreating from the field of battle to save the planet. Actually, I'd say they're taking the fight to a different front -- they just want to change your head.

It sounds mushy and sentimental, but the power to change the behavior of our murderous pack of invasive primates lies with the storytellers, not the technocrats, as recent events in the political and social realms make only too clear.

Getting people to wake up to their biological, animal identities as part (but only one part among many) of an Earth system of interconnected lives strikes me as a good goal, as likely to succeed as anything else we've tried.

Which is to say, not very likely. But you can learn to live with that.

Why do we blog?

"After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many do so from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but less visible long-term organizing and groundwork — or underground work — often laid the foundation. Changes in ideas and values also result from work done by writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists, and participants in social media. " -- Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

More Gloom from the Killjoy

Are you feeling cheerful yet?

Here at There is no Planet B I am always on the lookout for good news and new ideas about how we can continue to keep our home planet habitable, for us and for our fellow living creatures. Why obsess about the endless flow of bad news? Let's figure out what real-world things we can do to help heal the planet!

So here's a recent post from Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth blog, touting a new academic paper (which is behind a paywall, unfortunately) describing a project to collect examples of "visions of a good Anthropocene."

Here's the project's web site: https://goodanthropocenes.net/

The idea behind this project is to fill our gloomy minds with "visions of positive futures," collected examples of small organizations around the world that are working to projects that might contribute to a better future. These "seeds of a good Anthropocene" are not mere good news stories, but also potential positive models that, given wider recognition, could be "planted" elsewhere.

Well, maybe. It's really hard to tell from the web site, which is too superficial for me to envision much of anything. And I'm sure many of these organizations are doing good work, but this "seed" metaphor makes me twitchy, not cheery. All joking about invasive plants aside, what sort of ecologists think that community-based problem-solving is something that can/ should be transplanted?

To quote Clive Hamilton (who was responding to a different discussion, but whose points are still valid here): "In the end, grasping at delusions like 'the good Anthropocene' is a failure of courage, courage to face the facts. The power of positive thinking can’t turn malignant tumours into benign growths.... It is the possibility of preventing bad turning into very bad that motivates many of us to work harder than ever. But pretending that bad can be turned into good with a large dose of positive thinking is, even more so than denying things are bad, a sure-fire way of ending up in a situation that is very bad indeed."

(Full text here: http://clivehamilton.com/the-delusion-of-the-good-anthropocene-reply-to-andrew-revkin/)

E.O. Wilson thinks humans should live on half the planet and leave the other half to Nature. Here's a small list of places where that already happened, by accident -- and, in every example, we humans made a complete mess of things before we withdrew.

But healing happened anyway.

5 Places Abandoned by People But Not Wildlife – Center for Biological Diversity

 

E.O. Wilson thinks humans should live on half the planet and leave the other half to Nature. Here's a small list of places where that already happened, by accident -- and, in every example, we humans made a complete mess of things before we withdrew.

But healing happened anyway.

Free-ranging in a tick-infested world

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Jan 5, 2017

How to go outside without getting Lyme disease

One of the great disappointments of my lifetime is the spread of Lyme disease in the United States. In my childhood, I would sometimes return home from a walk in the wildflowers to have a dozen or more dog ticks hiding in my hair, waiting to be combed out -- a creepy experience, to be sure, but not a health hazard.

The world has changed a lot since then, and the paper linked below is not exactly surprising: ticks carrying Lyme disease are endemic to parks in the eastern United States.

These days, if we want to go outside, my children and I follow a fairly rigorous regime (similar to the one described in the article) to avoid the blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis), the main offender in spreading Lyme locally. We call it "tick drill," and it's a nuisance. It's also an exception to Thoreau's old maxim about avoiding any endeavors requiring new clothes -- because everyone in the family has a full set of insect-resistant clothing.

Meanwhile, now there is another tick spreading Lyme disease:

https://entomologytoday.org/2015/11/23/a-tick-that-feeds-on-birds-may-increase-the-range-of-lyme-disease/

On one hand, you need not worry about these ticks biting you, because they are not interested in humans. On the other hand, birds are big travelers, and they could big player in spreading Lyme in wild animal populations.

So know the risks and plan accordingly. It's a nuisance to avoid Lyme, but much simpler than curing it once you're infected.

A veteran tree

Shared for the beauty of the illustration.

Originally shared by Botany One

The Dead Good Deadwood Blog: What’s so good about deadwood? - TCV Scotland http://buff.ly/2iACbiW

What to do, Jan. 2017 edition

As I write this, wildfires have just burned through a million acres of the Texas panhandle. Another mass bleaching is sweeping through the corals of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Sea ice in the Arctic has set a record low for the third year running….

And so on, and so on. Anyone with eyes can see what’s happening, and yet, here in the U.S., the new government leadership denies it.

It’s infuriating. Disheartening. But we’re not dead yet! And that’s why I started this collection, a year ago. As individuals, we’re just tiny drops in a sea of humanity, facing a problem that we’re basically powerless to change. How’s that for an inspiring call to action?

But, if you love this planet and the beautiful animals and plants who live here with us, giving up in despair is not an option.

And that’s why I started this collection, mostly for myself, to try to answer this question: what do we do now? I am neither a scientist nor a politician nor a rich philanthropist. What can I do?

Alas, politics

When I started this G+ collection more than a year ago, I wanted to avoid politics as much as possible, because it both psychologically poisonous and unsatisfying.

But stuff happens. The latest U.S. election filled the highest levels of government with climate deniers, former global oil company CEOs, and anti-conservationists. To ignore that is to ignore reality.

So we’ve got to push back. Sadly, one political party has made it a point of partisan identify to deny climate change (and science in general).

Like [a] basketball team ignoring the referee, they have simply chosen not to accept the results of climate science. http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/10/14871696/scott-pruitt-climate-denial

The simplest solution is to get that party out of power. Personally, I think this may be a case of standing back and letting the opponent destroy itself. But you can help things along, by speaking to your representatives, or, if they don’t represent your views, seeking to replace them.

For member of Congress, you can get good information from League of Conservation Voters (which is also a good organization to support):
https://www.lcvef.org/

If your representatives are enlightened, thank them and let them know which issues are important you. If they are not enlightened, be a squeaky wheel. There’s lots of information out there (Google “indivisible”) about how to be an effective squeaky wheel. I’d suggest limiting your participation to one or two issues that you care most about, to avoid the very real possibility of burnout.

Tackling environmental issues at a state and local level is also important. It’s far easier to influence local elections, and climate deniers know this. When they frame environmental compliance as an issue for the states, it’s because they know that businesses have a close, friendly relationship with state politicians and state regulators, with very little oversight from the press or citizens.

Changing the balance of power at the state and local level seems like low-hanging fruit to me.

Two national organizations that have a strong state and local organizations are well are Audubon and Sierra Club.
http://www.audubon.org/
http://www.sierraclub.org/

Finally, keep an eye on the actions of your state’s attorney general and how they are using their powers.

Or We Could Sue the Bastards

At all levels of government, there is also the possibility of influencing environmental decision-making via the courts – and, hey, our current head of the EPA has spent most of his career doing just that!

We can play that game too, but someone has to pay the lawyers. Here are three organizations you might consider supporting:
Environmental Defense Fund. https://www.edf.org/
Earth Justice. http://earthjustice.org/
Natural Resources Defense Council. https://www.nrdc.org/

Another place where lawyers are needed, sadly, is in defending climate scientists and activists against harassment. Certain members of Congress have made harassment by subpoena into an art form. This is an organization that defends scientists from this sort of attack:
https://climatesciencedefensefund.org/

Public protests

Several years ago, my personal hero, E.O. Wilson, scolded a young interviewer:

As we squirmed in our seats, Wilson, 82, continued: “Why are you not repeating what was done in the ‘60s? Why aren’t you in the streets? And what in the world has happened to the green movement that used to be on our minds and accompanied by outrage and high hopes? What went wrong?”
https://thinkprogress.org/e-o-wilson-wants-to-know-why-youre-not-protesting-in-the-streets-8cd4c98c7549#.aen5vtpb4

Perhaps we’re finally there. First is the March for Science, on April 22, Earth Day. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/scientists-march-new-movement-21203

The People’s Climate March is April 29. You can find out more about it from the worthy organization 350.org, https://350.org/

Private action

If you care about climate and want reliable information, you should consider supporting independent journalism that focuses on climate. Here are three sources I really like, and which have done some excellent original reporting:
https://climatecentral47041.thankyou4caring.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=298
https://insideclimatenews.org/about/membership
https://www.desmogblog.com/donate-desmog

Finally, protect your own sanity. Focus some attention on areas where you can see real results, like citizen science. Do best you can with property under your control, like gardening for wildlife or pursuing energy efficiency or clean energy sources for your home.

And talk to your friends. Just like I’m doing right now.

Oh the humanity

What's the most inconvenient truth about climate change? That it's caused by humans, and only humans changing their behavior en masse is going to make any difference.

But getting humans to change their behavior is tricky stuff, and my climate movement friends are among the least qualified to do it. (Think birders. I love you, Audubon folks, but you know what I mean.)

Sadly, the people who are good at this stuff are concentrated in the amoral world of politics, lobbying, and advertising -- and they are getting pretty darn good at pulling the people's strings. The climate movement seems pathetically unsophisticated by comparison, even if we've got the moral high ground.

Let's study the other side and see if we can do better. First, consider how we belong to the planet's most invasive primate species. Like all our primate buddies, we're highly attuned to issues of social rank and fairness. Nothing gets our goats more quickly than a hypocrite. Calling someone out as a hypocrite may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but it seems to work pretty well.

+John Baez provides a thoughtful tutorial on how this works, complete with a real-world sample text (from a credible online publication, even) showing a climate denier using the technique.

For extra credit, see if you can find similar techniques being used against climate advocates by a columnist for a major mainstream U.S. newspaper earlier this year. (Hint: he's a recent hire.)

Originally shared by John Baez

Who do you trust: the liar or the hypocrite?

Some people like to accuse those who are worried about climate change of being "hypocrites". Why? Because we still fly around in planes, drive cars and so on.

What's the argument? Could it be this?

"If even those folks who claim there's a problem aren't willing to do anything about it, it must not really be a problem."

That argument is invalid. Say we have a married couple who both smoke. The husband says "we should quit smoking." But he keeps smoking. Does this mean that it's okay to smoke?

Indeed, our civilization is addicted to burning carbon. It's a lot like being addicted to nicotine. Addiction leads people to say one thing and do another. You know you should change your behavior - but you don't have the will power. Or you do for a while... but then you lapse.

I see this in myself. I try to stop taking airplane flights, but scientists get lots of invitations to conferences, with free flights to fun places. It's hard to resist. It's like offering cigarettes to someone who is trying to quit. I can resist nine times and cave in on the tenth! I can "relapse" for months and then come to my senses.

In fact the accusation of hypocrisy is not about the facts of climate change. It's about joining a social group:

"The people who want you to take climate change seriously are hypocrites. Don't be a sucker. Don't let them boss you around. Join us instead."

This takes advantage of a psychological fact: most of us prefer liars to hypocrites. A lie is forgivable. But hypocrisy - someone publicly saying you should do something when they don't themselves - is not.

There are studies about this:

Take two kinds of claims about environmental activism. Under one set of conditions, a speaker claims to recycle his rubbish, after which it is revealed that he does no such thing. Under the other, a speaker tell his listeners they should recycle their rubbish, after which it is revealed that he does not do it himself. The first is a liar. The second is a hypocrite, but not a liar, since what he says is still true (people should recycle their rubbish). Most people respond with relative equanimity to the lie. But they loathe the hypocrisy, because the hypocrite seems to be patronising them.

The accusation of hypocrisy is trying to set up a binary choice:

"Whose side are you on? Those hypocrites who say climate change is a problem and try to get you to make sacrifices, while they don't? Or us liars, who say there's no problem and your behavior is fine?"

Of course, being liars, they leave out the word "liars".

One way out is to realize it's not a binary choice. There's a third position: the honest hypocrite.

Perhaps the most critical piece of evidence for the theory of hypocrisy as false signaling is that people disliked hypocrites more than so-called “honest hypocrites.” In a fourth online study, the researchers tested perceptions of “honest hypocrites,” who — like traditional hypocrites — condemn behaviors that they engage in, but who also admit that they sometimes commit those behaviors.

“The extent to which people forgive honest hypocrites was striking to us,” says Jordan. “These honest hypocrites are seen as no worse than people who commit the same transgressions but keep their mouths shut and refrain from judging others for doing the same — suggesting that the entirety of our dislike for hypocrites can be attributed to the fact that they falsely signal their virtue.”

There's also a fourth position: the non-liar, non-hypocrite. That's even better. But sometimes, when we need to take collective action, we should listen to the honest hypocrite, who tells us that we should all take action, but admits he's not doing it yet.

The first quote is from a Guardian article on "How climate scepticism turned into something more dangerous", namely climate cynicism:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/07/climate-change-denial-scepticism-cynicism-politics

The second quote is from a Association for Psychological Science article on why we dislike hypocrites:

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/we-dislike-hypocrites-because-they-deceive-us.html

And now, if you're not tired yet, here's a great example of a climate denier's attempt to take advantage of our hatred of hypocrites. Pay careful attention to how she cleverly tries to manipulate you! By the end you'll feel different than when you started. If she were trying to get you to smoke, by the end you'd light up a cigarette and feel proud of yourself.

........................

The hypocrisy of climate change advocates
Julie Kelly

So according to all the hysterical people, President-elect Donald Trump has appointed the most climate denier cabinet ever. As cabinet confirmation hearings get underway, expect to hear the charge “climate denier!” a lot.

For those of you who don’t know what a climate denier is, it means you either challenge, question or flat-out reject the idea that the planet is warming due to human activity. In the scientific world and in the world of international liberal groupthink (but I repeat myself), this is blasphemy. Should you remotely doubt the dubious models, unrealized dire predictions, changing goal posts or flawed data related to climate science, you are not just stupid according to these folks, but you are on par with those who deny the Holocaust.

Even people who believe in manmade climate change (or AGW, anthropogenic global warming) have been excommunicated from the climate tribe for raising any concern about climate science. Last month, Roger Pielke, Jr. wrote a revealing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about how he became a target of the climate junta for saying there was no connection between weather disasters and climate change. Although Pielke believes in AGW and even supports a carbon tax to mitigate its impact, his scrutiny made him a target of powerful folks in Congress, the media and even the White House.

The first time I was called a climate denier was a few years ago, after I started writing about agricultural biotechnology or GMOs. The charge was an attempt to undermine my credibility on supporting genetic engineering: the line of attack was, if you don’t believe the science and consensus about man-made global warming, you are a scientific illiterate who has no business speaking in defense of other scientific issues like biotechnology. This was often dished out by climate change pushers who also oppose GMOs because they are anti-capitalist, anti-corporate ideologues (Bernie Sanders could be the poster child for this).

As I did more research on climate change, I learned one important thing: being a climate change believer means never having to say you’re sorry, or at least never making any major sacrifice to your lifestyle that would mitigate the pending doom you are so preoccupied with (but, sea ice!). You can go along with climate change dogma and do virtually nothing about it except recycle your newspapers while self-righteously calling the other side names. From the Pope to the president to the smug suburban mom, climate adherents live in glass houses that function thanks to evil stuff like oil and gas while throwing rocks at us so-called deniers.

So who are the real deniers: those who are reasonably skeptical about climate change or those who give lots of lip service to it while living a lifestyle totally inimical to every tenet of the climate change creed?

To that end, you might be a climate change denier if:

You are the Holy Father of the largest denomination of the Christian faith who calls climate change “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day” and that coal, oil and gas must be replaced “without delay” yet lives a palatial lifestyle powered by fossil fuels.

You are the president of the United States who tried to ban fracking on public land because it emits greenhouse gases but then takes credit for cutting “dependence on foreign oil by more than half” thanks to fracking.

You are a presidential candidate whose primary message is blasting big corporations from Exxon to Monsanto for destroying the planet but then demands a private jet to make meaningless campaign appearances on behalf of the woman who beat you so you can keep getting attention for yourself.

You are a movie star who works in one of the most energy-intensive and frivolous industries but now earns fame by leading protests against fracking and demands the country live on 100 percent renewables by 2050 then jets your family off from Manhattan to Australia on a jumbo jet to take pictures of the Great Barrier Reef.

You are Robert Kennedy, Jr.

You drive a Tesla but don’t know the electricity comes from a grid supported by fossil fuels.

You are a legislator who pushes solar panels and wind turbines without having the slightest clue how much energy and materials — like steel, concrete, diesel fuel, fiberglass and plastic — are needed to manufacture them.

You are Leonardo DiCaprio.

You are a suburban mom who looks down at other moms who don’t care/know/believe in climate change but you spend the day driving your privileged kids around in a pricy SUV and have two air-conditioners in your 6,000 square-foot house,

You oppose nuclear energy and/or genetically engineered crops.

You eat meat because meat production allegedly emits about 14.5 percent of greenhouse gases or some made-up number according to the United Nations.

You eat any sort of food because agriculture uses all kinds of climate polluting energy not to mention the big carbon footprint to process, package, ship and deliver that food to your local Whole Foods.

You are John Kerry.

So if you live off the grid, never fly in an airplane and don’t eat, then you can call me a denier. For the rest of you, please zip it. You deny climate change by your actions because you contribute daily to the very greenhouse gases you contend are destroying the planet. I’d rather be a denier than a hypocrite any day.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/313090-the-hypocrisy-of-climate-change-advocates

#climateaction

Something cheery for a change

Something cheery for a change, part two

While our eyes were fixed on the dumpster fire in Washington, D.C., Project Drawdown published a book illustrating a path toward a future in which the human species stops adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and starts sequestering carbon instead.

There are some surprises. Educating girls clearly leads to healthier, happier populations, but who knew it would have such a huge carbon impact?

This book will cheer you up. While you're waiting to get your hands on a copy, here's an interview with author Paul Hawken, who talks about some other surprises from the book's 100-item to-do list. Says Hawken:

"... studies show that the human brain is not wired to deal with future existential threats.

What we’re saying at Drawdown is that we’re going in through a locked back door to humanity, and the front door is wide open. That front door is needs assessment, what every human being needs, which is security, a living wage, jobs that give them a sense of purpose. We’re the only species without full employment, and never has been so much work been needed to be done. Regenerative development is development, whether it’s on an urban, transportation, housing, marine agriculture, or health level. It’s development that actually heals the future as opposed to stealing from it, which is what we’re doing today....

"We’re stealing our future and selling it. Regenerative development is the opposite. It’s not as though we have to say, 'OK, let’s do this for climate and this for biodiversity and this for human health.' The regenerative development addresses all of them simultaneously. That’s the front door."

https://e360.yale.edu/features/paul-hawken-on-one-hundred-solutions-to-the-climate-crisis

A reading list for the end of the world

In a time when lies are the coin of the realm, an honest reckoning is refreshing! And there are few things more delicious than having inchoate thoughts and feelings, and then finding those ideas, refined and crafted into words of perfect clarity, in a book.

That's how I felt when reading Paul Kingsnorth's Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, a collection of his essays, most of which were written for the Dark Mountain Project, which he co-founded. Perhaps you've heard of it.

The point of Dark Mountain was to gather like-minded creative thinkers to share ideas and stories about the current situation and the unimaginable future -- about the violence our species has done to our planet and how to live with that, going forward. These are no longer radical, fringe ideas, and Kingsnorth is resigning from running Dark Mountain this month, because he feels he's said his bit. More on Kingsnorth later.

Yes, these are good days to be talking about the end of the world as we know it. I've moved on from reading Kingsnorth to reading Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, by Roy Scranton. Holy cow! Prophets of doom come in a variety of flavors. Scranton is the fire-breathing sort. More on him later as well.

Shaken to the core by Scranton's book, Wen Stephenson brooded for two years and then produced this essay, about reading Hannah Arendt:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/learning-to-live-in-the-dark-reading-arendt-in-the-time-of-climate-change/#!

Stephenson's book is next on my list.

I'm With Stupid

The piece linked below is so heinous that I hesitate to post about it. Somehow, a George Washington University herpetologist has convinced the Washington Post that he has some expertise on evolutionary biology and the Sixth Extinction. But sweet Jesus, no, he has no idea what he's talking about.

Extinction is good! Extinction is natural! Stop making such a big deal about polar bears! My first reaction was to see whether this guy was somehow connected to the Climate Denial Industrial Complex, or maybe a buddy of Scott Pruitt. My second reaction was to check whether GMU has given him tenure yet. This article makes me despair for this guy's poor undergraduates.

Three random observations:

1. The author somehow fails to understand that ever creature alive today is the product of a lineage that did not go extinct. We're not the products of mass extinctions -- we're the products of creatures that survived those mass extinctions. How did he get a Ph.D. in biology without studying evolution?

2. The author repeatedly asserts that the only thing that matters is humans. "Extinction does not carry moral significance." That's hubris, baby. Hubris never ends well.

3. Even if, for the sake of argument, we accept the author's assertion that the only value of the world and its living things is to support human life ... he blithely assumes humans will control the world and bend it to their will. Last time I checked, in the battle between the world and humans, we're losing.

The Washington Post should be ashamed of itself for printing this piece of scientifically-illiterate garbage.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/we-dont-need-to-save-endangered-species-extinction-is-part-of-evolution/2017/11/21/57fc5658-cdb4-11e7-a1a3-0d1e45a6de3d_story.html?utm_term=.ae898f83de37