Enjoying the Natural World in Luxury

My wife and I spent a few days out in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. As we hiked through canyons and along the alluvial fans, we marveled at the majestic vistas and appreciated the verdins, black-throated sparrows and other birds and wildlife that make their homes among the cholla and cactus. As with our visits to Yosemite, Olympic National Park, and other places that have been set aside for folks to enjoy the outdoors, my wife and I wanted a nature experience and we got it.

            The one odd thing about visiting desert parks is the conspicuousness of human intrusion with RVs. Here is an RV park outside Anza-Borrego:

I guess as long as you have RVs, and as long as you have parks, there are going to be people to drive their RVs to parks. That is what they are meant for. It seems ironic, however, that the most incongruous thing you’re going to find in a park that celebrates the wonders of nature is an RV. Some of these vehicles weigh in excess of 12 tons. To me, it is absurd that people need to move that much of anything in order to enjoy the outdoors. These RVs are small houses on wheels, with beds, sofas, and kitchen sinks.

It is always a paradox that we use industrial products like our cars and consume resources like gasoline to enjoy open spaces. It is a conundrum that I recognize, but for my wife, and me we do make an effort to keep the driving to a minimum and use our more fuel-efficient car when we can. Driving an RV, though, is taking this conundrum to a whole ‘nother level. It takes a lot of fuel to move them about, increasing the amount of greenhouse gasses being pumped into the atmosphere. I know some people like them, but are they necessary?

            

Have You Read the News?

Newspapers have always had sections. There’s always been the business section, a local section, and of course, the sports section. Before the Internet, when papers were the way to get the news, sections were a precursor to the hyperlink. You could find the section that interested you and read about how your stocks were doing, see who was getting married, or just read the comics without having to leaf through a lot of other news that may have been of lesser interest to you. Transitioning to the Internet, papers still have sections. Instead of being a separate bundle of paper, the sections are links displayed below the paper’s banner on their home page.

            Now here is something to ponder: Of the ten largest circulating U.S. papers in the U.S.[1] none of them have an environment section, a place devoted to covering advances in green technology, the impact of rising sea levels on coastal areas and islands, the listing of plants and animals as endangered or threatened, and other such stories.

            Looking elsewhere at newspapers in other English speaking countries, their papers devote sections to the environment. The Guardian and The Independent in England have sections on the environment. The Sydney Morning Herald has an environment section. Even the Irish Times devotes a section of its online paper to environmental matters.

Recent polls indicate that Europeans consider the problems of global warming to be of utmost importance, second only to the problem of poverty,[i] while Americans’ concern about global warming is waning.[ii] A majority of Americans think that the protecting the environment should take a back seat when doing so is at odds with extracting coal, oil, and natural gas.[iii]

I believe that the difference of priorities that Americans and Europeans place on the environment is, at least in part, due to the way they are covered in the news. American papers may argue that they are merely giving their readership what they want. They provide a travel section because they know that there are people who want to read about snorkeling in Belize and train travel in Canada, and it’s the same with the financial section and sports section.

This is true, but news sources also influence the way their readers perceive the news and the importance of the news. An easy example is warfare in Central America. During the eighties Americans were acutely aware of the Sandinistas and Contras in Nicaragua as their conflict raged and engulfed Oliver North and Ronald Reagan in an Iran-Contra scandal. There was also a bloody war in Guatemala at the same time, one in which the United States played a role, yet Americans were largely ignorant of the fighting in Guatemala.

Using the New York Times as an indicator of the general press coverage, the number of stories concerning Nicaragua jumped from 1,663 during the seventies to 11,477 during the eighties, while the number of stories about Guatemala went from 1,821 to 3,590 for the same time period. The number of stories about Guatemala did increase, but not to near to the extent that it did for Guatemala.[2]

Americans knew about Daniel Ortega and his baseball caps because the press told them, again and again, about the war in Nicaragua. It’s the same for the environment. Americans would know a great deal about mountaintop removal, and probably care about the plight of the land and people of Appalachia, if it received as much press as Newt Gingrich.

For an adequate democracy, a populace needs to be informed. Without the U.S. press responsibly reporting on the environment, we are left with inadequate knowledge to make the tough decisions we need to make while the planet warms, wetlands are stressed, water grows scarce, and the rest of the natural world is placed at risk.

---

[1] The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Post, New York Daly News, New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune – Source: Audit Bureau of Circulation

[2] I used Proquest to obtain these figures.

---

[i] Europeans fear climate change more than financial turmoil, poll shows The Guardian 10/7/11 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/07/europeans-climate-change-poll

[ii] In U.S., Concerns About Global Warming Stable at Lower Levels Gallup 3/14/11 http://www.gallup.com/poll/146606/concerns-global-warming-stable-lower-levels.aspx

[iii] In U.S., Expanding Energy Output Still Trumps Green Concerns Gallup 3/16/11 http://www.gallup.com/poll/146651/expanding-energy-output-trumps-green-concerns.aspx

I Thought This Was Supposed To Be a Debate

This is what Newt Gingrich had to say about the Keystone pipeline in last night’s GOP debate. In this quote he is referring to the GOP affixing to a payroll tax cut wording that would expedite the construction of the Keystone pipeline. Referring to president Obama’s objection to inclusion of this language, Gingrich said, “It is utterly irrational to say ‘I’m now going to veto a middle class tax cut to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians, and do so in a way that makes no sense to any normal rational American’”

            I’ve written in this blog before about the rhetoric now used by politicians and others who want to roll back or do away with environmental protections or environmental regulation that may impede construction projects or energy projects such as the Keystone pipeline. But this performance in the video is a rhetorical neutron bomb, even for a rhetor such as Gingrich. He included the familiar term “left-wing environmental extremists,” as well as the geographic liberal Mecca that the GOP hates more than Mecca “San Francisco.” He also tied opposition the Keystone pipeline to the economy, American prosperity, and a supposed overseas threat from Iran.

            That Gingrich could so deftly demonize the people of South Dakota, Nebraska, and other central states who have legitimate concerns about contamination of their groundwater, that he could so harshly excoriate the environmentalists who point out that the pipeline has environmental costs greater than other energy sources, that he could so easily defend the inclusion of legislation to expedite the construction of the pipeline (a poison pill rider) in a bill providing a tax cut to most workers in this country is astonishing.

            Rhetorically astonishing, yes. But to say this is a debate is laughable. It’s highfalutin name calling, and reduces the formation of policy to the level of street brawling. No wonder the crowd cheered.

Hey Ireland, Tell Me About Durban!

I just went to Google News, putting the words “Durban Climate Change Conference” in the search box. I thought that today being the last day of the conference there might be some news about the international meeting that has been going on for over a week now.

            The news stories that came up were from the Guardian, Vancouver Sun, Irish Times, and other publications from other countries. There were two stories from American news sources, one from CNN and another from the AP, that covered events of the conference. A search of the online front pages of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times brought up no stories of the Durban conference.

            On the other hand, when I put “Newt Gingrich” in the search box of Google News, stories from the Los Angeles Times, CBS, ABC, Fox News, Washington Post, PBS, New York Times, and the New York Daily News came up.

            Why has the American press largely ignored the Durban climate conference? Perhaps they understood that meaningful results from the conference were about as likely as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich endorsing president Obama’s stimulus bill. Maybe they knew that the conference was a moot point and thus unworthy of being covered.

            But the American press covers a lot of stuff that is not news. Political conventions in which the nominee is already known are covered fawningly and faithfully. The same can be said of the dozen or so debates among the GOP candidates. Television networks have given air time to all of the debates—the substance of which could be summarized in seven to eight minutes of programming— with additional reporting and analysis of the proceedings taking up even more broadcast time.

            As these graphs show, the coverage in general about global warming has gone down in the US press.

Graphs from Maxwell Boykoff Center for Science and Technology Policy Research University of Colorado

October, 2011

Finding a successful agreement on CO2 emissions among dozens and dozens of countries, all of them with differing interests when it comes to fossil fuel use and global warming dangers, in unlikely. Nonetheless, one of the reasons for the failures of Kyoto and Durban is the unwillingness of the United States to take a leading position in efforts to mitigate global warming.

            And if the American press doesn’t cover the Durban conference and the coverage of other news of climate change drops as well, then it follows that Americans will not think of global warming as an important issue. And without an informed public that lets its elected officials hear about their concerns, Washington will not take the lead on climate change.

            The world is warming, and yet the US press is remiss in letting us know what we need to know. As well, Ireland is a small island country that may have much to loose in a warmed world. I guess that's where I get my news from today.

           

National Defense Authorization Act: One Step Beyond Kafka

Passed in the Senate today was the National Defense Authorization Act, which contains a provision that would give the government the legal authority to lock up in military custody people it suspects of terrorism. The detentions could be indefinite and without trial. All that is needed is the suspicion of terrorism. There is no exception for American citizens in the provision.

            This is, without a doubt, totalitarian. What makes this even scarier is the very loose manner in which terrorism is defined within the United States. Besides the carnage and violence of car bombs and other mass murder, the U.S. includes vandalism and other property crimes in its definition of terrorism. In the past decade the FBI has included such acts as the pouring of sugar in the gas tanks of construction vehicles and the releasing of thousands of minks from a farm as acts of terrorism.[i]

            Clearly, we must thwart Al Qaeda and any other terrorists, be they Timothy McVeigh or the Shoe Bomber. But a law that could take a vandal out of the criminal justice system and place him into indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay is nightmarish beyond the imagination of Kafka.

---

[i] FBI website: Terrorism 2002-2005 http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005

I Found a Merchant of Doubt

I guess this is an example of what my last blog was about. In that blog I talked about Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, an exposé on the efforts of industries such as tobacco and oil to obfuscate information on the dangers and consequences of their products: in the case of tobacco, cancer, in that of oil, global warming.

Nicolas Loris of the Heritage Foundation

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/11/New-EPA-Inspector-General-Report-One-More-Reason-to-Reject-Climate-Change-Regulation#_edn12

If you click the above link, you’ll find a piece by Nicolas Loris on the Heritage Foundation web site in which he tries to cast doubt on the work of the EPA and the science of global warming. Giving some context to this link, the Supreme Court, in their ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA found that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are pollutants and as such the authority and the responsibility to regulate such pollutants fell to the EPA under its mandate under the Clean Air Act.

            In response to the ruling, the EPA produced a Technical Support Document (TSD), a report on the science of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the consequences that has for global warming, rising sea levels, and the acidification of the oceans.

            Loris’ critique of the TSD centers on a procedural review of the TSD from the EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG). In doing the procedural review, the OIG reclassified the TSD from an Influential Scientific Assessment to a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment. These two kinds of assessments have differing processing procedures. The OIG found that the procedures for the TSD had not fully followed those of a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment under its reclassification.

            Please bear with me a while longer. I know this is complicated. It is meant to be. And that is part of the problem.

            The reason this process is so complicated is because big business and industry lobbyists back in the beginning of the George W. Bush administration were able to attach a rider on a spending bill that imposed burdensome regulations and red tape on the EPA and other government agencies that rely on science for their work. This rider, The Data Quality Act, is intended to generate reports upon reports, like the review by the OIG, and lead to analysis paralysis.

Loris says that the procedural review “should bring to light the problems with the EPA’s approach to greenhouse gas regulation: The EPA refuses to seriously consider broad dissenting science on the causes of climate change.” The procedural review found that certain procedures for a certain type of assessment were not fully followed. The procedural review did not find anything wrong with the science used in the TSD, nor did it find that the TSD lacked the requirements for rulemaking. By performing a mental bait and switch, changing the topic from procedures to science, Loris would have you believe otherwise.

            At another point he claims that the people at the EPA “bypass the legislative process” in regulating greenhouse gasses. In Massachusetts v. EPA the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had to regulate greenhouse gasses under the authority granted the agency under the Clean Air Act, a law passed by Congress. No legislative process bypassed here.

            Loris would lead you to believe that the EPA is remiss in its responsibilities by heading one section of his critique EPA: Ignoring Dissenting Science. Yet, reading the substance of the section you find that a couple of the “dissenters” don’t disagree with the scientific conclusion that CO2 is warming our planet. They merely disagree as to the extent of the warming that will take place. Most importantly, Loris offers no science that has been performed that shows that the plant is warming for other reasons besides the increased presence of CO2 in our atmosphere. That’s right. No dissenting science. Zero. Zip. Nada.

            I can see how this writing of Loris could, at first glance, sway some folks. But a good look at it, and understanding the context in which a procedural review was generated for an Environmental Protection Agency TSD, reveals it to be laughable.

Ref:

Technical Support Document for Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act  December 7, 2009: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/downloads/Endangerment%20TSD.pdf

Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gases Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes Report No: 11-P-0702 September 26, 2011: http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2011/20110926-11-P-0702.pdf

Merchants of Doubt: Why It's So Easy For the Science Deniers

I’m just finishing Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Though I found the book to drag at times, getting bogged down in details, these two authors make a significant case against the climate change denying industry. Starting with the tobacco industry in the 1950s, they catalogue a history of industry hired scientists, and very often the same scientists again and again, obfuscating the truth about scientific findings that hurt the bottom line of their industry sponsors, whether that industry is selling cigarettes or oil.

            I’ve watched the global warming denying phenomenon for about as long as anyone. And what no one can deny is the amount of success that the science deniers have had in bringing doubt into many people’s minds over issues in which the science is greatly indicative or settled. The science deniers have a lot of things working in their favor and have helped them to forestall smoking restrictions or the development of a climate policy in this country.

            First of all, science is hard to understand. Most folks are unable to determine if a scientific study or experiment is rigorous or poorly designed or executed. People aren’t to be blamed for this, but it is very easy to exploit. The average guy or gal doesn’t have the time to double check the cherry picked figures cited by the Heritage Foundation. And using the catchphrase of almost every scientist “more research needs to be done,” gives the deniers an aura of knowingness as they help politicians and policymakers to coddle the industries that finance their campaigns and kick the environmental can down the road for a while.

            In the past 30 years or so there has also developed a suspicion of all expertise. People without credentials and experience are valued as more authentic than those who have paid their dues through schooling or work. These “authentic” individuals’ gut level reactions and thinking are thought to be uncluttered by theory, book learning, or university level high falutiness. In the eyes of many, Barack Obama’s education at Columbia University and Harvard Law School made him less authentic, and therefore less trustworthy, than Sarah Palin, who as a student hopscotched from college to college before earning a degree in journalism. (OK, George W. Bush is a Harvard Business School graduate. But he never acts like a man with a Harvard background, so he at least seems more authentic to a lot of folks.)

Perhaps it is a particularly American characteristic to favor the cracker barrel philosopher over the intellectual. After all, in the halls of the Capitol Congress chose to install a statue of Will Rogers and not one of Emerson. As scientists are men and women who almost uniformly have advanced degrees, they fit into this society of experts: intellectuals and elites who say they know better than you. Americans don’t like them.

            Going back to recent decades, Americans no longer had to worry about cholera, malaria, and typhoid thanks to science. And the researcher Jonas Salk conquered polio. But just as we could now rest assured that our drinking water was safe and our children would not be crippled by an insidious virus, the atom bomb scared the collective bejesus out of us. Though we are no longer gripped by the existential fear that The Bomb created, cloning, genetic engineering, and other scientific finagling leave many of us unsettled and suspicious of science.

            Oreskes and Conway devote a chapter to the current attacks on Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. It may very well have been this suspicion of science—the invention and use of DDT and other synthetic pesticides, which were the main targets of Carson’s critique—that helped Silent Spring gain ground with the American Public and our political leaders when it did. Ironically, it is now the deniers to exploit this suspicion to attack Carson, her work, and the banning on DDT.

            With Merchants of Doubt Oreskes and Conway make a persuasive argument. Their book may help end this charade of creating public doubt over settled science. I was just hoping in this blog to add to the context in which this important book may help in our understanding of science and our efforts to curb global warming.