Tag Archives: climate change

Dissing Science

I’m hardly going out on a limb with the prediction that the next few years will be tumultuous. A manifestly unqualified candidate who lagged the “loser” by nearly 3 million  votes will occupy the Oval Office, and he has sent daily signals that he intends to dismantle important institutions of American government and pursue policies that most of us will bitterly oppose.

Our government hasn’t been working properly for some time; hopefully, once the fever breaks–assuming our utterly clueless “Commander in Chief” hasn’t destroyed us all in a nuclear war– this unfortunate election is likely to precipitate a crisis that will force us to make long-needed repairs to our civic infrastructure.

Of course, in the interim, if Trump and the Republican Congress follow through on their threats to shred the social safety net, a lot of people are likely to suffer and die before the damage can be undone.

The two biggest dangers we face under a mentally unstable President and a cabinet filled with know-nothings, however, will not be “fixable” at some saner future time. One is the prospect that Trump actually will use nuclear weapons in response to some provocation; the other is that his administration will set back efforts to abate climate change until it is too late to ameliorate much of the damage.

I understand climate change denial from people like the Koch brothers, whose economic interests are tied to fossil fuels. I’m at a loss to understand the success of their cynical disinformation campaign with people who should know better.

A recent New Yorker article quoted George Orwell,

In a 1946 essay, George Orwell wrote that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” It’s not just that we’re easily misled. It’s that, by “impudently twisting the facts,” we can convince ourselves of “things which we know to be untrue.” A whole society, he wrote, can deceive itself “for an indefinite time,” and the only check on that mass delusion is that “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.” Science is one source of that solid reality. The Trump Administration seems determined to keep it at bay, and the consequences for society and the environment will be profound.

Case in point: Myron Ebell–who heads the EPA transition team.

In the aughts, as a director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, he worked to kill a cap-and-trade bill proposed by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman; in 2012, when the conservative American Enterprise Institute held a meeting about the economics of a possible carbon tax, he asked donors to defund it. It’s possible, of course, to oppose cap-and-trade or carbon taxes in good faith—and yet, in recent years, Ebell’s work has come to center on lies about science and scientists. Today, as the leader of the Cooler Heads Coalition, an anti-climate-science group, Ebell denies the veracity and methodology of science itself. He dismisses complex computer models that have been developed by hundreds of researchers by saying that they “don’t even pass the laugh test.” If Ebell’s methods seem similar to those used by the tobacco industry to deny the adverse health effects of smoking in the nineteen-nineties, that’s because he worked as a lobbyist for the tobacco industry.

When Ebell’s appointment was announced, Jeremy Symons, of the Environmental Defense Fund, said, “I got a sick feeling in my gut. . . . I can’t believe we got to the point when someone who is as unqualified and intellectually dishonest as Myron Ebell has been put in a position of trust for the future of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the climate we are going to leave our kids.”

We can eventually fix the damage a Betsy DeVos will do to public education; we can (probably) repair the damage to civil rights likely to be done by Jeff Sessions, and the sorts of unfortunate measures likely to be taken by others in the cast of inexperienced and unqualified characters being nominated for cabinet positions.

But if major portions of the earth become uninhabitable–and millions of people die or are forced to migrate as a result–a return to sanity and respect for science and “solid reality” will come too late to repair the damage.

As someone once said, elections have consequences.

Tomorrow is Christmas; I’ll try to be more cheerful….

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Health and That Chinese “Hoax”

One of the unfortunate aspects of this bizarre Presidential campaign has been the lack of attention to the truly important issues America faces. Not that sexual assault, bigotry and massive ignorance are unimportant, but between disclosures about Trump’s “groping,” his “scorched earth” attacks on pretty much everyone, and his increasingly obvious mental health issues, the Orange One has sucked up all the oxygen in the room, with the result that issues of enormous consequence have received little attention, and even less thoughtful discussion.

Earlier this month, I posted about Trump’s selection of “environmental experts” for his transition team–a group of denialists about the reality of climate change.

We are already experiencing the severe weather that we’ve been warned will accompany our new climate reality; hurricanes that pick up power from warming oceans, flooding in some regions, droughts in others. But it isn’t only weather and agriculture that should concern us.

I often quote my cousin, an eminent cardiologist whose own blog is devoted to providing accurate medical information and debunking what he aptly calls “snake oil.” He recently reminded me that there is a health dimension to climate change that is too often overlooked:

At this time, most thoughtful people acknowledge the reality of humanly generated climate change on our environment, but they often fail to understand the real threat this poses to human health in general.

Now, the American College of Physicians (ACP), one of our most respected medical institutions, has issued a sobering position paper on climate change and it effects on human health, including higher rates of respiratory and heat-related illness, increased prevalence of vector-borne and waterborne diseases, food and water insecurity, and malnutrition. Persons who are elderly, sick, or poor are especially vulnerable to these potential consequences, according to this group. The ACP also states its belief that it’s incumbent on all those in the health industry to play an active role in protecting human health and averting dire environmental outcomes.

This ACP publication emphasizes that climate change presents a “catastrophic risk” to human health over the next hundred years that may wipe out all of the health advances made over the previous 100 years. The average temperature on Earth has increased by almost 1 degree since 1889, and greenhouse gas emissions have increased by almost 50% from 2005 to 2011. It is predicted that by the end of the century, the Earth’s temperature may increase by 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic seas has melted at unprecedented rates and the water levels worldwide have risen by almost 7 inches over the last 100 years. The World Health Organization has predicted that climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year from 2030 to 2050 due to malnutrition, increased malaria, increased respiratory illness, heat-related illness, food issues due to crop losses, and increases in waterborne infectious diseases and vector-borne illness:

Their current recommendations include the following:

The entire health care community throughout the world must engage in environmentally sustainable practices that reduce carbon emissions.
Support efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Educate the public, their colleagues, their community, and lawmakers about the health risks posed by climate change

As guardians of human health, we must assume a more active role in avoiding these disastrous consequences—if not for our own well-being, but for that for our children and all future generations! These efforts could well begin with how we all vote in the coming election!

My concern is not simply with the efforts of fossil fuel companies to stave off changes so that they can continue to profit, or with the fundamentalists (too many of whom are in Congress) who piously insist that God will take care of us.

My concern is that far too many of us arguably normal folks will react just like patients whose doctors tell them to quit smoking or start exercising– patients who know the doctor is right, but who lack the will to follow through.

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And for the Department of Head in the Sand….

Another day, another reason to view Donald Trump as a threat not just to the United States  and the rule of law, but to the entire globe.

As has been widely reported, Trump has called global warming “bullshit” and he has said that, if elected, he would “cancel” the Paris climate accord and reverse President Obama’s executive actions on climate change. Now, he has announced that Myron Ebell will head up his climate transition team, should he be elected President.

And who is Myron Ebell?

Ebell certainly is not a climate scientist. He is instead a disinformation specialist on global warming, working out of the D.C. offices of the right-wing, Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute as chief of the Center for Energy and Environment. He is also chairman of Cooler Heads Coalition, a collection of propagandists that “question[s] global warming alarmism and oppose energy-rationing policies.” And now he’s been picked to head Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team.

The rest of this “environmental team” are equally frightening.

Also appointed by Trump: Mike McKenna to guide the Department of Energy transition team. He’s worked in the energy field for former Virginia Republican Gov. George Allen and in the George H.W. Bush administration. He’s currently a lobbyist for Koch Companies Public Sector LLC, Southern Company Services, Dow Chemical Co. and Competitive Power Ventures Inc. David Bernhardt, formerly with the U.S. Department of Interior, will be heading the DOI transition team. Bernhardt works the Natural Resources Department of the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Faber Shreck. Among other things, he has represented clients involved in energy development on American Indian lands and businesses accused of violating the Department of the Interior’s regulations.

There are two main categories of science deniers: those who place their immediate financial interests above the common good and their children and grandchildren’s futures; and people like Donald Trump, who live in a reality of their own construction.

As with other aspects of the real world, Trump and his ilk apparently believe that it is possible to ignore facts, science and empirical evidence if you simply put your fingers in your ears and go “la la la, I can’t hear you.”

The problem with childish responses to complex, adult problems isn’t simply that they don’t solve those problems. It’s that they make them much worse.

Whether the Donalds of the world want to believe it or not, climate change is not only occurring, it’s accelerating. The consequences–even if we begin to act responsibly–will be enormously costly, and will reshape global population patterns and politics.

If we don’t act responsibly, they will be catastrophic.

Another reason–as if we needed one– to reject the Orange Buffoon.

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The Electoral Climate

A researcher at Yale recently had an interesting article in the L.A. Times. In it, he suggested that “I’m not a scientist” disclaimers aren’t going to work with voters in 2016.

In the 2012 presidential campaign, global warming didn’t come up in any of the three debates between Mitt Romney and President Obama. That won’t be the case this campaign season, with wide swaths of America suffering through climate change-fueled record heat, rampant wildfires and historic droughts. Voters understand what’s happening, and they want the government to take action.

The question is, have Republicans gotten the message? Not quite.

In a poll conducted this spring by me and my colleagues at Yale and George Mason universities, 70% of Americans support placing strict limits on carbon dioxide emissions at existing coal-fired power plants. We also found that 75% of adults, including 63% of Republicans, support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant. And yet Republicans have been making the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan their latest punching bag.

The reluctance of GOP candidates to acknowledge–let alone embrace–the widely accepted scientific consensus is undoubtedly due to their need to pander to the party’s primary voters, base voters who are the most doctrinaire and conservative and most likely to deny the reality of climate change, and to the special interests that disproportionately provide their campaign funds.

This is the same dilemma the national party faces almost across the board: the party’s increasingly rabid base strongly rejects positions that are widely held among American voters generally. In order to win the affections of the base–in order to secure the nomination–a candidate must take positions that effectively poison his/her chances in the general.

In another Yale/George Mason poll conducted last year, we found that, overall, Americans are two times more likely to vote for a candidate who strongly supports action to reduce global warming, and three times more likely to vote against a political candidate who strongly opposes action to reduce global warming. Only conservative Republicans are slightly more likely to vote for a candidate who strongly opposes action to reduce global warming.

And to add insult to injury, if the GOP hasn’t done enough to repel Latino voters, a recent poll by the New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future found that 95% of Latinos think the federal government should take at least some action to tackle climate change.

The real irony is this: while the more traditional candidates (I was going to say “credible” but I think that’s probably stretching it) swallow hard and disclaim belief in evolution and climate change, the primary voters insisting on these anti-science stances  in return for their support are currently splitting their allegiances between an embarrassing and tasteless narcissist and a soft-spoken, albeit certifiably insane, theocrat–neither of whom has a clue what government is or how it operates.

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The Real Bottom Line

Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog recently considered the impact of recent revelations that Exxon had covered up–lied about– decades of its own research on climate change.

In a move that echoes similar scandals involving the tobacco industry and cancer research, Exxon conducted research into fossil fuels and global warming, discovered it had a major problem that threatened public safety, and quickly decided to start intentionally misleading the public and peddling doubt and uncertainty rather than confront the problem.

Exxon could have chosen to expose the problems with fossil fuels and become the world’s leading investor in and producer of renewable energies. It would have been risky and reduced short-term profits, but it would potentially have set the company up for massive long-term growth. It would also, of course, have been the right thing to do. But that’s not the path Exxon chose. Exxon chose to lie, cheat, cover up, collude with other oil companies, and bring the entire world to the brink of global climate disruption and destruction.

When does a company’s efforts to protect its bottom line become criminal?

When small businesses engage in fraudulent behaviors–the auto mechanic who lies about the work your car requires, the doctor who performs unneeded procedures, the jeweler who sells you a “gold” necklace that isn’t–we prosecute those responsible.

The powers-that-be have deemed certain financial institutions “too big to fail”– and also, evidently, too big to prosecute. Is “big energy” similarly exempt from the laws that govern the rest of us?

Does the sheer magnitude of the harm they’ve done somehow insulate them?

What’s the real bottom line?

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