Arquivo da tag: Estados Unidos

The surprising links between faith and evolution and climate denial — charted (The Washington Post)

03/06/2015Uncategorizedciência, Estados Unidos, Evolucionismo, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Religiãorenzotaddei

By Chris Mooney May 20, 2015

For a long time, we’ve been having a pretty confused discussion about the relationship between religious beliefs and the rejection of science — and especially its two most prominent U.S. incarnations, evolution denial and climate change denial.

At one extreme is the position that science denial is somehow deeply or fundamentally religion’s fault. But this neglects the wide diversity of views about science across faiths and denominations — and even across individuals of the same faith or denomination — not all of which are anti-climate science, or anti-evolution.

At the other extreme, meanwhile, is the view that religion has no conflict with science at all. But that can’t be right either: Though the conflict between the two may not be fundamental or necessary in all cases, it is pretty clear that the main motive for evolution denial is, indeed, a perceived conflict with faith (not to mention various aspects of human cognition that just make accepting evolution very hard for many people).

The main driver of climate science rejection, however, appears to be a free market ideology — which is tough to characterize as religious in nature. Nonetheless, it has often been observed (including by me) that evolution denial and climate science rejection often seem to overlap, at least to an extent.

[Pope Francis has given the climate movement just what it needed: faith]

And there does seem to be at least some tie between faith and climate science doubt. Research by Yale’s Dan Kahan, for instance, found a modest correlation between religiosity and less worry about climate change. Meanwhile, a 2013 study in Political Science Quarterly found that “believers in Christian end-times theology are less likely to support policies designed to curb global warming than are other Americans.”

So how do we make sense of this complex brew?

Josh Rosenau, an evolutionary biologist who works for the National Center for Science Education — which champions both evolutionary science and climate science teaching in schools — has just created a chart that, no matter what you think of the relationship between science and religion, will give you plenty to talk about.

Crunching data from the 2007 incarnation of a massive Pew survey of American religious beliefs, Rosenau plotted different U.S. faiths and denominations based on their members’ views about both the reality of specifically human evolution, and also how much they favor “stricter environmental laws and regulations.” And this was the result (click to enlarge):

As Rosenau notes, in the figure above, “The circle sizes are scaled so that their areas are in proportion to the relative population sizes in Pew’s massive sample (nearly 36,000 people!).” And as you can see, while at the top right atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, non-Orthodox Jews and others strongly accept evolution and environmental rules, at the bottom left Southern Baptists, Pentecostals and other more conservative leaning faiths are just as skeptical of both.

Obviously, it is important to emphasize that a given individual, of any faith, could be anywhere on the chart above — it’s just that this is where the denominations as a whole seemed to fall out, based on Rosenau’s analysis (which itself mirrors prior analyses of the political alignments of U.S. faiths and denominations by political scientist and Religion News Service blogger Tobin Grant).

Reached by phone Tuesday, Rosenau (whom I’ve known for a long time from the community of bloggers about science and the environment) seemed to be still trying to fully understand the implications of the figure he’d created. “People seemed to like it,” he said. “I think some people are finding hope in it” — hope, specifically, that there is a way out of seemingly unending science versus religion spats.

Here are some of Rosenau’s other conclusions from the exercise, from his blog post introducing the chart:

First, look at all those groups whose members support evolution. There are way more of them than there are of the creationist groups, and those circles are bigger. We need to get more of the pro-evolution religious out of the closet.

Second, look at all those religious groups whose members support climate change action. Catholics fall a bit below the zero line on average, but I have to suspect that the forthcoming papal encyclical on the environment will shake that up.

[Our new pro-science pontiff: Pope Francis on climate change, evolution, and the Big Bang]

Rosenau also remarks on the striking fact that for the large bulk of religions and religious denominations, as support for evolution increases, so does support for tougher environmental rules (and vice versa). The two appear to be closely related.

So what can that mean?

Rosenau told me he was still trying to work that out — still playing with the data and new analyses to try to understand it.

One possible way of interpreting the figure is that as with political parties themselves, people at least partially self-sort into faiths or denominations that seem more consonant with their own worldviews. And thus, a cluster of issue stances may travel alongside these choices of affiliation. “People are choosing what religion they want to associate with,” suggested Rosenau. “If people feel alienated from a church, they’re switching.”

There may also be a substantive point here that links together the ideas. A view of the world that thinks of human beings as having evolved, as being part of the natural world and having emerged through the same process as other organisms, may also be related to a manner of thinking that puts great overall emphasis on the value of nature and one’s connectedness with it.

In any case, while the pattern above may require more analysis, one clear punchline of the figure is that it really doesn’t make sense to say that religion is at war with science. You can say that for some people, religion is clearly linked to less science acceptance — especially on evolution. But for others, clearly, religion presents no hurdle at all.

I would also agree that these data reinforce the idea that the pope’s coming encyclical on the environment could really shake matters up. Catholics are the biggest bubble in the chart above, and they’re right in the middle of the pack on the environment.

The pope, incidentally, also appears to accept evolution.

Guerra do clima (Folha de S.Paulo)

19/02/2015Uncategorizedciência, Estados Unidos, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Políticarenzotaddei

Pedidos de quebra de sigilo de cientistas crescem com a proximidade da Cúpula do Clima de Paris e acentuam embate sobre aquecimento global nos EUA

RAFAEL GARCIA

19/02/2015

ENVIADO ESPECIAL A SAN JOSE (EUA)

A animosidade entre climatologistas e grupos que questionam a atribuição do aquecimento global às emissões de CO2 tem crescido, e uma nova guerra pelo controle da informação começa a ser travada nos bastidores, principalmente nos EUA.

Os métodos usados nesse embate, porém, são diferentes daquele usado às vésperas da Cúpula do Clima de Copenhague, em 2009, quando diversos cientistas tiveram e-mails roubados e vazados na internet.

Agora, céticos do clima usam pedidos formais, baseados em leis de acesso à informação, para tentar quebrar o sigilo de correspondência dos pesquisadores.

“Veremos uma escalada similar à medida que a Cúpula do Clima de Paris se aproxima, no fim de 2015”, disse o climatologista Michael Mann, da Universidade do Estado da Pensilvânia, em palestra no encontro da AAAS (Associação Americana para o Avanço da Ciência), em San Jose.

Do encontro em Paris deve sair um novo acordo internacional para combater o aquecimento global, no lugar do Protocolo de Kyoto.

“Vai haver um esforço para confundir o público e os formuladores de politicas”, afirmou Mann.

As petições que buscam quebrar o sigilo de e-mail e anotações de cientistas em geral alegam suspeita de fraude e se baseiam em leis de transparência de informações que garante acesso a documentos produzidos por funcionários de governo.

Segundo um novo relatório da ONG Union of Concerned Scientists, esse tipo de abordagem a climatologistas cresce desde 2010, quando o promotor Ken Cuccinelli intimou a Universidade da Virgínia a liberar e-mails e anotações de Mann, que trabalhou para a instituição.

O processo se estendeu por quatro anos e, mesmo com decisão favorável ao cientista, longas horas foram consumidas para discussões com a própria universidade –que ameaçava liberar os dados temendo ser punida.

Mann foi o único a travar uma disputa pública. Mas, segundo a AGU (União Americana de Geofísica), questionamentos do tipo têm se direcionado a cientistas de instituições como Nasa, NOAA (agência oceânica e atmosférica) e o Departamento de Energia. Alguns desistem de travar a batalha legal.

Steven Dyer, da Universidade Commonwealth da Virgínia, achou que passar mais de 100 horas compilando mensagens para responder a petições seria menos dispendioso e interrompeu seu período sábatico para fazê-lo.

A entidade autora da petição –o centro de estudos conservador American Tradition Institute– passou então a exigir seus “livros de registro”. Essa e outras entidades recebem verbas da indústria do petróleo.

“Eles acham que temos um livro onde os pós-graduandos relatam o que estão fazendo”, diz Michael Helpern, autor do relatório da Union of Concerned Scientists.

Desde 2011, o congresso anual da AGU tem centro jurídico a disposição de cientistas de clima, que os orienta sobre como agir nesses casos.

“No último ano, tive muito trabalho”, conta a advogada Lauren Kurtz. Ela dirige agora o Fundo para Defesa Legal da Ciência do Clima, que levanta recursos para atender a cientistas assediados.

Geoengineering report: Scientists urge more research on climate intervention (Science Daily)

11/02/2015Uncategorizedciência, Diplomacia climática, Estados Unidos, Geoengenharia, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

Date: February 10, 2015

Source: University of Michigan

Summary: Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, while necessary, may not happen soon enough to stave off climate catastrophe. So, in addition, the world may need to resort to so-called geoengineering approaches that aim to deliberately control the planet’s climate.

Deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, while necessary, may not happen soon enough to stave off climate catastrophe. So, in addition, the world may need to resort to so-called geoengineering approaches that aim to deliberately control the planet’s climate.

That’s according to a National Research Council committee that today released a pair of sweeping reports on climate intervention techniques.

The University of Michigan’s Joyce Penner, who is the Ralph J. Cicerone Distinguished University Professor of Atmospheric Science, served on the committee. Penner studies how clouds affect climate.

The reports consider the two main ways humans could attempt to steer the Earth’s system: We could try to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Or we could try to reflect more sunlight back into space. The committee examined the socioeconomic and environmental impacts as well as the costs and technological readiness of approaches in each category.

The researchers said that certain CO₂-removal tactics could have a place in a broader climate change response plan. But the sunlight reflecting technologies, on the other hand, are too risky at this point. They underscored how important it is for humans to limit the levels of CO₂ they put into the atmosphere in the first place, and they called for more research into all climate intervention approaches.

“I, for one, am concerned with the continuing rise in CO₂ concentrations without clear efforts to reduce emissions,” Penner said. “The widespread impacts from these increases are readily apparent, and the cost of climate change impacts is likely to be high.

“We may need to employ some of these climate interventions techniques to avoid a catastrophe such as the loss of the Antarctic ice sheets, or even to remain below levels of climate change that are considered dangerous in the political arena.”

Techniques to remove CO₂ include restoring forests and adopting low-till farming — both of which trap carbon in plants and soils. Oceans could be seeded with iron to promote growth of CO₂-consuming organisms. And carbon could be be sucked directly out of the air and injected underground.

Methods to reflect sunlight include pumping sulfuric compounds into the stratosphere to, in essence, simulate a volcanic eruption; and spraying sea water mist or other finer-than-usual particles over the ocean. Smaller particles lead to brighter clouds, Penner said.

While the committee said that some of the CO₂ removal strategies including “carbon capture and sequestration” have potential to be part of a viable plan to curb climate change, it noted that only prototype sequestration systems exist today. Much development would have to occur before it could be ready for broad use.

The scientists caution against dumping iron in the oceans, as the technical and environmental risks currently outweigh the benefits. Similarly, they warned against sunlight-reflecting approaches, also known as “albedo modification.”

These efforts might be able to reduce the Earth’s temperature in just a few years, and they’re relatively cheap when compared to transitioning to a carbon-free economy. But they’d have to be kept up indefinitely and could have numerous negative secondary effects on ozone, weather and human health.

Even in its opposition to sunlight reflecting tactics, the committee still recommended more research into them, as it urged more study of all climate intervention possibilities. Penner was struck by this call to action.

“U.S. agencies may have been reluctant to fund this area because of the sense of what we call ‘moral hazard’ — that if you start down the road of doing this research you may end up relying on this or condoning this as a way of saving the planet from the cost of decreasing CO₂ emissions,” Penner said. “But we’ve stated that decreasing emissions must go hand in hand with any climate intervention efforts.”

Penner says the recommendation is a sign of the climate problem’s urgency.

“We need to develop the knowledge base to allow informed decisions before these dangerous effects are upon us,” she said.

The study was sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. intelligence community, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Department of Energy. The National Academy of Sciences is a private, independent nonprofit institution that provides science, technology and health policy advice under a congressional charter granted to NAS in 1863. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

The Climate Science Behind New England’s Historic Blizzard (Climate Progress)

26/01/2015UncategorizedDesastre, Estados Unidos, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Nevascarenzotaddei

BY JOE ROMM POSTED ON JANUARY 26, 2015 AT 3:49 PM UPDATED: JANUARY 26, 2015 AT 4:52 PM

“The Climate Science Behind New England’s Historic Blizzard”

Warming-fueled sea surface temperatures provide a boost of moisture for the forecast New England blizzard, just as it has for previous monster East Coast snow storms. Via NOAA.

Another epic blizzard is bearing down on New England. There is a “big part” played by “human-induced climate change,” especially warming-fueled ocean temperatures, according to Dr. Kevin Trenberth, former head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

I asked Dr. Trenberth to comment on the role climate change has on this latest storm, which is forecast to set records. He explained:

The number 1 cause of this is that it is winter. In winter it is cold over the continent. But it is warm over the oceans and the contrast between the cold continent and the warm Gulf Stream and surrounding waters is increasing. At present sea surface temperatures are more the 2F above normal over huge expanses (1000 miles) off the east coast and water vapor in the atmosphere is about 10% higher as a result. About half of this can be attributed to climate change.

Before this latest storm, we’ve seen a long-term pattern of more extreme precipitation, particularly in New England winters. Climate scientists had long predicted this would happen in a warming world. Here’s why.

“Percent changes in the amount of precipitation falling in very heavy events (the heaviest 1%) from 1958 to 2012″ by region,” via the 2014 National Climate Assessment. “There is a clear national trend toward a greater amount of precipitation being concentrated in very heavy events, particularly in the Northeast,” driven by a warming climate.

Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace. And like a baseball player on steroids, it’s the wrong question to ask whether a given home run is “caused” by steroids. As Trenberth wrote in his must-read analysis, “How To Relate Climate Extremes to Climate Change,” the “answer to the oft-asked question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that it is the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be.”

One of the most robust scientific findings is the direct connection between global warming and more extreme precipitation or deluges. “Basic physics tells us that a warmer atmosphere is able to hold more moisture — at a rate of approximately 7 per cent increase per degree [Celsius] warming,” as the U.K. Met Office explained in its 2014 update on climate science. “This is expected to lead to similar percentage increases in heavy rainfall, which has generally been borne out by models and observed changes in daily rainfall.”

This means that when it is cold enough to snow, snow storms will be fueled by more water vapor and thus be more intense themselves. So we expect fewer snowstorms in regions close to the rain-snow line, such as the central United States, though the snowstorms that do occur in those areas are still likely to be more intense. It also means we expect more intense snowstorms in generally cold regions. This may appear to be counterintuitive — and certainly climate science deniers like to play up big snowstorms for that reason. But the fact is that the warming to date is not close to that needed to end below-freezing temperatures during midwinter over parts of the globe like New England, while it is large enough to put measurably more water vapor into the air.

A 2014 MIT study by Prof. Paul O’Gorman found that “snowfall extremes actually intensify” even many decades from now, in a future with high levels of warming:

O’Gorman found that there’s a narrow daily temperature range, just below the freezing point, in which extreme snow events tend to occur — a sweet spot that does not change with global warming….

“People may know the expression, ‘It’s too cold to snow’ — if it’s very cold, there is too little water vapor in the air to support a very heavy snowfall, and if it’s too warm, most of the precipitation will fall as rain.”

We’ve long known that warmer-than-normal winters favor snow storms. A 2006 study, “Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States” found we are seeing more northern snow storms and that we get more snow storms in warmer years:

The temporal distribution of snowstorms exhibited wide fluctuations during 1901-2000…. Upward trends occurred in the upper Midwest, East, and Northeast, and the national trend for 1901-2000 was upward, corresponding to trends in strong cyclonic activity….

Assessment of the January-February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%-80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years…. a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected, will bring more snowstorms than in 1901-2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) U.S. Climate Impacts Report from 2009 reviewed that literature and concluded, “Cold-season storm tracks are shifting northward and the strongest storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent.

So it is no surprise that a 2012 study found extreme snowstorms and deluges are becoming more frequent and more severe. The 2014 National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is the most comprehensive analysis to date of current and future U.S. climate impacts, pointed out, “The mechanism driving these changes is well understood.” The congressionally-mandated report by 300 leading climate scientists and experts, which was reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences, explains: “Warmer air can contain more water vapor than cooler air. Global analyses show that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere has in fact increased due to human-caused warming…. This extra moisture is available to storm systems, resulting in heavier rainfalls. Climate change also alters characteristics of the atmosphere that affect weather patterns and storms.”

That final point is very important. The worst deluges have jumped not merely because warmer air holds more moisture that in turn gets sucked into major storm systems. Increasingly, scientists have explained that climate change is altering the jet stream and weather patterns in ways that can cause storm systems to slow down or get stuck, thereby giving them more time to dump heavy precipitation (see my recent literature review here).

The National Climate Assessment noted that this “remains an active research area” but pointed outthat: “Heavier-than-normal snowfalls recently observed in the Midwest and Northeast U.S. in some years, with little snow in other years, are consistent with indications of increased blocking (a large scale pressure pattern with little or no movement) of the wintertime circulation of the Northern Hemisphere.”

You can see these the remarkable swings in the fraction of annual precipitation coming from extreme deluges in New England from NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index for the past century:

NOAA chart showing the percentage (times 2) of New England “with a much greater than normal proportion of precipitation derived from extreme (equivalent to the highest tenth percentile) 1-day precipitation events” during the cold season (October-March).

In the case of the blizzard bearing down on New England, we have both the extra moisture off the East Coast and an “odd configuration of the jet stream (once again) is moving the low pressure system through a pattern that will create an epic blizzard.”

What of the future? Trenberth explains, “In mid winter, it is expected with climate change that snowfalls will increase as long as the temperatures are cold enough, because they are warmer than they would have been and the atmosphere can hold 4% more moisture for every 1F increase in temperature. So as long as it does not warm above freezing, the result is a greater dump of snow.” On the other hand, “at the beginning and end of winter, it warms enough that it is more likely for rain to result.” The net result is that average total snowfall may not increase.

The 2014 MIT study provides some more regional specificity about how the future will play out in terms of average snowfall versus extreme snowfall:

The study found that, under high warming scenarios, those low-lying regions with average winter temperatures normally just below freezing would see a 65 percent reduction in average winter snowfall. But in these places, the heaviest snowstorms on average became only 8 percent less intense. In the higher latitudes, extreme snowfall became more intense, with 10 percent more snow, even under scenarios of relatively high average warming.

Of course, climate science deniers and their allies will no doubt continue to misinform the public and policymakers by arguing that monster snowstorms are somehow evidence against the theory of human caused global warming, when they are no such thing. The latest science means the deniers will continue to have increasingly intense extreme “snowmageddons” in colder regions like New England, especially in midwinter, to mislead the public for decades to come.

Study: California drought is the most severe in at least 1,200 years (Washington Post)

05/12/2014UncategorizedCalifórnia, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Paleoclimatologia, Secarenzotaddei

By Angela Fritz December 4 at 3:40 PM

The current drought in California is the worst the state has seen in at least 1,200 years, according to a recent study published by the American Geophysical Union.

Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the University of Minnesota reconstructed California’s temperature and precipitation history back to 800 A.D. using tree ring data. Hidden in this millennium of data they found as many as 66 dry periods of at least three to nine years. In the entire 1,200 year period they studied, there were only three droughts that were similar in nature to the current drought.

Though none have been as severe as what California has seen in the three years since 2012. Not even the historic droughts of the late 1970s, nor the late 1980s. The study also found that 2014 was the worst single drought year in the past 1,200 years, and that approximately 44 percent of California’s 3-year droughts have gone on to last another year, or longer.

Interestingly, California’s current lack of rainfall is not unprecedented in the 1,200-year record. The study concludes that the current drought was a result of both below-average precipitation and record-breaking high temperatures, and that the latter could have intensified the drought by about 36 percent.

This week has been particularly rainy one for California, which is being blasted by a series of storms that are channeling moisture into the state. San Francisco has seen over 3.5 inches of rain since Monday, compared to 2013, when they only received 0.35 inches in the whole month. They’re average rainfall for the entire month of December is 4.03, so the city is well on it’s way to at least making par. Los Angeles has racked up over 1.5 inches of rain so far this month, where the December average is 2.05.

However, much, much more rainfall is needed to put a dent in the drought.

Fifty five percent of California remains in an “exceptional drought” as of Thursday — the most severe classification on the scale used by the U.S. Drought Monitor, and 100 percent of the state remains in at least a moderate drought. Many of the state’s critical reservoirs remain well below their historical average.

While this week’s rain and snow will be a step in the right direction, California still has a long way to go to reach total drought abatement. As of October, the National Climatic Data Center was estimating that most of California’s central valley as well as Northern California would need anywhere from 18 to 21 inches of precipitation over the next six months to end the drought.

This week’s rains will be beneficial, but they won’t be nearly enough.

Record Drought Reveals Stunning Changes Along Colorado River (National Geographic)

03/12/2014Uncategorizedágua, Desastre, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Secarenzotaddei

Lake Powell is at historic lows, offering kayakers new channels to explore but raising the alarm about water.

A boat traces the curves of Reflection Canyon, part of Glen Canyon.

A boat wends its way around the curves of Reflection Canyon, part of Lake Powell in Glen Canyon. The “bathtub rings” on the walls show past water levels.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL MELFORD, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

Jonathan Waterman

for National Geographic

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 23, 2014

LAKE POWELL, Utah—In early September, at the abandoned Piute Farms marina on a remote edge of southern Utah’s Navajo reservation, we watched a ten-foot (three-meter) waterfall plunging off what used to be the end of the San Juan River.

Until 1990, this point marked the smooth confluence of the river with Lake Powell, one of the largest reservoirs in the U.S. But the lake has shrunk so much due to the recent drought that this waterfall has emerged, with sandy water as thick as a milkshake.

My partner DeEdda McLean and I had come to this area west of Mexican Hat, Utah, to kayak acrossLake Powell, a reservoir formed by the confluence of the San Juan and the Colorado Rivers and the holding power of Glen Canyon Dam, which lies just over the border in Arizona. Yet in place of a majestic reservoir, we saw only the thin ribbon of a reemergent river channel, which had been inundated for most of the past three decades by the lake. We called this new channel the San Powell, combining the name of the river and the lake.

Map of the Lake Mead and Lake Powell regions.

VIRGINIA W. MASON, NG STAFF SOURCE: BUREAU OF RECLAMATION, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

We had also come to see firsthand how drought is changing the landscapes of the desert Southwest. Here, judging by the lack of conservation reform, water has seemed to be largely taken for granted. But our recent float suggests that profound changes may be in store for the region. (See “The American Nile.”)

Sweating in the desert heat, we loaded our 15-foot (5-meter) kayaks with two weeks’ worth of food and ten gallons of water—enough to last us two days. Drinking from the silty river or fecal-contaminated areas of Lake Powell frequented by houseboats was not an option (Glen Canyon Recreation Area, which includes the reservoir, is visited by more than two million people a year). The contours of our journey—where we camped, our hiking destinations, and how far we paddled each day—would be defined by the need to find potable springs.

Like bicyclists shunning the interstate, many kayakers have avoided Lake Powell ever since the builders of Glen Canyon Dam finished flooding 186 miles (300 kilometers) of the Colorado River Valley in 1980. The reservoir was named after John Wesley Powell, the National Geographic Society co-founder who first paddled most of the Colorado River and who later, in public office, tried to limit population growth in the arid Southwest. The dams and the enormous reservoirs that were later built in the desert would have horrified him.

Motorboaters call Powell’s lake the “Jewel of the Colorado” because of its unnatural emerald hue—Glen Canyon Dam now captures the silt that used to make the Colorado, after its confluence with the San Juan, the most colorful river in the West. Paddlers call it “Lake Foul” for the noise and stench of outboard engines.

In 2011, Lake Powell contained plenty of water.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JON WATERMAN

“Extreme” Drought

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 11 of the past 14 years have been drought years in the Southwest, with the drought ranging from “severe” to “extreme” to “exceptional,” depending on the year and the area.

At “full pool,” Lake Powell spans 254 square miles (660 square kilometers)—a quarter the size of Rhode Island. The lightning bolt-shaped canyon shore stretches 1,960 miles (3,150 kilometers), 667 miles (1,073 kilometers) longer than the West Coast of the continental United States.

The reservoir serves multiple purposes. It stores water from the Upper Basin states of Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado so that the Lower Basin states of California, Nevada, and Arizona can receive their allotted half of the Colorado River; it creates electricity through hydro-generators at Glen Canyon Dam; and it helps prevent flooding below Hoover Dam (240 miles or 390 kilometers downstream), the site of North America’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead.

11 of the past 14 years have been drought years in the Southwest.

The irony, as most students of this river’s history now know, is that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation created these enormous reservoirs during the wettest period of the past millennium. According to modern tree-ring data (unavailable during the dam-building epoch), the previous millennium experienced droughts much more severe than those in the first 14 years of the 21st century. Many climate scientists think the Southwest is again due for a megadrought. The Bureau of Reclamation’s analysis of over a hundred climate projections suggests the Colorado River Basin will be much drier by the end of this century than it was in the past one, with the median projection showing 45 percent less runoff into the river.

Last winter was snowy in the Rockies, and runoff was at 96 percent of the historical average. Because of the previous years of drought, however, Lake Powell had risen to only half full by fall.

But Lake Mead was in even worse shape. This year it plunged to 39 percent of capacity, a low that has not been matched since Hoover Dam began backing up the Colorado River in 1935. In August, the Bureau of Reclamation announced that Lake Powell would release an additional 10 percent of its waters, or 2.5 trillion gallons, to Lake Mead. That release will lower the water in Lake Powell by about three feet (one meter).

By 2014, Lake Powell was full of plant life and silt.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JON WATERMAN

Rise of Ancient Ruins?

Fifty miles (80 kilometers) up from the Colorado River confluence, on what is commonly known as the San Juan River Arm of Lake Powell, we kept poking our paddles-cum-measuring sticks toward the shallow river bottom, shouting: “Good-bye, reservoir! Hello, San Powell River!” In a four-mile-per-hour, opaque current, always hunting for the deepest river braids, we breezed past fields of still-viscous, former lake-bottom silt deposits. Stepping out of the boat here would have been an invitation to disappear in quicksand.

We paddled downstream, looking for the edge of the reservoir. We passed caterwauling great blue herons, a yipping coyote, and squawking conspiracies of ravens. By late afternoon, dehydrated by the desert sun, we stopped at one of the few quicksand-free tent sites above the newly emerged river: a sandy yet dry creek bed draining the sacred Navajo Mountain.

We slept in the perfume of blooming nightshades; wild burros brayed throughout the night. Here, more than a dozen miles below our put-in at a marina that once served the reservoir, the swirling “San Powell” River continued to sigh 15 feet (5 meters) below our tent.

In October 2011, when the reservoir was at 70 percent of its capacity, I had stood on a rocky shore above where our tent now stood and photographed Lake Powell’s Zahn Bay here in the San Juan River Valley. It’s dry now, and the lake bottom is a cracked series of chocolate-colored hummocks, surrounded by the invasive Russian thistle and tamarisk, native willows and sunflowers, and pockmarked by burro hooves.

For five days, we wouldn’t see a human footprint or hear the ubiquitous whine of Lake Powell boat traffic.

Half full, the amazing vessel that is Lake Powell has lost 4.4 trillion gallons of water in the recent drought.

By day three, desperate to refill our water bottles, we found a newly created marsh where the river thinned before dropping into the deeper reservoir. Unlike anything I’d experienced elsewhere on the sterile Lake Powell, abundant small fish and aquatic life supported American pelicans, mallards, coots, mergansers, green herons, hawks, and kingfishers. The silty river is also sheltering endangered razorback suckers and pikeminnows that are preyed upon by non-native fish in the clearer waters of the lake.

Within a decade or two at the most, if the drought persists, we can expect to see hundreds of inundated ancient Anasazi ruins rising above the drying reservoir. Archaeologists will be delighted, just as kayakers like us delight at the reemergence of a river. But more than 36 million people in and around the Colorado River Basin depend on this vanishing water.

As we finally reached a body of water wide enough to be properly called the reservoir, many miles below where we had expected to find it, we continued paddling in a chocolate pudding of ground-up river debris. Some 94 feet (29 meters) above our craned heads, on the red sandstone walls of the reservoir, we saw the “bathtub rings”—the stains left by river minerals in wetter times.

That night we did a quick calculation: Half full, the amazing vessel that is Lake Powell has lost 4.4 trillion gallons of water in the recent drought; the deeper vessel of Lake Mead at 39 percent capacity has lost 5.6 trillion gallons of water.

Aerial view looking down on Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon dam.

This aerial view of Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam was taken in 2009.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER MCBRIDE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

Big Impact

As central California (beyond the reach of Colorado River water) has already been hamstrung by an even more exceptional drought, many farms and dairy operations have shut down, rationing has begun, homeowners are being fined for watering their lawns, and the state has begun relying on finite groundwater supplies. And as extensive farm networks are served by the Colorado River, it is likely that nationwide produce prices will soon begin to rise.

What’s next? As Lakes Powell and Mead continue to plummet, officials are now predicting rationing by 2017 for the junior Colorado River water-rights holders of Nevada and Arizona.

In the decades that follow, invasive flora and fauna will colonize dried-out reservoir bottoms. River running and reservoir boating may end. Those will seem like minor issues compared with the survival of cities like Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, all of which depend on the Colorado River. There is talk of diverting more water to the Colorado Basin users from places such as the Missouri River. A massive desalination plant is being built on the California coast. But such solutions won’t come cheap.

Officials are now predicting rationing by 2017 for the junior Colorado River water-rights holders of Nevada and Arizona.

We can hope for agricultural reform, such as irrigation changes, more aggressive crop rotation and fallowing, reverting to less water-intensive produce, or dismantling of the water-intensive southwestern dairy industry. And the exponential population growth of the region—as Powell warned at the end of the 19th century—will have to be addressed. (See “Arizona Irrigators Share Water With Desert River.”)

By mid-September, we reached the speedboat-accessible region of Lake Powell. Motorboaters often stopped to ask if we needed help. Many of these boaters offered us iced beer or bottled water imported from distant regions of the country.

Each day, for 14 days, except during two violent but brief rainstorms, the temperature climbed into the 90s. Often dizzy, and even exhausted from the heat, we parceled out our water, cup by cup, consuming over four gallons daily. And every other day, we walked or paddled miles out of our way so that we could enact a time-honored practice of desert cultures like the Anasazi’s, which vanished in the 13th-century megadrought.

Every other day, we uncapped our empty bottles while honoring this ritual of aridity: Bowing under shaded cliffs at moss-covered seeps, we pressed our lips onto cold sandstone walls and drank those precious drops until our bellies were full.

http://player.d.nationalgeographic.com/players/ngsvideo/share/?feed=http://feed.theplatform.com/f/ngs/dCCn2isYZ9N9&guid=00000149-679a-ddff-ab59-f7db8ef50000&link=http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/

This short film by Pete McBride explores the history and meaning of the Colorado River.

Jonathan Waterman is a writer and photographer based in Colorado. In 2010 National Geographic published his book Running Dry: A Journey From Source to Sea Down the Colorado River. He is also the co-author, with Pete McBride, of The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict.See his previous work “The American Nile.”

Get involved with the effort to restore the Colorado River throughChange the Course, a partnership of National Geographic and other organizations.

Survey shows what Americans fear most (Science Daily)

22/11/2014UncategorizedDesastre, Estados Unidos, Medorenzotaddei

Date: October 21, 2014

Source: Chapman University

Summary: The Chapman Survey on American Fears included 1,500 participants from across the nation and all walks of life. The research team leading this effort pared the information down into four basic categories: personal fears, crime, natural disasters and fear factors.

Chapman University has initiated the first comprehensive nationwide study on what strikes fear in Americans in the first of what is a planned annual study. According to the Chapman poll, the number one fear in America today is walking alone at night.

The Chapman Survey on American Fears included1,500 participants from across the nation and all walks of life. Underscoring Chapman’s growth and emergence in the sciences, the research team leading this effort pared the information down into four basic categories: personal fears, crime, natural disasters and fear factors.

The survey shows that the top five things Americans fear the most are:

1) Walking alone at night

2) Becoming the victim of identity theft

3) Safety on the internet

4) Being the victim of a mass/random shooting

5) Public speaking

“What initially lead us into this line of research was our desire to capture this information on a year-over-year basis so we can draw comparisons with what items are increasing in fear as well as decreasing,” said Dr. Christopher Bader, who led the team effort. “We learned through this initial survey that we had to phrase the questions according to fears vs. concerns to capture the information correctly, so that is how we present it,” Bader continued.

The top five things Americans worry or are concerned about are:

1) Having identity stolen on the internet

2) Corporate surveillance of internet activity

3) Running out of money in the future

4) Government surveillance of internet activity

5) Becoming ill/sick

“The sky is falling (and a serial killer is chasing me)”

Turning to the crime section of the Chapman Survey on American Fears, the team discovered findings that not only surprised them, but also those who work in fields pertaining to crime.

“What we found when we asked a series of questions pertaining to fears of various crimes is that a majority of Americans not only fear crimes such as, child abduction, gang violence, sexual assaults and others; but they also believe these crimes (and others) have increased over the past 20 years,” said Dr. Edward Day who led this portion of the research and analysis. “When we looked at statistical data from police and FBI records, it showed crime has actually decreased in America in the past 20 years. Criminologists often get angry responses when we try to tell people the crime rate has gone down.”

Despite evidence to the contrary, Americans do not feel like the United States is becoming a safer place. The Chapman Survey on American Fears asked how they think prevalence of several crimes today compare with 20 years ago. In all cases, the clear majority of respondents were pessimistic; and in all cases Americans believe crime has at least remained steady. Crimes specifically asked about were: child abduction, gang violence, human trafficking, mass riots, pedophilia, school shootings, serial killing and sexual assault.

“Fear of Disaster — Little Action to Prepare”

Chapman’s growth in global climate change research and extreme events led another portion of The Chapman Survey on American Fears into the area of natural disasters and people’s preparedness. The findings showed that despite widespread fear, the vast majority of those surveyed do not have emergency kits — even in regions hardest hit by natural disasters.

The top five most feared natural disasters by Americans are:

1. Tornado/hurricane

2. Earthquakes

3. Floods

4. Pandemic or Major Epidemic

5. Power Outage

Despite these fears, only 25 percent of Americans have a disaster preparedness kit that includes food, water, clothing and medical supplies.

“Our research indicated that Americans are aware, but better communication strategies are needed to encourage the nearly 75 percent who are unprepared for catastrophe,” said Dr. Ann Gordon, who led this portion of the survey. “We are conducting follow-up studies to examine why so many Americans remain unprepared despite lessons learned from recent natural disasters,” Gordon continued. “And, we are also taking a closer look at ‘preppers’ — a community that takes preparedness to the extreme.”

Dr. Gordon’s work includes maps of America that breaks down the fears of natural disasters by region, which can be seen at http://www.chapman.edu/fearsurvey

“Fear Factors”

The remainder of The Chapman Survey on American Fears looks at fear factors.

“Through a complex series of analyses, we were able to determine what types of people tend to fear certain things, and what personal characteristics tend to be associated with most types of fear,” said Dr. Christopher Bader, who performed the analysis.

Factors Bader and his team looked at included: age, gender, race, work status, education, income, region of the country, urban vs. rural, political preference, religion, TV viewing, and gun ownership.

Through their analysis two key factors emerged: having a lower level of education and also high frequency of television viewing were the most consistent predictors of fear.

U.S. and China Reach Climate Accord After Months of Talks (N.Y.Times)

18/11/2014UncategorizedChina, Diplomacia climática, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

By MARK LANDLERNOV. 11, 2014

President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China, with their delegations, met inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday.CreditMandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BEIJING — China and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases.

The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030.

Administration officials said the agreement, which was worked out quietly between the United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to negotiate a new global climate agreement by 2015.

It was the signature achievement of an unexpectedly productive two days of meetings between the leaders. Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi also agreed to a military accord designed to avert clashes between Chinese and American planes and warships in the tense waters off the Chinese coast, as well as an understanding to cut tariffs for technology products.

A climate deal between China and the United States, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 carbon polluters, is viewed as essential to concluding a new global accord. Unless Beijing and Washington can resolve their differences, climate experts say, few other countries will agree to mandatory cuts in emissions, and any meaningful worldwide pact will be likely to founder.

“The United States and China have often been seen as antagonists,” said a senior official, speaking in advance of Mr. Obama’s remarks. “We hope that this announcement can usher in a new day in which China and the U.S. can act much more as partners.”

As part of the agreement, Mr. Obama announced that the United States would emit 26 percent to 28 percent less carbon in 2025 than it did in 2005. That is double the pace of reduction it targeted for the period from 2005 to 2020.

China’s pledge to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030, if not sooner, is even more remarkable. To reach that goal, Mr. Xi pledged that so-called clean energy sources, like solar power and windmills, would account for 20 percent of China’s total energy production by 2030.

Administration officials acknowledged that Mr. Obama could face opposition to his plans from a Republican-controlled Congress. While the agreement with China needs no congressional ratification, lawmakers could try to roll back Mr. Obama’s initiatives, undermining the United States’ ability to meet the new reduction targets.

Still, Mr. Obama’s visit, which came days after a setback in the midterm elections, allowed him to reclaim some of the momentum he lost at home. As the campaign was turning against the Democrats last month, Mr. Obama quietly dispatched John Podesta, a senior adviser who oversees climate policy, to Beijing to try to finalize a deal.

For all the talk of collaboration, the United States and China also displayed why they are still fierce rivals for global economic primacy, promoting competing free-trade blocs for the Asian region even as they reached climate and security deals.

The maneuvering came during a conference of Pacific Rim economies held in Beijing that has showcased China’s growing dominance in Asia, but also the determination of the United States, riding a resurgent economy, to reclaim its historical role as a Pacific power.

Adding to the historic nature of the visit, Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi were scheduled to give a joint news conference on Wednesday that will include questions from reporters — a rare concession by the Chinese leader to a visiting American president.

On Tuesday evening, Mr. Xi invited Mr. Obama to dinner at his official residence, telling his guest he hoped they had laid the foundation for a collaborative relationship — or, as he more metaphorically put it, “A pool begins with many drops of water.”

Greeting Mr. Obama at the gate of the walled leadership compound next to the Forbidden City, Mr. Xi squired him across a brightly lighted stone bridge and into the residence. Mr. Obama told the Chinese president that he wanted to take the relationship “to a new level.”

“When the U.S. and China are able to work together effectively,” he added, “the whole world benefits.”

But as the world witnessed this week, it is more complicated than that. Mr. Xi won approval Tuesday from the 21 countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to study the creation of a China-led free-trade zone that would be an alternative to Mr. Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trading bloc that excludes China.

On Monday, Mr. Obama met with members of that group here and claimed progress in negotiating the partnership, a centerpiece of his strategic shift to Asia.

Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership are much further along than those for the nascent Chinese plan, known as the Free Trade Area of Asia Pacific, and some analysts said the approval by the Pacific Rim nations of a two-year study was mainly a gesture to the Chinese hosts to give them something to announce at the meeting.

For all the jockeying, the biggest trade headline was a breakthrough in negotiations with China to eliminate tariffs on information technology products, from video-game consoles and computer software to medical equipment and semiconductors.

The understanding, American officials said, opens the door to expanding a World Trade Organization agreement on these products, assuming other countries can be persuaded to accept the same terms. With China on board, officials predicted a broader deal would be reached swiftly.

“We’re going to take what’s been achieved here in Beijing back to Geneva to work with our W.T.O. partners,” said Michael B. Froman, the United States trade representative. “While we don’t take anything for granted, we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to work quickly” to conclude an expansion of the agreement, known as the Information Technology Agreement.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Xi formally welcomed Mr. Obama at a ceremony in the Great Hall of the People; they later toasted each other at a state banquet.

Administration officials said Mr. Obama had pressed Mr. Xi to resume a United States-China working group on cybersecurity issues, which abruptly stopped its discussions after the United States charged several Chinese military officers with hacking.

“We did see a chill in the cyber dialogue,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser. “We do believe it’s better if there’s a mechanism for dialogue.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama credited APEC with originating the work on reducing tariffs, saying, “The United States and China have reached an understanding that we hope will contribute to a rapid conclusion of the broader negotiations in Geneva.”

Talks with China over expanding the 1997 accord on information technology broke down last year over the scope of the products covered by the agreement. But after intensive negotiations leading up to Mr. Obama’s visit, Mr. Froman said, the Americans and the Chinese agreed Monday evening to eliminate more than 200 categories of tariffs.

While the United States still exports many high-technology goods, China is the world’s dominant exporter of electronics and has much to gain from an elimination of tariffs. Taiwan, South Korea and Japan increasingly find themselves supplying China’s huge electronics industry, deepening their dependence on decisions made in Beijing.

The administration estimated that expanding the Information Technology Agreement would create up to 60,000 jobs in the United States by eliminating tariffs on goods that generate $1 trillion in sales a year. About $100 billion of those products are American-made. The administration faces a longer path on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including whether Mr. Obama will obtain fast-track trade authority from Congress. That could make it easier for the United States to extract concessions from other countries, since they would have more confidence that the treaty would be ratified by Congress.

While Mr. Froman conceded that sticking points remained, he said, “It’s become clearer and clearer what the landing zones are.” He said that Mr. Obama would seek fast-track authority, but that the best way for him to win congressional passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be to negotiate the best deal.

The new GOP Senate is already gearing up to cause climate mayhem (Grist)

07/11/2014UncategorizedEstados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Política, Republicanosrenzotaddei

By Ben Adler

5 Nov 2014 7:30 AM

On Tuesday night, Republicans won big: They picked up governorships in blue states like Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois, and they held House seats in competitive districts with embarrassing incumbents like Michael Grimm of New York, who physically threatened a reporter and is under indictment for tax evasion.

But their biggest win by far was taking control of the U.S. Senate. As of this writing, Republicans had already secured 52 Senate seats, thanks to knocking off Democratic incumbents or replacing retiring Democrats in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia. Another GOP pick up is probable in Alaska, and Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy is likely to win the runoff in Louisiana against Sen. Mary Landrieu in December.

This is not good news for the climate. The party that controls the majority and the committee chairmanships controls the agenda. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will now be the majority leader. McConnell deflects questions about whether he accepts climate science by saying he isn’t a scientist and citing climate-denying conservative pundit George Will. But he is clear about where he stands on fossil fuels, especially coal: He loves them. Attacking President Obama for not sharing his passion for burning carbon was central to McConnell’s reelection campaign this year. If you thought Landrieu, chair of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee, was too pro–fossil fuel, just wait until Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska takes the gavel. Leading climate denier James Inhofe of Oklahoma will be taking over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and fellow denier Ted Cruz (R-Texas) will be chairing the Committee on Science and Technology.

The Republicans have two top energy-related demands: stop EPA from regulating CO2 and approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

The EPA is required under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) as pollutants. So the agency proposed regulations of CO2 emissions from power plants. This is the centerpiece of what Republicans inaccurately call Obama’s “War on Coal.”

In the House, Republicans have voted to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate GHGs. That measure died in the Senate because of Democratic opposition. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the only Senate Republican to vote against it, and even she had voted once previously to revoke the EPA’s GHG regulatory authority. Obama has staked his second-term legacy on reducing GHG emissions, in large part through the EPA power plant regulations. Those regulations are also essentialto setting the U.S. on a path to meet its promised emissions reductions under the Copenhagen Accord of 2009. Obama will not let congressional Republicans make him look like a feckless liar to our allies, whose cooperation we need to get a more ambitious climate agreement in the 2015 round of negotiations in Paris. So Obama will make a stand on EPA authority if he must. And before it even comes to that, Senate Democrats will likely throttle any EPA authority repeal with a filibuster.

Keystone is more vulnerable. Many Democrats from fossil fuel-dependent states have called for its approval. As former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said on CNN Tuesday night, “This Republican House and Republican Senate will pass the Keystone XL pipeline.” Speaking on Fox News the same night, GOP Dark Overlord Karl Rove said that Republicans would look to pass legislation that could get Democratic votes and cited Keystone XL as an example.

Republicans won’t just pass Keystone approval on its own for Obama to veto. They will continue their strategy of attaching it to unrelated bills, from anodyne energy-efficiency measures to the budget. No one really knows what Obama thinks about Keystone, but it is widely assumed that he was happy to let it go through until activists rose up in protest. Obama would probably like to mollify his base after the midterms by rejecting Keystone, but there’s no guarantee he won’t be willing to trade it away with newly empowered Republicans.

Anticipating exactly this line of dispiriting thinking, 350.org, which has led the national fight against Keystone, issued a statement Tuesday night defensively titled, “Keystone XL No Done Deal.” “We know the Republicans are going to make Keystone a priority, but this isn’t their call,” said May Boeve, executive director of 350.org. “President Obama has the power to reject the Keystone pipeline outright, and do right by his own legacy. We’re gearing up to hold his feet to the fire — and we’re confident that when everything’s said and done, Keystone XL will not be built.”

Republicans know they may need to force Obama’s hand on Keystone precisely because of the pressure he will get from his base to reject it. And they will try to do just that. With control of both houses of Congress, Republicans can pass any bill they want unless Senate Democrats threaten a filibuster. That doesn’t mean Republicans can enact any law they want. Obama can veto their bills, and now his little-used veto pen will be put to work. But Obama can’t simply prevent the GOP from doing anything at all. Some legislation has to get passed just to keep the government running, such as approving a budget and raising the debt ceiling. Ever since Republicans won control of the House in 2010, they have been exploiting those requirements to try to force Obama to sign off on their agenda. Now, with control of the Senate, Republicans will be in a stronger position to demand that Obama give in to or compromise on some of their demands. If he doesn’t, they can cause a government shutdown, or trigger a global financial collapse by breaching the debt ceiling and defaulting on the U.S. national debt.

I know what you’re thinking: “But shutting down the government or defaulting on our debt would be terrible for America!” Don’t be so naive as to mistake congressional Republicans for rational human beings or patriotic Americans. They are so beholden to their base that taking the U.S. economy hostage has become a standard GOP negotiating tactic. Since swing voters frown on such shenanigans, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) has said he would like to end the hostile budget fights and get down to governing. But the Republican leadership always wants that, and in the past they’ve always given in to their rowdy backbenchers.

If they can’t get their way through normal legislative means, Republicans might simply try to disable the government by blocking all of President Obama’s nominees until he gives in to a major demand like Keystone approval. They were already doing that by filibustering even moderate, well-qualified nominees until Democrats eliminated the filibuster for executive branch appointees. Now, with a Senate majority, Republicans can block any nominee.

To see what else Senate Republicans have in store for the environment, just look at what their House colleagues have tried to do. Earlier this year, House Republicans passed a series of bills to kneecap federal agencies like the EPA. The details are boring and complicated, but the bottom line is that they would institute a number of requirements to burden or constrict the regulatory process. A typical example is their proposal to require agencies to calculate all the indirect costs of every regulation and always choose the least costly option, regardless of its adverse impact on, say, human health. Another example: In September, they passed a bill that would stop the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers from protecting America’s small streams and wetlands.

Republicans will also try to prevent environmental regulation by refusing to pay for it. In a typical measure, the House GOP’s EPA budget passed in June would have cut funding for the agency by 9 percent. House Republicans have previously votedto defund the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which compiles reportson climate science, and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body that hosts international climate negotiations. Now the Senate may join them. Just through controlling the House, Republicans have already forced through milder cuts to the EPA budget and blocked environmental regulations. With control of the Senate, Obama will have to cede even more ground.

In fairness to the GOP, elections have consequences and Obama should have to compromise with them. That Republicans lack any actual popular majority — they won because of the rural bias of the Senate and gerrymandering of House districts — is irrelevant. When Republicans claim they have a popular mandate, they are lying, and should be called out for it. But when they say, “We won and we’re going to use our power to enact our agenda,” it’s all in the game.

And so you can expect to see a lot of little bits of bad news for the climate and the broader environment in the budget negotiation process. EPA funding will be cut, presumably by somewhere between the roughly stable funding Obama will likely request and the drastic cuts the House GOP will pass. Programs that especially irk Republicans, like those that promote renewable energy and anything pertaining to smart growth, will fare especially poorly. There will also be spending cuts in other departments with environmental implications, like mass transit and transit-oriented affordable-housing development.

In terms of Senate election results, the worst of it is over. The map of states with Senate seats up in 2016 is a lot more favorable to Democrats, and they will stand a good chance of regaining the majority. But in terms of environmental policy, the worst is yet to come.

* * *

Climate change denier Jim Inhofe in line for Senate’s top environmental job (The Guardian)

Obama faces a fight to protect his climate change agenda after midterm results suggest Senate’s top environmental post will fall to Republican stalwart of climate denial

theguardian.com, Thursday 6 November 2014 16.24 GMT

Climate skeptic nad Republican Senator Jim Inhofe Republican Senator Jim Inhofe is expected to get the Senate top environmental job. Photograph: Tom Williams/Getty Images

The Senate’s top environmental job is set to fall to Jim Inhofe, one of the biggest names in US climate denial, but campaigners say Barack Obama will fight to protect his global warming agenda.

Oklahoma Republican Inhofe has been denying the science behind climate change for 20 years – long before it became a cause for the conservative tea party wing. Following midterm elections which saw the Republicans take control of the senate, he is now expected to become the chairman of the senate environment and public works committee.

However, advocates believe Obama will work to protect his signature power plant rules from Republican attacks, and to live up to his earlier commitments to a global deal on fight climate change.

“We think he sees this as a critically important part of his second term legacy and there is no reason why he should not continue to go forward on this… both domestically and around the world,” Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, told a press briefing.

The campaigners were less clear, however, how far Obama would be willing to fight to block the Keystone XL pipeline project.

Obama will get a chance to show he is still committed to fighting climate change during a trip to Beijing next week, where the US and Chinese are expected to announce new energy co-operation.

Extracting a pledge from China to cut emissions is hugely important now for Obama, who faces growing pressure from Republicans to demonstrate that other countries beyond the US – especially the high-emissions, rising economies – are acting on climate change.

“It is a domestic political imperative for the president to gain emissions reductions from China and other major emitters as much as it is an international policy goal,” said Paul Bledsoe, a climate change official in the Clinton White House.

“The president is under increasing pressure to gain emissions reductions from China and other major emitters in order to justify US domestic mitigation policy. That is going to be the spin Republicans put on it – that we are wasting our time with domestic emissions reductions because they will be swamped by developing countries’ pollution.”

Obama is going to feel that pressure the most from Congress. With his opponents now in control of both houses, the top slot on the Senate’s environment and public works committee passes from a climate defender, the California Democrat, Barbara Boxer, to Inhofe.

He published a book in 2012 calling global warming a hoax, and has compared the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Gestapo.

A spokeswoman for Inhofe said his first concern was passing the defence budget, and that he would make no comment on his leadership roles until next week.

But if, as expected, Inhofe becomes the new committee chair next January, he will probably try to dismantle the EPA rules cutting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants – the centrepiece of Obama’s environmental agenda.

Industry lobbyists and campaigners said Inhofe lacked the votes to throw out the power plant rules entirely.

Obama would also veto any such move, said Scott Segal, an energy and coal lobbyist with Bracewell & Giuliani.

“I’m not sure we have the votes to advance those across the finish line particularly if they are vetoed,” Segal told a conference call with reporters. Instead, he said he expected “tailored changes”, which could weaken the rules.

Bledsoe did expect, however, that Obama will sign off on the controversial Keystone XL project early next year.

Republicans have said approving the pipeline, built to pump tar sands crude to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, would be an early order of business.

Obama in his post-election press conference gave no indication what he would decide. But Bledsoe said: “I actually believe the president is likely to approve the piepline and in the process deny Republicans a politically potent issue.”

From his perch in the Senate, Inhofe is expected to launch multiple investigations into the EPA – including Republican charges that the agency leaned heavily on a campaign group in drafting the proposed new rules.

But as committee chair, Inhofe is unlikely to indulge in quite the same level of theatrics on climate denial, said RL Miller, a California lawyer and founder of the grassroots organising group, Climate Hawks Vote.

“I expect we are going to see less headline-grabbing efforts on the EPA and more of simply throttling their budget,” Miller said. “If he touches climate denial at all he is going to be ridiculed in public and in the media. If he is smart, he is going to be very quiet publicly, and it will be death by a thousand cuts in the kind of budget battles that people like Jon Stewart don’t pay attention to.”

Despite their upbeat postures, Tuesday’s results were a big setback for campaign groups which had invested an unprecedented amount in trying to elect pro-climate candidates to Congress.

The former hedge fund billionaire, Tom Steyer, spent nearly $75m on advertising and organising in only seven races, making him the biggest known single spender in these elections. Only three of his candidates won.

“There is no way to dance around the issue that in too many races we lost good allies,” Michael Brune, the director of the Sierra Club, told a briefing. “We see those people being replaced by people that are against our values.”

But the environmental leaders blamed the poor showing on low turnout in an off election year – and continued to insist that climate change was becoming a top-tier issue.

They insisted their effort had put climate change on the electoral map – a big shift from 2012 when virtually no candidates would even utter the words climate change.

This time around, Republican candidates were forced to back away from outright climate denial, the campaigners said.

They noted Cory Gardner, the newly elected Republican Senator from Colorado, had appeared in campaign ads with wind turbines, after earlier disparaging climate science. “Climate denial is an endangered species,” Brune said.

Midterm Elections, the Senate, and Republican Science Denial (Slate)

05/11/2014UncategorizedEleições, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Política, Republicanosrenzotaddei

By Phil Plait

NOV. 4 2014 7:00 AM

If Republicans win the Senate, James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, could be in charge of the committee that controls the EPA. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Today is the midterm election for the United States, where many seats in the House and Senate will be determined. It seems pretty obvious that the House will remain in control of the Republicans. It seems likely the GOP will get a slight majority in the Senate today as well.

What does this mean? Well, in the short term and for many issues, not a lot. This previous Congress will go down in history as the least effective ever, since all it really did is block White House initiatives. They couldn’t even approve a surgeon general nomination! A GOP majority in the Senate will probably mean more of the same, since they’ll lack the supermajority needed to prevent Democratic filibustering of big items.

But this vast, gaping polarization of American politics is toxic, especially where it comes to the crucial issue of global warming. Here, a Senate GOP majority can have an extremely destructive effect. It will put a cohort of science-deniers into positions of authority over the very science they want to trample. This is extremely worrisome to me, and it should be to you as well.

Nowhere is this more important thanthe Environment and Public Works Committee. A Republican win will almost certainly make James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, chairman. This committee controls the Environmental Protection Agency, which is charged with addressing climate change and what to do about it. Inhofe is probably the most ludicrously adamant global warming denier in the Senate; he has called it a hoax and denies it to levels that would make the frothiest conspiracy theorists shake their heads in wonder.

Inhofe has indicated he will attack greenhouse gas regulators, so giving him control of this committee puts the “fox in charge of the henhouse” simile to shame.

Other committees will fare no better; as just one example Ted Cruz, R-Texas, could be chairman of the committee on science and space, and he also denies global warming. The irony is as excruciating as it is familiar.

Of course, the Republican mantra of late is to claim “I’m not a scientist, but …” as if this excuses them when they deny reality. I’ve excoriated this ridiculous notion before; it started in 2012 when Marco Rubio, R-Florida, used it when he said he wasn’t sure how old the Earth is (!), but it is now being wielded like a shield for Republican rejection of global warming. It was baloney then, and it’s still baloney now. Their lack of scientific qualifications hasn’t stopped them from trying to create medical legislation to control women’s bodies, or to try to make laws about agriculture, health care, and so many other science-based topics. It’s clearly a cynical dodge.

And it will cost us. These elections happen mere days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its fifth Synthesis Report, a 40-page opus making it very clear that global warming is real, humans are causing it, and it’s disrupting our planet’s climate.

The summary for policymakers is as succinct as it is brutal in its assessment:

Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.

[…]

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.

It then gives evidence and support for these claims, going into terrifying specificity:

Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence), with only about 1% stored in the atmosphere.

So much for “the pause”.

Since the beginning of the industrial era, oceanic uptake of CO2 has resulted in acidification of the ocean … corresponding to a 26% increase in acidity.

Ocean acidification is killing off entire species, upsetting the ecological balance of the oceans. This is on top of sea level rise, the disruption of the heat transport balance of the planet, and the amplification of extreme weather we’re seeing all over the Earth.

Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.

Ask Californians suffering from one of the worst droughts in history how they feel about “long-lasting changes in the climate,” for example, or how much you enjoyexcursions in the polar vortex bringing frigid cold into the U.S. eastern states in the winter.

Global warming is real. It’s causing climate change on a planetary scale, and this isextremely dangerous for humanity.

Yet Republican politicians deny it as if their careers and funding depend on them doing so.

This is what these elections today mean. I am by no means a single-issue voter, unless you count reality as an issue. When you vote today, it quite literally affects the future of humanity.

Do we finally take action about the single greatest threat we as a species face today? Or do we elect officials who would rather take money from the fossil fuel industryand bury their heads firmly in the sand, putting off for at least another two years taking any action, or even recognizing that we need to take action against it?

Remember that today as you go to the polls. Your vote counts. Make it count.

Coping with water scarcity: Effectiveness of water policies aimed at reducing consumption evaluated (Science Daily)

26/10/2014Uncategorizedágua, Califórnia, Capitalismo, Desastre, Estados Unidos, Gestão de recursos hídricos, Mercado, participatividade, Secarenzotaddei

Date: October 23, 2014

Source: University of California, Riverside

Summary: Southern California water agencies have turned to new pricing structures, expanded rebate programs and implemented other means to encourage their customers to reduce consumption. Some of those policies have greatly reduced per capita consumption, while others have produced mixed results.

As California enters its fourth year of severe drought, Southern California water agencies have turned to new pricing structures, expanded rebate programs and implemented other means to encourage their customers to reduce consumption.

Some of those policies have greatly reduced per capita consumption, while others have produced mixed results, according to a report published in the UC Riverside School of Public Policy journal Policy Matters. The journal is published quarterly by the School of Public Policy, and provides timely research and guidance on issues that are of concern to policymakers at the local, state, and national levels.

Water policy experts Kurt Schwabe, Ken Baerenklau and Ariel Dinar reviewed some of their recent research that was presented at a UCR workshop on urban water management in June 2014. Schwabe and Baerenklau are associate professors and Dinar is professor of environmental economics and policy. The workshop highlighted efforts by Southern California water agencies to promote water conservation, relevant research findings by UC faculty, and challenges that remain to further reduce water demand.

“California is a water-scarce state and needs to have policy tools to deal with scarcity whether in drought years or otherwise,” Dinar said. Water policy research in the School of Public Policy focuses on strategies that agencies and California can take to help reduce vulnerability to drought.

Water utilities throughout California are working to satisfy a 2010 state mandate to reduce per capita urban water demand 20 percent by 2020. Reducing residential water demand is an appealing response to water scarcity as approaches such as building more storage and conveyance systems have become increasingly expensive, the authors wrote in “Coping with Water Scarcity: The Effectiveness of Allocation-Based Pricing and Conservation Rebate Programs in California’s Urban Sector.”

“Reducing residential water demand is also attractive given it is a local solution to relieving water stress with seemingly much recent success,” they wrote.

Efforts to reduce water demand by changing behavior fall into two categories: price and non-price, the researchers said. Price-based approaches focus on adjusting the price of water while non-price approaches include other demand-management strategies such as the use of water-conserving technologies and conversion of lawns to drought-tolerant landscape, often promoted with rebates, and mandatory restrictions.

“Price-based instruments for water management … have proven to be very effective when compared to non-price instruments,” the researchers found.

One such instrument is the “water budget,” which has been adopted by more than 25 Southern California water agencies in recent years. Water budgets typically are defined as an indoor allocation based on the number of people in the house and an outdoor allocation based on the amount of irrigable land, special needs, and local weather conditions, according to the report. The sum of the indoor and outdoor allocations is a household’s water budget. Staying within that budget is deemed efficient use. Water use that exceeds a household’s budget is considered inefficient, and is priced at a higher rate to encourage conservation.

“Recent empirical evidence within southern California suggests that this sort of pricing structure can be very effective for reducing residential water demand while securing the financial cash-flow of the water utility,” the researchers reported.

Non-price efforts to reduce water consumption have not been as effective, however. For example, the researchers refer to a study of 13 groundwater-dependent California cities in which modest water price increases were more effective and more cost-effective than promoting technology standards to curb water consumption.

Some studies have found that rebate programs, in particular, have shown smaller-than-expected water savings, the researchers said in the report. For example, studies show that low-flow showerheads tend to result in longer showers and frontloading washing machines result in more cycles.

“This does not mean that such measures should be abandoned, but rather suggests that achieving real water savings in a cost-effective manner requires more research and partnerships between agencies and the research community to find an optimal mix between these two approaches,” the researchers said.

Journal Reference:

Kurt Schwabe, Ben Baerenklau, and Ariel Dinar. Coping With Water Scarcity: The Effectiveness of Allocation-Based Pricing and Conservation Rebate Program in California’s Urban Sector.. Policy Matters, Volume 6, Issue 1, 2014 [link]

NASA study finds 1934 had worst North American drought of last thousand years (Science Daily)

16/10/2014UncategorizedDust Bowl, Estados Unidos, História, Secarenzotaddei

Date: October 14, 2014

Source: NASA

Summary: A new study using a reconstruction of North American drought history over the last 1,000 years found that the drought of 1934 was the driest and most widespread of the last millennium. Using a tree-ring-based drought record from the years 1000 to 2005 and modern records, scientists found the 1934 drought was 30 percent more severe than the runner-up drought (in 1580) and extended across 71.6 percent of western North America.

This photo shows a farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936. The 1930s Dust Bowl drought had four drought events with no time to recover in between: 1930-31, 1934, 1936 and 1939-40. Credit: Arthur Rothstein, Farm Security Administration

A new study using a reconstruction of North American drought history over the last 1,000 years found that the drought of 1934 was the driest and most widespread of the last millennium.

Using a tree-ring-based drought record from the years 1000 to 2005 and modern records, scientists from NASA and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found the 1934 drought was 30 percent more severe than the runner-up drought (in 1580) and extended across 71.6 percent of western North America. For comparison, the average extent of the 2012 drought was 59.7 percent.

“It was the worst by a large margin, falling pretty far outside the normal range of variability that we see in the record,” said climate scientist Ben Cook at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Cook is lead author of the study, which will publish in the Oct. 17 edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

Two sets of conditions led to the severity and extent of the 1934 drought. First, a high-pressure system in winter sat over the west coast of the United States and turned away wet weather — a pattern similar to that which occurred in the winter of 2013-14. Second, the spring of 1934 saw dust storms, caused by poor land management practices, suppress rainfall.

“In combination then, these two different phenomena managed to bring almost the entire nation into a drought at that time,” said co-author Richard Seager, professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York. “The fact that it was the worst of the millennium was probably in part because of the human role.”

According to the recent Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, climate change is likely to make droughts in North America worse, and the southwest in particular is expected to become significantly drier as are summers in the central plains. Looking back one thousand years in time is one way to get a handle on the natural variability of droughts so that scientists can tease out anthropogenic effects — such as the dust storms of 1934.

“We want to understand droughts of the past to understand to what extent climate change might make it more or less likely that those events occur in the future,” Cook said.

The abnormal high-pressure system is one lesson from the past that informs scientists’ understanding of the current severe drought in California and the western United States.

“What you saw during this last winter and during 1934, because of this high pressure in the atmosphere, is that all the wintertime storms that would normally come into places like California instead got steered much, much farther north,” Cook said. “It’s these wintertime storms that provide most of the moisture in California. So without getting that rainfall it led to a pretty severe drought.”

This type of high-pressure system is part of normal variation in the atmosphere, and whether or not it will appear in a given year is difficult to predict in computer models of the climate. Models are more attuned to droughts caused by La Niña’s colder sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which likely triggered the multi-year Dust Bowl drought throughout the 1930s. In a normal La Niña year, the Pacific Northwest receives more rain than usual and the southwestern states typically dry out.

But a comparison of weather data to models looking at La Niña effects showed that the rain-blocking high-pressure system in the winter of 1933-34 overrode the effects of La Niña for the western states. This dried out areas from northern California to the Rockies that otherwise might have been wetter.

As winter ended, the high-pressure system shifted eastward, interfering with spring and summer rains that typically fall on the central plains. The dry conditions were exacerbated and spread even farther east by dust storms.

“We found that a lot of the drying that occurred in the spring time occurred downwind from where the dust storms originated,” Cook said, “suggesting that it’s actually the dust in the atmosphere that’s driving at least some of the drying in the spring and really allowing this drought event to spread upwards into the central plains.”

Dust clouds reflect sunlight and block solar energy from reaching the surface. That prevents evaporation that would otherwise help form rain clouds, meaning that the presence of the dust clouds themselves leads to less rain, Cook said.

“Previous work and this work offers some evidence that you need this dust feedback to explain the real anomalous nature of the Dust Bowl drought in 1934,” Cook said.

Dust storms like the ones in the 1930s aren’t a problem in North America today. The agricultural practices that gave rise to the Dust Bowl were replaced by those that minimize erosion. Still, agricultural producers need to pay attention to the changing climate and adapt accordingly, not forgetting the lessons of the past, said Seager. “The risk of severe mid-continental droughts is expected to go up over time, not down,” he said.

Journal Reference:

Benjamin I Cook, Richard Seager, Jason E Smerdon. The Worst North American Drought Year of the Last Millennium: 1934. Geophysical Research Letters, 2014; DOI: 10.1002/2014GL061661

Pentagon: global warming will change how US military trains and goes to war (The Guardian)

14/10/2014UncategorizedEstados Unidos, Forças armadas, Guerra, Militarismo, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

Climate change to become immediate factor for all strategic, operational and planning decisions

Suzanne Goldenberg

theguardian.com, Monday 13 October 2014 18.37 BST

Global warming and climate change will change how US military trains and goes to war An Air Force reserve pararescueman from the 920th Rescue Wing scans the ravaged Texas landscape in the aftermath of hurricane Ike. Photograph: Tech. Sgt. Paul Flipse/U.S. Air Force photo

Global warming is changing the way the US trains for and goes to war – affecting war games, weapons systems, training exercises, and military installations – according to the Pentagon.

The defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, will tell a high-level meeting of military leaders on Monday that the Pentagon is undertaking sweeping changes to operation systems and installations to keep up with a growing threat of rising seas, droughts, and natural disasters caused by climate change.

“A changing climate will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions,” Hagel wrote in his introduction to a Pentagon report out today. “We are considering the impacts of climate change in our war games and defence planning scenarios.”

The Pentagon’s strategic planners have for years viewed climate change as a “threat multiplier”– worsening old conflicts and potentially provoking new clashes over migration and shortages of food and water in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and opening up new military challenges in a melting Arctic.

But with Monday’s report, climate change moved from potential threat to an immediate factor in a wide range of operational and budgeting decisions.

“It makes it a reality that climate change indeed is a risk today, and we need to plan, programme and budget for it now and into the future,” said Sherri Goodman, chief executive of the military advisory board, a group of former generals and other high-ranking officers that studies US national security.

The report – unveiled at a meeting of more than 30 defence ministers from the Americas and Europe – also signalled US intention to take a lead role at international climate negotiations in Lima in December.

From now on, the military will factor climate change into a host of day-to-day decisions, a senior defence official told a conference call with reporters.

“It’s about being baked into things we are already doing, and incorporated into all the other things we are doing,” he said.

Those decisions could include war games, training exercises, and purchasing decisions – which could all be affected by conditions such as sea-level rise, heat waves, and drought.

War games scenarios would now factor in floods or storms instead of assuming optimal conditions, said Goodman. “You could make the game more complex with sea-level rise, and extreme weather events.”

She said the navy would have to test sonar and other systems under the changing ocean chemistry. The military will have to adapt to hotter temperatures.

One of the biggest and most costly decisions ahead is the location of some 7,000 US military sites.

As the report acknowledged, US military installations and personnel are already exposed to climate change. The Hampton Roads area in Virginia – which houses the biggest concentration of US forces – already floods during high tides and severe storms, and could see an additional 1.5 feet of sea level rise in the next 20 years.

Meanwhile, military bases in the south-west are coping with water and electricity shortages, under recurring droughts. Arctic land-based installations are shifting because of melting permafrost, while retreating sea ice is changing naval requirements.

The Pentagon is not planning a wholesale relocation of bases, the officials told the call. But they said the military was already bringing in sandbags and moving generators out of basements in low-lying areas. It was also shelving ideas for new construction on flood plains.

Other potential changes include cuts to outdoor training exercises – because of heat waves, or increased weapons maintenance costs and repairs because of heat and dust.

“As we think about changing weather patterns we have to think hard about where operations might be conducted and whether we need to change the assumptions about what kind of air breathing conditions … what kind of sea state we might expect in an operating environment, and what impact they might have.”

The report said troops could also be at greater risk of infectious diseases, which spread more rapidly in hotter temperatures.

Hagel in comments to reporters at the weekend said the Pentagon anticipated an increase in humanitarian missions, because of natural disasters and recurring famines.

He also said the Arctic presented a growing military challenge.

“We see an Arctic that is melting, meaning that most likely a new sea lane will emerge,” he said. “We know that there are significant minerals and natural deposits of oil and natural gas there. That means that nations will compete for those natural resources. That’s never been an issue before. You couldn’t get up there and get anything out of there. We have to manage through what those conditions and new realities are going to bring in the way of potential threats.”

The Pentagon was first instructed by Congress in 2007 to incorporate climate change into its long-term security planning.

But Republicans in Congress have gone on to block the military from preparing for a warmer future, cutting funds for intelligence gathering or testing low-carbon jet fuels.

Officials told the call that planning for the future would help bring down climate-related costs.

“There is a lot you can do to mitigate risk and lower the cost of risks if you acknowledge the risk exists,” the officials said.

Battle between NSF and House science committee escalates: How did it get this bad? (Science)

03/10/2014UncategorizedConservadorismo, Estados Unidos, Fomento à ciência, NSFrenzotaddei

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE & TECHNOLOGY. Representatives Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX) and Lamar Smith (R–TX)

By Jeffrey Mervis

2 October 2014 7:15 pm

Four times this past summer, in a spare room on the top floor of the headquarters of the National Science Foundation (NSF) outside of Washington, D.C., two congressional staffers spent hours poring over material relating to 20 research projects that NSF has funded over the past decade. Each folder contained confidential information that included the initial application, reviewer comments on its merit, correspondence between program officers and principal investigators, and any other information that had helped NSF decide to fund the project.

The visits from the staffers, who work for the U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees NSF, were an unprecedented—and some say bizarre—intrusion into the much admired process that NSF has used for more than 60 years to award research grants. Unlike the experts who have made that system work so well, however, the congressional staffers weren’t really there to judge the scientific merits of each proposal. But that wasn’t their intent.

The Republican aides were looking for anything that Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), their boss as chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, could use to support his ongoing campaign to demonstrate how the $7 billion research agency is “wasting” taxpayer dollars on frivolous or low-priority projects, particularly in the social sciences. The Democratic staffers wanted to make sure that their boss, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX), the panel’s senior Democrat, knew enough about each grant to rebut any criticism that Smith might levy against the research.

The peculiar exercise is part of a long-running and bitter battle that is pitting Smith and many of his panel’s Republican members against Johnson and the panel’s Democrats, NSF’s leadership, and the academic research community. There’s no end in sight: The visits are expected to continue into the fall, because NSF has acceded—after some resistance—to Smith’s request to make available information on an additional 30 awards. (Click here to see a spreadsheet of the requested grants.)

And the feud appears to be escalating. This week, Johnson wrote to Smith accusing him “of go[ing] after specific peer-reviewed grants simply because the Chairman personally does not believe them to be of high value.” (Click here to see a PDF of Johnson’s letter and related correspondence from Smith and NSF.)

Smith, however, argues he is simply taking seriously Congress’s oversight responsibility. And he promises to stay the course: “Our efforts will continue until NSF agrees to only award grants that are in the national interest,” he wrote in a 2 October e-mail to ScienceInsider.

Ask, answered

How did things get to this point? For the past 18 months, Smith has waged a very public assault on NSF’s storied peer-review system. He’s issued a barrage of press releases that ridicule specific awards, championed legislation that would alter NSF’s peer-review system and slash funding for the social science programs that have supported much of the research he has questioned, and berated NSF officials for providing what he considers to be inadequate explanations of their funding decisions.

NSF has defended itself at congressional hearings, in personal meetings with committee staff and the chair, and with a stream of letters and e-mails. White House officials, university leaders, and Democratic legislators have joined the fray, roundly criticizing Smith for what they see as an attempt to impose his political judgment on a process that draws upon the wisdom of scientific experts. But that nearly universal condemnation hasn’t stopped Smith, who was first elected to Congress in 1986 and last year was named chairman of the science committee.

Smith describes his growing frustration with NSF in a 27 August letter to NSF Director France Córdova. (The committee made this and another letter available to ScienceInsider.) Smith notes that he first asked for materials relating to several grants in the spring of 2013, soon after Cora Marrett became acting NSF director following Subra Suresh’s resignation to become president of Carnegie Mellon University.

But after being rebuffed by Marrett, Smith writes that he “set aside the request … until a permanent NSF director was installed.” Córdova was confirmed by the Senate this past March, and on 7 April Smith wrote her a letter containing a list of 20 grants that he wanted to examine.

Smith’s request created a major dilemma for NSF. On the one hand, Córdova knew that Congress has the authority to obtain information as part of its job to oversee the actions of federal agencies, a right that federal courts have repeatedly upheld. On the other hand, NSF constantly assures scientists that every aspect of the peer-review process will remain confidential. (NSF’s website contains abstracts of projects it has funded, and the public can obtain a copy of a successful application. NSF does not share any information about, or even acknowledge the existence of, proposals that have been rejected.)

Smith wanted the material shipped to his offices on Capitol Hill. But Córdova made a counteroffer that the Texas legislator grudgingly accepted. First, the committee staff could see everything related to the grant except for the names of the reviewers, which would be redacted. Second, the material would remain at NSF headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Third, the staff could take copious notes, but none of the information could be photocopied or otherwise reproduced.

Judy Gan, head of public and legislators affairs at NSF, says the arrangement “preserves the integrity of the merit review process.” Even so, NSF officials have sent letters to the president of each university with a grant on Smith’s hit list, hoping to reassure them that everything is under control. NSF had no choice but to comply with the committee’s request, the letters explain. But NSF chose to tell each institution about the request “so that you may take appropriate action to inform your principal investigator and other potentially impacted parties about this production of documents.”

In many cases, NSF staffers had already sounded the alarm. Steven Folmar, a cultural anthropologist at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, recalls getting a call from his program manager last month alerting him to the science committee’s pending review of his 2012 grant, titled “Oppression and Mental Health in Nepal.” The 3-year, $160,000 award supported him and two colleagues in a study of how social status affects the mental health of Nepalese adolescents. Folmar has worked on and off in Nepal since 1979, and he says the country’s economic and cultural divisions are so striking that it’s an ideal place to measure the impact of discrimination on those in the lowest caste.

Folmar says that his first reaction after hearing that his grant had been singled out was to hunker down and keep quiet. “I felt like somebody in a war movie, with bullets whizzing over my head.” But after further reflection, he thinks that speaking up may not be such a bad idea.

“I’d tell [Smith] that our work has a great deal of relevance to this country,” he says. Measuring how social inequality can cause depression and anxiety is valuable information for U.S. public health officials, too, he explains, noting that some Nepalese victims display symptoms akin to post-traumatic stress disorder.

The project was a bargain, he adds. The grant covered several months of field work by three senior researchers and their graduate students, he notes, “all for about $50,000 a year. That’s pretty cheap science.”

Parsing the list

The scientific community is scratching its head over how Smith compiled his list of questionable grants. Many have also been flagged by other legislators, notably Senator Tom Coburn (R–OK), who issue annual lists of what they consider to be wasteful government spending. Research grants often appear on such lists. Decades ago, former Senator William Proxmire (D–WI) created what he called the Golden Fleece Awards to poke fun at such supposed boondoggles. In fact, the practice has become so widespread that 3 years ago a coalition of scientific organizations created a counterpoint, called the Golden Goose Awards, which honors federally funded basic research that later turned out to have huge societal benefits.

But Proxmire’s awards were never meant to fundamentally alter NSF’s peer-review system, according to Folmar. “This sounds like Golden Fleece with a much more dangerous twist,” he says.

Smith so far has asked to take a look at 50 grants. (Note: ScienceInsider was able to identify just 47 unique awards.) And the list is hard to characterize. One grant goes back to 2005, and 13 appear to have expired. The total amount of money awarded is about $26 million. The smallest grant, awarded in 2005, is $19,684 for a doctoral dissertation on “culture, change & chronic stress in lowland Bolivia.” The largest, for $5.65 million, is for a project that aims to use innovative education methods to educate Arctic communities about climate change and related issues.

More than half of the grants appear to involve work outside the United States. The largest number—29—were funded through NSF’s social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences directorate. Of those, 21 came from SBE’s behavioral and cognitive sciences division, including a number of grants in archaeology and anthropology. But six of NSF’s seven directorates also funded grants on Smith’s hit list.

What the science committee expects to learn from its investigation is a burning question from scientists. A committee representative declined to answer repeated queries about the criteria used to select the grants. In his written statement to ScienceInsider, Smith said only that “there are many grants that no taxpayer would consider in the national interest, or worthy of how their hard-earned dollars should be spent. … The public deserves an explanation for why the NSF has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on musicals about climate change, bicycle designs, and a video game that allows users to relive prom night.”

Mont Hubbard is the “bicycle designs” grantee on Smith’s intended list of shame. An emeritus professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Davis, Hubbard received $300,000 in 2009 to study the feedback system that allows humans to control a vehicle, in this case a bicycle. And Hubbard has a ready answer to Smith’s question about how his research could possibly serve the national interest.

“It’s easy to learn to ride a bicycle, but it’s hard to explain how we do it,” Hubbard says. His broader research into operator control of mechanical systems has applications across many areas, he explains. Substitute “pilot” for “rider” and “airplane” for “bicycle,” he says, and it’s clear that helping humans do a better job of manipulating machines has the potential to greatly improve performance, reduce safety risks, and promote economic growth.

Present stalemate

What’s next? So far, neither side has shown any signs of backing down. In his 27 August letter to Córdova, Smith declares that “the current review work is 5% complete, which implies that this oversight initiative will span at least 12 months.” He accuses her of reneging on a promise to provide the committee with everything it requested and speculates that she “may be banking on a cumbersome, time-consuming federal court process” to back her up. That approach puts NSF “in an indefensible position,” he says, predicting that such tactics will ultimately fail and that NSF will be forced to give in to his demands.

In her reply 2 weeks later, Córdova denies withholding any pertinent information. “To the contrary,” she writes, “NSF has provided the Committee full and complete access to our files for each of the grants of interest.” She disagrees with his assertion that “NSF does not trust the Committee.” But she acknowledges that “we are balancing this access with the need to preserve the trust of the scientific community, whose participation in the merit review process occurs in a confidential environment.”

With such strong rhetoric on both sides, it’s hard to see a quick or quiet ending to this confrontation. Johnson certainly seems prepared to continue defending NSF and, in particular, its funding of the social sciences. “This campaign against NSF’s merit-review system is indefensible absent some compelling explanation of what you are trying to accomplish,” she tells Smith in her 30 September letter. “If your ultimate goal is to cut funding for social and behavioral sciences …I respect your right to try to make that case as Chairman. But please do not compromise the integrity of NSF’s merit review system as part of this campaign.”

WIth reporting by David Shultz.

Correction 3 October, 8:05 a.m.: Steven Folmar studies how social inequality can contribute to, not treat, depression.

Voices from the People’s Climate March: Indigenous Groups Lead Historic 400,000-Strong NYC Protest (Democracy Now!)

26/09/2014UncategorizedEstados Unidos, Manifestações, Marcha do clima, Mudanças climáticas, Nova Yorkrenzotaddei

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

http://www.democracynow.org/embed/story/2014/9/22/voices_from_the_peoples_climate_march

As many as 400,000 people turned out in New York City on Sunday for the People’s Climate March, the largest environmental protest in history. With a turnout far exceeding expectations, the streets of midtown Manhattan were filled with environmentalists, politicians, musicians, students, farmers, celebrities, nurses and labor activists — all united in their demand for urgent action on climate change. Organizers arranged the People’s Climate March into different contingents reflecting the movement’s diversity, with indigenous groups in the lead. Democracy Now! producers Aaron Maté and Elizabeth Press were in the streets to hear from some of the demonstrators taking part in the historic protest.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the People’s Climate March. Organizers estimate as many as 400,000 people marched in New York Sunday in the largest climate protest in history. The turnout far exceeded expectations. Other marches and rallies were held in 166 countries. More protests are planned for today. Climate activists are gathering today in downtown Manhattan for a mass sit-in dubbed “Flood Wall Street.” The actions are timed to coincide with the United Nations climate summit taking place here in New York Tuesday. President Obama and over 100 other world leaders are scheduled to attend.

Sunday’s events in New York began with an indigenous sunrise ceremony in Central Park. Indigenous activists then led the march.Democracy Now!‘s Aaron Maté was in the streets at the People’s Climate March.

AARON MATÉ: We’re near the very front of the People’s Climate March, and the sign behind me reads: “Front Lines of Crisis, Forefront of Change.” This march has been divided up into different groups, and at the front are indigenous and front-line communities most impacted by climate change.

CLAYTON THOMAS–MULLER: Hi. My name is Clayton Thomas-Muller. I’m an organizer with the indigenous peoples’ social movement Idle No More and Defenders of the Land. Things today are going really, really well. We’ve got tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people on the street. We have front-line indigenous communities from communities that are disproportionately affected by President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy policy. We’ve got leaders from communities fighting fracking, fighting tar sands, pipelines, all kinds of pipeline fighters from across the continent who are organizing in solidarity with First Nations from the belly of the beast in Alberta who are trying to stop tar sands expansion at the source. And we’re here to send a very clear message to President Obama, Stephen Harper and the rest of the world leaders that we need legally binding mechanisms on climate change right now passed, and if they ain’t going to do it, that the people certainly will.

INDIGENOUS ACTIVIST: Hi. We’re here to march for the next seven generations and to take astand against Big Oil companies that are coming through our territories and trying to take our ancestral lands and destroy them. We’re here because it’s going to take all of us—all of us—not just the indigenous people, but everyone in the whole world, to come together to save our water.

PERUVIAN ACTIVIST: We are from the Peruvian delegation here on the March. And we are marching because we are fighting for climate justice, and we are fighting because this December, the next COP event is going to be in our country. And we are preparing a people’s summit and the next march in December 10 in Lima. And we are asking the Peruvian government, Ollanta Humala, for coherence, because even if they are taking pictures here near Ban Ki-moon, they are not doing that kind of commitments in the country. So, we need to fight here, we need to fight in our country. This is a global fight.

EL PUENTE ACTIVIST: Who are we?

EL PUENTE ACTIVISTS: El Puente!

EL PUENTE ACTIVIST: What do we stand for?

EL PUENTE ACTIVISTS: Peace and justice!

FRANCES LUCERNA: My name is Frances Lucerna. I’m the executive director of El Puente. We have about 300-strong here of our young people. We are a human rights organization located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Most of our young people are from Puerto Rico, from Dominican Republic. And the connection between what’s happening in terms of our islands and also what’s happening here in our waterfront community that Williamsburg is part of, we need, really, the powers that be to come together with our people and really make decisions that are about preserving our Earth.

CARLOS GARCIA: Hi. My name is Carlos Garcia. I’m the secretary-treasurer of the New York State Public Employees Federation. We represent 54,000 New York state employees who are professional scientific and technical workers. And we’re out here to say to the U.S. government, New York state government, let’s take care of our climate, let’s take care of our environment.

IRENE JOR: My name is Irene Jor. I’m with the National Domestic Workers Alliance with the New York domestic workers here today. And for us, we’re here because, as domestic workers, it’s time to clean up the climate mess.

DOMESTIC WORKERS: We are domestic workers! We want climate justice now!

IRENE JOR: Domestic workers have been part of the struggle for a long time. We’re disproportionately impacted by climate change. For those of us who are migrant women workers, we often come here because of what extractive resources and climate crisis has done to our home countries.

AARON MATÉ: We’ve come upon a huge contingent of young people, many carrying signs reading “Youth choose climate justice.”

YOUTH ACTIVISTS: Obama, we don’t want no climate drama! Hey, Obama, we don’t want no climate drama!

JONAH FELDMAN: My name is Jonah Feldman. I’m here with the Brandeis Divestment Campaign from Brandeis University.

AARON MATÉ: And what does your sign say?

JONAH FELDMAN: It says, “Divest from Climate Change.” We believe that our university should sell off all its investments in the fossil fuel industry—that’s in coal, oil, natural gas, tar sands—and to reinvest into clean, renewable alternatives.

LUIS NAVARRO: Hello. My name Luis Navarro. I’m 16. I’m from Boston, Massachusetts. I’m with the Boston-area Youth Organizing Project. Well, as a youth, I feel like every youth should be a part of this, because it concerns them and their future, whether or not if they can live by 20 years from now with this climate change. And I feel like it’s important for me to be here to show them that the youth is on our side.

AARON MATÉ: As we weave through this march that has taken over midtown Manhattan, tens of thousands out in full force, coming across all different sorts of diverse groups.

VEGAN: Number one way to fight climate change: Go vegan.

REV. SUSAN DE GEORGE: I’m Susan De George, and I’m with both Green Faith and with Hudson River Presbytery. We have everybody from Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, Catholics, Protestants, atheists, agnostics, all marching in a group.

PROTESTERS: What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!

CAITLIN CALLAHAN: My name is Caitlin Callahan. I’m from Rockaway Beach, and I’m an organizer with Rockaway Wildfire. Superstorm Sandy devastated the Rockaway Peninsula. We know that climate change is being worsened and exacerbated by all of the systemic profiteering that’s happening throughout our world. And it’s time for that to stop. If you haven’t been involved in climate justice activism before, it’s time to get involved in climate justice activism, because this is affecting all of us.

BRADEN ELLIOTT: My name is Braden Elliott. I’m a Ph.D. student at Dartmouth College, and I’m here because I care.

AARON MATÉ: And the banner under which the scientists are marching is “The Debate is Over”?

BRADEN ELLIOTT: Correct. The banner says “The Debate is Over” because the core part, the part that the planet is warming and that humans are responsible for the lion’s share of it, is settled. There’s always debate to be had on the edges of a large topic, but the call to action is very clear.

AARON MATÉ: And now we’re in the bloc of demonstrators under the banner of “We Know Who is Responsible,” anti-corporate campaigners, peace and justice groups, those who are organizing against the groups they say are holding back progress.

SANDRA NURSE: My name is Sandra Nurse. I’m here with the Flood Wall Street contingent. We’re calling on people to do a mass sit-in in the financial district to highlight the connections between corporate capitalism, extractive industries, the financing and bankrolling of climate change, the financing of politicians who will not bring meaningful legislation to the table and who are blocking the process of actually bringing meaningful legislation against climate change.

FLOOD WALL STREET CONTINGENT: All day, all week, let’s flood Wall Street!

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices from the 400,000-strong People’s Climate March here in New York. Special thanks to Aaron Maté and Elizabeth Press in the streets for Democracy Now!

The Changing Face of Climate Change (Slate)

26/09/2014UncategorizedÍndios, Estados Unidos, Manifestações, Marcha do clima, Mudanças climáticas, Nova Yorkrenzotaddei

Will the leaders of the People’s Climate March now lead the movement?

By P.J. Podesta and Laura Smith

People's Climate March.

Marchers dance during the People’s Climate March in New York City on Sept. 21, 2014. Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

At the front of the People’s Climate March, moments before the crowd began to move, you could look back and see the wall of stone that makes up the wealthy Upper West Side apartment buildings to your left, and Central Park to your right, in the last of its full-blown green phase before the leaves start to turn. Visible on the street: signs, artwork, and many, many heads.

In the front section of the march, designated by organizers for “the people first and most impacted,” were representatives of the Kichwa from Ecuador, Taino from the Caribbean, Winnemem Wintu from California, and many other indigenous groups in traditional clothing. There were also members of the media and the musician Sting. Young people of color from Brooklyn held large paper sunflowers and an enormous banner reading: “FRONTLINES OF CRISIS, FOREFRONT OF CHANGE.” Above them were the glossy towers that mark the beginning of Midtown and the bright red CNN sign against the fog signaling that the 11:30 a.m. start time was drawing closer. On his spire, Columbus had his back to the crowd.

The march was already the largest climate demonstration in history before the walking began. There was plenty of excitement. But the drums, the chanting, and the drone of conch-shell horns added an air of warfare.

Indigenous and underprivileged communities are already experiencing the worst impact of climate change, and for those at the front of the march, battle-ready would seem an appropriate posture.

People's Climate March.

Many of the indigenous groups participating in the People’s Climate March on Sept. 21, 2014, in New York City, wore traditional clothing. Photo by Cem Ozdel/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Ricken Patel, the founder of the online activist network called Avaaz, told us shortly before the march: “We know that the most vulnerable communities get if first and worst every time.” The refrain was repeated by so many others, and research corroborates it. An analysis from Yale and George Mason University finds that in the United States, climate change is most likely to affect “Hispanics, African Americans, and other racial and ethnic groups who are likely to be more vulnerable to heat waves, extreme weather events, environmental degradation, and subsequent labor market dislocations.”

The people at the front of the march were themselves a sign that the face of mainstream climate activism has shifted from polar bears and Priuses toward marginalized communities. It is, in theory, a shift from what climate researcher Angela Park wrote in 2009 was a movement that “still suffers from the perception, and arguably the reality, that it is … led by and designed for the interests of the white, upper-middle class.”

Seven representatives from frontline communities spoke at a press conference before the march began, including Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, a 26-year-old writer, professor, and spoken-word artist from the Marshall Islands. She has also been selected by the United Nations from a group of 544 nominees to speak in the opening ceremonies of Tuesday’s Climate Summit.

We caught up with her after the march. Jetnil-Kijiner is small in stature, with long black curly hair, and she appeared exhausted after arriving from the Marshall Islands just the day before the march (not to mention marching and speaking to reporters all day), but she managed to reanimate herself. Walking in Central Park, she told us that she first felt called to climate activism after returning to the Marshall Islands after college in 2010. “There are some parts of the Marshalls where you can stand and see both sides of the ocean,” she said. Rising sea levels, one of the most devastating and permanent consequences of climate change, threaten the very existence of low-lying island nations. In 2008, she woke one morning to find her home island flooded. Houses were destroyed, debris was everywhere, and once the waters receded, the trees shriveled because of the salt.

While people like Jetnil-Kijiner were physically at the front of the march, the question remains whether their voices will be drowned out by the bigger names of climate activism, the Bill McKibbens and the Ricken Patels.

140922_SCI_PeoplesClimateMarch04

Demonstrators take part in the People’s Climate March on Sept. 21, 2014, in New York City. Photo by Lisa Larson-Walker

The night before the march, McKibben and other writers and politicians spoke on a panel in the packed Unitarian Church of All Souls on the Upper East Side. Nearing the end of the discussion, the moderator, Brian Lehrer, asked McKibben what was the unified message that he wanted people to take away from the march. Instead of answering, McKibben metaphorically passed the mic, saying, “There will be people from communities who have had to deal with Sandy, the ongoing fact of living in a place where every third kid has an inhaler. They’ll do a good job of speaking powerfully.”

Just before the march, Ananda Lee Tan, an organizer with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, told us, “We’re seeing a shift in the movement. This march really marks a flipping of the script.” Tan explained that the communities most impacted by extreme weather have joined together. “We’re taking over the leadership of the U.S. climate movement,” he said, “and so we’ll see on the streets today probably the most diverse, broad, grass-roots climate movement that the U.S. has ever seen.”

The difference is not that communities most threatened by climate change are now involved in the climate change movement. As Jacqueline Patterson, the NAACP’s Environment and Climate Justice Program director, pointed out in a phone interview, frontline communities have been involved in climate justice from the beginning of the movement. What’s new is that a wide range of groups, from labor unions and indigenous tribes to the Granny Peace Brigade, was marching in the same place.

People’s Climate March.

The People’s Climate March was the largest climate demonstration in history. Photo by Lisa Larson-Walker

Still, Patterson had a more cautious view of the role of frontline communities in the march and the wider movement. She said that while there was now more acknowledgement that frontline communities needed to be engaged, there was “to a lesser extent, an acknowledgement that the frontline communities need to lead.”

On the Wednesday before the march, a 28-year-old Avaaz canvasser (who preferred to remain anonymous, citing a nondisclosure agreement) echoed Patterson’s concerns. He said there was much improvement in the communication with frontline communities, but he was skeptical of the “big greens” such as Avaaz, 350.org, and the Sierra Club, arguing that they needed to deepen their understanding of organizing in frontline communities. “There’s a lot of wisdom there,” he said. Specifically, he wanted the established environmental organizations to give more money directly to grass-roots organizations. He told us that he planned to quit his canvassing job that evening. He didn’t want to canvas in Washington Square Park anymore; he planned to return to his home community of Staten Island to organize there.

The test of the movement’s potency will, of course, be its coordination beyond the march, its ability to maintain the unity that defined it. And on Tuesday, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner will have an opportunity to tell world leaders about the Marshall Islands, about what it is like to live on land just two meters above sea level. She is tired of answering the question of where the Marshall Islanders will move when the islands are gone. “We don’t want to move, and we shouldn’t have to move,” she said. “There should be changes now so that doesn’t have to happen.”

Jon Stewart Obliterates Republicans By Highlighting Their Ignorance On Climate Change (Politicus USA)

23/09/2014UncategorizedConservadorismo, Estados Unidos, Incerteza, Manifestações, Mídia, Mudanças climáticas, Negacionismo, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

By: Justin Baragona

Tuesday, September, 23rd, 2014, 10:09 am

On Monday night’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, host Jon Stewart devoted the first segment of his program to the subject of climate change. He discussed the People’s Climate March that took place in New York City on Sunday,where over 100,000 people took to the streets to bring awareness to the dangers facing our planet due to rapid global warming. Stewart pointed out that, while you would think people around the world are now acutely aware of the existence of climate change and its effects on the environment, this march was necessary because House Republicans continue to deny its existence.

The Daily Show host then directed his attention to a recent hearing by the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, where White House Science Director, John Holdren,spoke in front of the committee to discuss President Obama’s initiative to reduce carbon emissions 30% by the year 2030. Stewart lamented that Holdren had the unenviable task of “pushing a million pounds of idiot up a mountain.”

Below is video of the entire segment, courtesy of Comedy Central.

http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgid:arc:video:thedailyshow.com:74a66229-cdca-41a4-a4de-0911279a8d9d

Stewart highlighted the various Republicans on the committee who peppered Holdren with idiotic questions or flat-out conspiracy theories. Confirmed moron Steve Stockman asked Holdren about global ‘wobbling.’ Stockman wanted to know why it wasn’t included in any climate models when he had read somewhere that it helped contribute to the last major ice age. Holdren patiently pointed out to Stockman that ‘wobbling’ refers to changes in the planet’s tilt and orbit and takes place over tens of thousands of years. It is very slow and has a tiny effect within a time scale of 100 years, which is the normal time frame for climate models.

Of course, the stupid wasn’t just contained to Stockman. A clip was played showing California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a well-known climate skeptic, tossing out a question about the dangers of carbon dioxide Rohrabacher wanted to know at what level does carbon dioxide become dangerous for human beings. When Holdren stated that he always enjoys his interactions with Rohrabacher, Stewart interjected, claiming Holdren meant it in the same way someone enjoys playing peek-a-boo with a baby or teasing a cat with a laser pointer. Stewart then showed Holdren’s response, where Holdren told Rohrabacher that his question was a red herring. As Holdren stated, the focus on CO2 is not about whether or not humans can breathe with increased levels, but if those increased levels trap heat in the atmosphere and rapidly change global temperatures.

However, the worst may have been Indiana Representative Larry Bucshon. The Congressman revealed himself as a full-fledged denier on the tin-foil hat variety during the hearing. He wondered why Holdren wasn’t listening to public comments on global warming. Holdren answered that perhaps Bucshon should read the scientific literature available on the subject instead of public opinion. As exasperated Stewart stated that Bucshon should read a climate science journal instead a teabaggers YouTube comments. Stewart then said Bucshon gave away the game when Bucshon told Holdren that he doesn’t believe scientists because it is their job to do these studies. In his opinion, scientists have a vested interest to create a hoax and therefore he won’t read what they produce.

After pointing out Bucshon’s idiocy, while also revealing that Bucshon’s biggest campaign donors are energy companies, Stewart then turned it back to Stockman to end the segment. He showed Stockman asking about the rise of sea levels and wondering how long it will take. Then, Stockman amazingly insisted that sea levels won’t rise because of displacement, using an example of melting ice cubes in a glass. This finally set Stewart off. Stewart tore apart Stockman’s lack of understanding of grade-school science by bringing out a glass of ice water and a bowl of ice. Stewart then proved the point that displacement only takes into account ice that is already in a body of water. However, if you take ice from elsewhere, say land, and put it in a body of water, that water level will rise.

All in all, this was one of Stewart’s best segments in a while. He tore apart the willful ignorance and Koch-funded denial of the Republican Party when it comes to the issue of climate change. The fact is, Republicans are placing us in great harm by refusing to act at all when it comes to global warming and the devastating effects it is having on our country and planet.

A Future as Clouded as Their Past (New York Times)

23/09/2014UncategorizedAnasazi, Arqueologia, Índios, Colapso civilizacional, Desastre, Estados Unidos, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

SEPT. 22, 2014

Credit: Carl Wiens

George Johnson

We won’t ever know what the Anasazi were thinking on the eve of the 13th century when they abandoned the cities they had worked so long to build on the Colorado Plateau. The reasons had something to do with climate — a great drought and, perhaps on top of that, a mini ice age. If that wasn’t enough to defeat a thriving culture, there was the turmoil that came from just not knowing. Why were the sky and earth behaving so strangely? Why wasn’t the old magic working anymore?

The rains were not just sparser. They were no longer coming when they were supposed to — when the seedlings were in the ground waiting for water. Cooler temperatures were putting an earlier end to the growing season. Fields had been overplanted, forests stripped of wood. Crops were failing as people reverted from agriculture to hunting and gathering and fighting violently over food.

Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde — these grand stone settlements fell silent, repurposed centuries later as national parks and monuments, memorials to the repercussions of ancient climate change.

There are many theories seeking to explain the abandonment, abstracted from faint clues in old rocks and bones and in the patterns of tree rings and pollen deposition. By some measures, there was enough water, just barely, for the Anasazi settlements to hang on. And there is evidence that they had survived drier times. A more complex story has emerged as archaeologists try to infer what they can from changes in architectural styles and pottery design — hints perhaps of a people trying out new rituals, new ways to entreat suddenly indifferent gods.

Something was happening — a slow horror, perhaps so slow that it didn’t feel like a horror, until the Anasazi’s culture began to unwind. Did their leaders engage at first in denial and then quiet deliberation? When that failed, did communities split into factions with the conservatives insisting on standing their ground — clinging to the old ways and waiting for the rains to return — and the liberals pushing for new approaches? Did a visionary arise? Some Moses leading a migration? Or three Moseses leading migrations in different directions?

One way or the other, the Anasazi disintegrated, the people moving southward. Their descendants are believed to live now in the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona, perched on mesa tops and hugging the banks of the Rio Grande.

In modern times, many of these pueblos divide themselves, for reasons they keep from the anthropologists, into kinship groups called summer and winter people or squash and turquoise people. Could these divisions be imprints left from that 13th-century upheaval?

It is frustrating how little is known. Compared with the Byzantines, the Normans, or the Mongols, the Anasazi left such faint traces, like ripples from the radiation of their own Big Bang. They have an oral history but it is mostly secret. And there is only so much that can be derived from mythology. The closest we have to records are the crude rock etchings called petroglyphs. Were these symbols in a rudimentary language or just doodling?

Our own deliberations — imprinted onto electromagnetic waves — have been pulsing outward from Earth since the first radio news shows in the 1920s and 30s, interspersed with the “Grand Ole Opry” and the “Amos ’n’ Andy” show.

By now broadcasts about greenhouses gases, melting ice caps and rising sea levels are rippling far beyond Alpha Centauri, along with the carefully calculated outrage of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. As the waves travel farther, they converge asymptotically toward a vanishing point. Even at their strongest they might seem as esoteric to curious aliens as Anasazi rock art.

Our later emanations, if they are ever understood, might tell of great feats of geoengineering: swarms of orbiting mirrors to bounce back sunlight, oceans fertilized to create carbon-absorbing algae blooms.

The Anasazi had to make do with simpler technology — water catchment basins, irrigation channels. But when all else failed at least they had somewhere to go.

Stuck here on Earth, do we embrace the Anthropocene — this new geological epoch in which the human race has become its own force of nature? Or do we hunker down for the sixth extinction? Faced with the dilemma, we cleave as naturally as a crystal into factions, like the squash people and the pumpkin people.

Diane Ackerman is one of the latest to join the environmental optimists, who believe that the same kind of technological prowess that got us into this mess will help us adapt to it, in ways we can only begin to imagine. (Her new book, “The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us” is reviewed on Page 5.)

With her following, Ms. Ackerman may become the counterpart to Bill McKibben, the environmentalist whose book “Eaarth” (he changed the name of the planet since we have irremediably transformed the place) called for a return to simpler times with backyard farms instead of lawns and decentralized green energy. The Anasazi with solar panels on the roof.

Finally there is the 25 percent of Americans (“cool skeptics,” as a Gallup poll called them) who don’t believe the keepers of the models — the interpreters of the signs. As we flail we are generating so much data that future archaeologists, if they exist, may be overwhelmed — the opposite problem presented by the Anasazi.

More than 700 years after their fall, we have the knowledge to tell us what is going wrong this time with the atmosphere. But that has made it no easier to agree on a plan. Science can only lay the case out on the table. For all our supercomputers and climatological models, what happens next will come down to something unpredictable: the meteorology of the human mind.

Southwest U.S. may face ‘megadrought’ this century (Science Daily)

01/09/2014UncategorizedEstados Unidos, Incerteza, Previsão, Secarenzotaddei

Date: August 27, 2014

Source: Cornell University

Summary: Because of global warming, scientists say, the chances of the southwestern United States experiencing a decade long drought is at least 50 percent, and the chances of a “megadrought” — one that lasts over 30 years — ranges from 20 to 50 percent over the next century.

Risk of megadrought in Southwestern U.S. Credit: Toby Ault, Cornell University; From “Assessing the risk of persistent drought using climate model simulations and paleoclimate data”

Because of global warming, scientists say, the chances of the southwestern United States experiencing a decade long drought is at least 50 percent, and the chances of a “megadrought” — one that lasts over 30 years — ranges from 20 to 50 percent over the next century.

The study by Cornell University, University of Arizona and U.S. Geological Survey researchers will be published in a forthcoming issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate.

“For the southwestern U.S., I’m not optimistic about avoiding real megadroughts,” said Toby Ault, Cornell assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and lead author of the paper. “As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere — and we haven’t put the brakes on stopping this — we are weighting the dice for megadrought conditions.”

As of mid-August, most of California sits in a D4 “exceptional drought,” which is in the most severe category. Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas also loiter between moderate and exceptional drought. Ault says climatologists don’t know whether the severe western and southwestern drought will continue, but he said, “With ongoing climate change, this is a glimpse of things to come. It’s a preview of our future.”

Ault said that the West and Southwest must look for mitigation strategies to cope with looming long-drought scenarios. “This will be worse than anything seen during the last 2,000 years and would pose unprecedented challenges to water resources in the region,” he said.

In computer models, while California, Arizona and New Mexico will likely face drought, the researchers show the chances for drought in parts of Washington, Montana and Idaho may decrease.

Beyond the United States, southern Africa, Australia and the Amazon basin are also vulnerable to the possibility of a megadrought. With increases in temperatures, drought severity will likely worsen, “implying that our results should be viewed as conservative,” the study reports.

“These results help us take the long view of future drought risk in the Southwest — and the picture is not pretty. We hope this opens up new discussions about how to best use and conserve the precious water that we have,” said Julia Cole, UA professor of geosciences and of atmospheric sciences.

The study, “Assessing the Risk of Persistent Drought Using Climate Model Simulations and Paleoclimate Data,” was also co-authored by Julia E. Cole, David M. Meko and Jonathan T. Overpeck of University of Arizona; and Gregory T. Pederson of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The National Science Foundation, National Center for Atmospheric Research, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded the research.

Journal Reference:

Toby R. Ault, Julia E. Cole, Jonathan T. Overpeck, Gregory T. Pederson, David M. Meko. Assessing the risk of persistent drought using climate model simulations and paleoclimate data. Journal of Climate, 2014; 140122102410007 DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00282.1

Norte-americanos estão conscientes do impacto dos seus hábitos de consumo no meio ambiente (Akatu)

25/08/2014UncategorizedConsumo, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

22/8/2014 – 03h51

por Redação do Akatu

Pesquisa revela que 70% dos norte-americanos assumem que são responsáveis por muitos dos problemas ambientais causados pelo consumo excessivo.

“Os norte-americanos são responsáveis por muitos dos problemas ambientais porque consomem mais recursos e produzem mais resíduos na comparação com outros países.” Com essa afirmação, concordaram 70% dos cidadãos norte-americanos entrevistados para o estudo “Novo Sonho Americano”. A pesquisa foi realizada pela PolicyInteractive para o Centro para um Novo Sonho Americano entre março e abril deste ano com 1.821 norte-americanos com mais de 18 anos de idade.

O estudo identificou que 85% dos norte-americanos estão conscientes de que mudanças substanciais no modo de vida são necessárias para proteger o meio ambiente. Eles também estão cientes da produção excessiva de resíduos no país: 91% concordaram que o seu modo de vida produz muitos resíduos.

A pesquisa, que investiga os anseios dos norte-americanos, abordou assuntos como economia, meio ambiente, publicidade e saúde, com as mesmas perguntas feitas para o estudo anterior, há 10 anos. As conclusões do levantamento indicam que o “sonho americano” segue mais o caminho da sustentabilidade do que o do consumismo: valorizam mais a liberdade pessoal, a oportunidade de explorar o seu potencial individual e a integração com a natureza. Além disso, 38% dos entrevistados tomou providências nos últimos cinco anos para diminuir a carga horária de trabalho, mesmo que isso acarretasse uma remuneração financeira mais baixa.

No Brasil, o Instituto Akatu identificou um crescimento da compreensão sobre sustentabilidade e do interesse por informações. O contingente de brasileiros que “ouviram falar” do termo sustentabilidade aumentou de 44% para 60% em dois anos, bem como o interesse de buscar informações sobre o tema (de 14% para 24%), revelou a pesquisa Pesquisa Akatu 2012: Rumo à Sociedade do Bem-Estar. Quando comparado a diversos outros, os dois únicos temas que tiveram expressivo crescimento no nível de interesse do consumidor foram justamente o da Responsabilidade Social Empresarial e o da Sustentabilidade: em 2010, ambos estavam em um patamar inferior a todos os demais e, em 2012, 24% apontaram seu interesse no tema Sustentabilidade e 25% em Responsabilidade Social Empresarial, praticamente ao mesmo nível de temas tradicionais, como Empresas/Negócios (26%) e Política (30%).

O levantamento conclui também que houve crescimento na adesão a práticas de consumo consciente no Brasil, ainda que, nesse momento, apenas de maneira eventual e não contínua. De 11 comportamentos considerados indicativos de consumo consciente, quando se adiciona aos consumidores que aderem “sempre” a esses comportamentos aqueles que aderem “às vezes”, oito comportamentos apresentaram aumento em relação a 2010, entre eles: planejar a compra de alimentos e roupas, desligar lâmpadas, fechar torneiras, usar o verso do papel, e ler rótulos dos produtos.

Esta tendência é reforçada por outro importante resultado da pesquisa feita pelo Akatu: solicitados a priorizar seus desejos, os entrevistados optaram, em uma significativa maioria, por soluções mais sustentáveis. Em cinco dos oito temas propostos (afetividade, alimentos, água, mobilidade, durabilidade, energia, resíduos e saúde), eles deram preferência a alternativas mais ligadas ao “caminho da sustentabilidade” do que as relacionadas ao “do consumismo”. Um exemplo é o tema da afetividade, que possui a maior diferença entre os consumidores que preferem o cenário mais sustentável (passar tempo com amigos e família – com índice de prioridade de 8,3 em uma escala de 0 a 10) ao invés do consumista (comprar presentes – com índice de 2,6). Vale destacar que a preferência pelo “caminho da sustentabilidade” ocorre em todas as classes sociais, faixas etárias e em todos os segmentos socioeconômicos e geográficos.

* Publicado originalmente no site Akatu.

The Climate Swerve (The New York Times)

25/08/2014UncategorizedCognição, Estados Unidos, Manifestações, Movimentos sociais, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Psicologiarenzotaddei

By ROBERT JAY LIFTON

AUG. 23, 2014

CreditRobert Frank Hunter

AMERICANS appear to be undergoing a significant psychological shift in our relation to global warming. I call this shift a climate “swerve,” borrowing the term used recently by the Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt to describe a major historical change in consciousness that is neither predictable nor orderly.

The first thing to say about this swerve is that we are far from clear about just what it is and how it might work. But we can make some beginning observations which suggest, in Bob Dylan’s words, that “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” Experience, economics and ethics are coalescing in new and important ways. Each can be examined as a continuation of my work comparing nuclear and climate threats.

The experiential part has to do with a drumbeat of climate-related disasters around the world, all actively reported by the news media: hurricanes and tornadoes, droughts and wildfires, extreme heat waves and equally extreme cold, rising sea levels and floods. Even when people have doubts about the causal relationship of global warming to these episodes, they cannot help being psychologically affected. Of great importance is the growing recognition that the danger encompasses the entire earth and its inhabitants. We are all vulnerable.

This sense of the climate threat is represented in public opinion polls and attitude studies. A recent Yale survey, for instance, concluded that “Americans’ certainty that the earth is warming has increased over the past three years,” and “those who think global warming is not happening have become substantially less sure of their position.”

Falsification and denial, while still all too extensive, have come to require more defensive psychic energy and political chicanery.

But polls don’t fully capture the complex collective process occurring.

The most important experiential change has to do with global warming and time. Responding to the climate threat — in contrast to the nuclear threat, whose immediate and grotesque destructiveness was recorded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — has been inhibited by the difficulty of imagining catastrophic future events. But climate-related disasters and intense media images are hitting us now, and providing partial models for a devastating climate future.

At the same time, economic concerns about fossil fuels have raised the issue of value. There is a wonderfully evocative term, “stranded assets,” to characterize the oil, coal and gas reserves that are still in the ground. Trillions of dollars in assets could remain “stranded” there. If we are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sustaining the human habitat, between 60 percent and 80 percent of those assets must remain in the ground, according to the Carbon Tracker Initiative, an organization that analyzes carbon investment risk. In contrast, renewable energy sources, which only recently have achieved the status of big business, are taking on increasing value, in terms of returns for investors, long-term energy savings and relative harmlessness to surrounding communities.

Pragmatic institutions like insurance companies and the American military have been confronting the consequences of climate change for some time. But now, a number of leading financial authorities are raising questions about the viability of the holdings of giant carbon-based fuel corporations. In a world fueled by oil and coal, it is a truly stunning event when investors are warned that the market may end up devaluing those assets. We are beginning to see a bandwagon effect in which the overall viability of fossil-fuel economics is being questioned.

Can we continue to value, and thereby make use of, the very materials most deeply implicated in what could be the demise of the human habitat? It is a bit like the old Jack Benny joke, in which an armed robber offers a choice, “Your money or your life!” And Benny responds, “I’m thinking it over.” We are beginning to “think over” such choices on a larger scale.

This takes us to the swerve-related significance of ethics. Our reflections on stranded assets reveal our deepest contradictions. Oil and coal company executives focus on the maximum use of their product in order to serve the interests of shareholders, rather than the humane, universal ethics we require to protect the earth. We may well speak of those shareholder-dominated principles as “stranded ethics,” which are better left buried but at present are all too active above ground.

Such ethical contradictions are by no means entirely new in historical experience. Consider the scientists, engineers and strategists in the United States and the Soviet Union who understood their duty as creating, and possibly using, nuclear weapons that could destroy much of the earth. Their conscience could be bound up with a frequently amorphous ethic of “national security.” Over the course of my work I have come to the realization that it is very difficult to endanger or kill large numbers of people except with a claim to virtue.

The climate swerve is mostly a matter of deepening awareness. When exploring the nuclear threat I distinguished between fragmentary awareness, consisting of images that come and go but remain tangential, and formed awareness, which is more structured, part of a narrative that can be the basis for individual and collective action.

In the 1980s there was a profound worldwide shift from fragmentary awareness to formed awareness in response to the potential for a nuclear holocaust. Millions of people were affected by that “nuclear swerve.” And even if it is diminished today, the nuclear swerve could well have helped prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

With both the nuclear and climate threats, the swerve in awareness has had a crucial ethical component. People came to feel that it was deeply wrong, perhaps evil, to engage in nuclear war, and are coming to an awareness that it is deeply wrong, perhaps evil, to destroy our habitat and create a legacy of suffering for our children and grandchildren.

Social movements in general are energized by this kind of ethical passion, which enables people to experience the more active knowledge associated with formed awareness. That was the case in the movement against nuclear weapons. Emotions related to individual conscience were pooled into a shared narrative by enormous numbers of people.

In earlier movements there needed to be an overall theme, even a phrase, that could rally people of highly divergent political and intellectual backgrounds. The idea of a “nuclear freeze” mobilized millions of people with the simple and clear demand that the United States and the Soviet Union freeze the testing, production and deployment of nuclear weapons.

Could the climate swerve come to include a “climate freeze,” defined by a transnational demand for cutting back on carbon emissions in steps that could be systematically outlined?

With or without such a rallying phrase, the climate swerve provides no guarantees of more reasonable collective behavior. But with human energies that are experiential, economic and ethical it could at least provide — and may already be providing — the psychological substrate for action on behalf of our vulnerable habitat and the human future.

Harvard historian: strategy of climate science denial groups ‘extremely successful’ (The Guardian)

08/08/2014UncategorizedConservadorismo, Estados Unidos, História, Mudanças climáticas, Naomi Oreskes, Negacionismo, Políticarenzotaddei

Professor Naomi Oreskes says actions of climate denialists are laying the foundations for the government interventions they fear the most

Posted by

Graham Readfearn

Thursday 24 July 2014 23.12 BST

Naomi Oreskes, Harvard University Professor of the History of Science

Naomi Oreskes, Harvard University Professor of the History of Science. Photograph: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Public Affairs & Communications

In 1965, US President Lyndon Johnson had a special message for the American Congress on conservation of the environment.

Worried about the “storm of modern change” threatening cherished landscapes, Johnson said: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through… a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

The same quote appears at the beginning of the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How A Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by science historians Erik Conway and Professor Naomi Oreskes.

Plainly the line – almost half a century old now – was picked to show just how long the impacts of fossil fuel burning have been known in the corridors of the highest powers.

The book explained the efforts since the 1960s of vested interests and ideologues to underplay the risks of pumping ever-increasing volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

One of the most startling revealing aspects of the book was how some of the same institutions and individuals who held out against a wave of scientific warnings about the health impacts of tobacco smoke became integral to efforts to block any meaningful policy response to greenhouse gas emissions.

Oreskes is a Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University and she has a new book out, again co-written with Conway.

The Collapse of Western Civilisation: A view from the future is written from the perspective of a historian living in the year 2393 and looking back at what went horribly wrong in the lead up to the “Great Collapse”.

Here’s my Q&A with Oreskes.

Q: Merchants of Doubt looked at the role of think tanks, vested interests and free market ideologies in attacking the science linking fossil fuel burning to climate change, smoking to cancer, pollution to acid rain and CFCs to the ozone hole. Four years later, has anything changed?

Not really. There are some new faces on the horizon, but recruiting “fresh voices” has been a tactic for a long time. So even the things that may look new are in fact old. The Heartland Institute has become more visible, and the George Marshall Institute a bit less, but the overall picture continues: these groups continue to dismiss or disparage the science, attack scientists, and sow doubt.

They continue to try to block action by confusing us about the facts. And the arguments, the tactics, and the overall strategy has remained the same. And, they’ve been extremely successful. CO2 has reached 400 ppm, meaningful action is still not in sight, and people who really understand the science—understand what is at stake—are getting very worried.

Q: How did you move from being a geologist working in Australia for the Western Mining Corporation to being a scholar of the history of science?

Oh this is a long story. I was always interested in broad questions about science. History of science gave me the opportunity to pursue those broad questions.

VIDEO: Naomi Oreskes discusses the background to the 2010 Merchants of Doubt

Q: You were filmed for an ABC documentary that pitched a climate change “advocate” against a “sceptic”. You met Australian politician and climate science sceptic Nick Minchin – the key political kingmaker who engineered the leadership challenge that gave the now Prime Minister Tony Abbott the Liberal leadership. What were your impressions of Minchin?

Well, I think he is a basically nice guy who has fallen into a trap: the trap of imprecatory denial. He doesn’t like the implications of climate change for our political and economic system, so he denies its reality. But climate change will come back to bite us all. It is already starting to.

VIDEO: Naomi Oreskes meets former Australian politician and climate sceptic Nick Minchin. Clip from ABC documentary “I Can Change Your Mind About Climate” Produced by Smith&Nasht.

Q: So you worked in Australia as a geologist, toured here to promote Merchants of Doubt and had an academic role at the University of Western Australia, so you’ve seen a bit of how things have played out. How do you think Australia has been influenced by organised climate science denial?

Clearly. One sees all the same strategies and tactics being used there, plus a few additional ones (trotting out geologists to claim there are hidden underwater volcanoes that are responsible for the extra atmospheric CO2.) The Institute of Public Affairs in Australia has been very active trotting out skeptical and denialist claims with little or no basis in evidence. If you go to their web site, they link back to many of the very same groups whose activities we documented in Merchants of Doubt : the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, Competitive Enterprise institute, the Heritage Foundation.

It’s the same old, same old: defend the free market, deny the reality of market failure, block action that could actually address those failures. And of course, that is the point of the new book: by denying the reality of market failure, and blocking corrective action, these folks are actually undermining our economies, and laying the foundations for kinds of government interventions that will make them pine for the good old days of a carbon tax.

Q: Oh yes the new book – The Collapse of Western Civilisation: A view from the future. You’ve written it from the point of view of a historian writing about the “Period of the Penumbra (1988–2093) that led to the Great Collapse and Mass Migration (2073–2093)”. It doesn’t sound like there are too many laughs?

Not unless we are talking about black humour. Our editor, when he first approached us, said he found it funny in a Dr Strangelovian way. I took that as a huge compliment.

Q: Dr Strangelove – a character that apparently borrowed parts from the real life Edward Teller, the so-called “father” of the H-bomb. Your new book borrows much from real life events and modern science too doesn’t it (it’s a clunky segue, but I’m sticking with it)?

Yes of course. A good deal of the power of that film came from the fact that while it was farce, it was all too true in some ways—or at least, all too plausible. It was conceivable that the world would end not in deliberate, calculated aggression, but in stupidity, mistakes, and men and machines run amok.

Kubrick understood that. Fortunately, we escaped disaster in the Cold War, because enough people realized what was at stake. Erik and I have often discussed that, in this case—climate change—a lot of people, folks like Nick Minchin included—don’t seem to realize what is at stake.

They’ve dismissed the science. They’ve pooh-poohed the mounting evidence that disruptive climate change is already underway. They’ve assumed scientists were over-reacting, and that all environmentalists are watermelons. And that bodes poorly for our future. Because the longer we wait, the more plausible our “collapse” scenario, with its unhappy implications for western democracies, becomes.

Q: But what is it that you think drives the denial industry? How much of it is just pure self-interest? Is it fear of socialism – a kind of post-Cold War paranoia that you identified in Merchants of Doubt? Or is it ideological fervour like the kind you’ve witnessed amongst American Tea Baggers?

I think it’s a complicated mix. Certainly, there are some very cynical individuals and groups who are protecting their own self-interest, with little or no regard to the consequences for others.

There are also those who have bought into the watermelon argument—that environmentalists are green on the outside, red on the inside—and that climate change is just an excuse to bring in socialism by another name.

Then there are also many people who I think believe, or have persuaded themselves, that climate change is just another fad, exaggerated by scientists who just want more money for their research, or environmentalists who over-react to small threats or are unrealistic about where their bread is buttered.

Finally there is the power of rationalization—people whose bread really is buttered by the fossil fuel industry, or people who are heavily invested in the industry in one way or another, and just don’t want to accept that there is a fundamental problem.

Q: Is that a big issue – do you think? That the nuances of the science aren’t that widely understood and so it’s an easy job to confuse people about it?

Yes I think so. That’s one reason why these disinformation campaigns have been so successful. It’s always easy to find some aspect of the science that is uncertain, or confusing, and focus on that to the exclusion of the larger picture

Q: It sounds like an almost intractable situation. Is there something you think should have happened, that didn’t, that might have helped to combat that misinformation?

Well, it certainly would have helped if political leaders had not repeated that disinformation!

Q: What would you do about it?

What I am doing: writing and talking about it, so we can accurately diagnose the problem. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what it is.

Q: Researching denial and organised misinformation has been your thing for about a decade now. So what’s next?

A book about the solutions? How not to go down the road to collapse?

VIDEO: Naomi Oreskes in a 2014 TEDTalk explaining why people should trust science – just not for the reasons most people think.

Congressional rift over environment influences public (Science Daily)

01/08/2014UncategorizedCongresso, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticas, Políticarenzotaddei

Date: July 31, 2014

Source: Michigan State University

Summary: American citizens are increasingly divided over the issue of environmental protection and seem to be taking their cue primarily from Congress, finds new research. The gap between conservatives who oppose environmental protection and liberals who support it has risen drastically in the past 20 years, a trend seen among lawmakers, activists and — as the study indicates — the general public as well, said a sociologist.

American citizens are increasingly divided over the issue of environmental protection and seem to be taking their cue primarily from Congress, finds new research led by a Michigan State University scholar.

The gap between conservatives who oppose environmental protection and liberals who support it has risen drastically in the past 20 years, a trend seen among lawmakers, activists and — as the study indicates — the general public as well, said sociologist Aaron M. McCright.

The findings echo a June 12 Pew Research Center poll showing that, in general, Republicans and Democrats are more divided long ideological lines than at any point in the past two decades.

When it comes to the environment, McCright, reporting in the journal Social Science Research, said the “enormous degree” of polarization has serious implications.

“The situation does not bode well for our nation’s ability to deal effectively with the wide range of environmental problems — from local toxics to global climate change — we currently face,” said McCright, associate professor in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and Department of Sociology.

McCright and colleagues examined an annual national survey from 1974 to 2012 that included a question on environmental spending. According to the survey, which included more than 47,000 total respondents, the divide over environmental protection among citizens who consider themselves conservatives and liberals started growing particularly wide in 1992.

That coincides with the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Following that historic event, McCright said, the conservative movement replaced the “Red Scare” with the “Green Scare” and became increasingly hostile toward environmental protection.

McCright said the trend has been amplified by the Tea Party pulling the Republican Party even further to the right.

In 1990, the study found, about 75 percent of self-identified Democrats and Republicans alike in the general public believed the United States spent too little on environmental protection. By 2012, a gulf had formed between party followers, with 68 percent of Democrats believing the country spent too little on the environment, contrasted with only 40 percent of Republicans.

The trend roughly follows the environmental-protection voting patterns of Congress.

“This political polarization,” McCright said, “is unlikely to reverse course without noticeable convergence in support of environmental protection among policymakers, with prominent conservatives becoming less anti-environmental in their public statements and voting records.”

Journal Reference:

Aaron M. McCright, Chenyang Xiao, Riley E. Dunlap. Political Polarization on Support for Government Spending on Environmental Protection in the USA, 1974-2012. Social Science Research, 2014; DOI:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2014.06.008

Robert Rubin: How ignoring climate change could sink the U.S. economy (Washington Post)

29/07/2014UncategorizedCrise econômica, Economia, Estados Unidos, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

By Robert E. Rubin

July 24

Robert E. Rubin, co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, was treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999.

Good economic decisions require good data. And to get good data, we must account for all relevant variables. But we’re not doing this when it comes to climate change — and that means we’re making decisions based on a flawed picture of future risks. While we can’t define future climate-change risks with precision, they should be included in economic policy, fiscal and business decisions because of their potential magnitude.

The scientific community is all but unanimous in its agreement that climate change is a serious threat. According to Gallup, nearly 60 percent of Americans believe that global warming is caused by human activity. Still, for many people, the effects of climate change seem like a future problem — something that falls by the wayside as we tackle what seem like more immediate crises.

But climate change is a present danger. The buildup of greenhouse gases is cumulative and irreversible; the pollutants we are now emitting will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. So what we do each day will affect us and the planet for centuries. Damage resulting from climate change cuts across almost every aspect of life: public health, extreme weather, the economy and so much else.

What we already know is frightening, but what we don’t know is more frightening still. For example, we know that melting polar ice sheets will cause sea levels to rise, but we don’t know how negative feedback loops will accelerate the process. As polar ice melts, the oceans absorb more heat, which causes more ice to melt. And the polar ice sheets have already started to melt.

When it comes to the economy, much of the debate about climate change — and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are fueling it — is framed as a trade-off between environmental protection and economic prosperity. Many people argue that moving away from fossil fuels and reducing carbon emissions will impede economic growth, hurt business and hamper job creation.

But from an economic perspective, that’s precisely the wrong way to look at it. The real question should be: What is the cost of inaction? In my view — and in the view of a growing group of business people, economists, and other financial and market experts — the cost of inaction over the long term is far greater than the cost of action.

I recently participated in a bipartisan effort to measure the economic risks of unchecked climate change in the United States. We commissioned an independent analysis, led by a highly respected group of economists and climate scientists, and our inaugural report, “Risky Business,” was released in June. The report’s conclusions demonstrated the significant harm that climate change is causing now and that will almost certainly be far more severe in the future — to the agricultural, energy and coastal-property sectors, as well as to public health and labor productivity more generally.

By 2050, for example, between $48 billion and $68 billion worth of current property in Louisiana and Florida is likely to be at risk of flooding because it will be below sea level. And that’s just a baseline estimate; there are other scenarios that could be catastrophic.

Then, of course, there is the unpredictable damage from superstorms yet to come. Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy caused a combined $193 billion in economic losses; the congressional aid packages that followed both storms cost more than $122 billion. We can’t attribute all the damage caused by Katrina and Sandy to global warming, but we know that rising sea levels led to significantly worse surges, and that the frequency and intensity of superstorms are almost certain to increase if global warming persists. It’s highly likely that as climate change continues, the damage will not increase on a straight line. Instead, it will increase on an upward-sloping curve, that could become catastrophically steep, because of negative feedback loops and other factors.

And dramatically rising temperatures in much of the country will make it far too hot for people to work outside during parts of the day for several months each year — reducing employment and economic output, and causing as many as 65,200 additional heat-related deaths every year. That’s almost twice as many deaths as those caused by motor vehicle accidents in 2012.

The U.S. economy faces enormous risks from unmitigated climate change. But the metrics we currently use to measure economic growth, fiscal prospects and business earnings do not incorporate these risks. If we are going to have a well-informed and accurate debate about the economic costs of action vs. inaction, the public and private sectors need metrics that honestly reflect climate-related risk.

First, future federal spending to deal with climate change is likely to be enormous and should be included in fiscal projections, whether in existing estimates or in additional estimates that include climate change. If nothing is done to prevent climate-related crises, the federal government will be forced to deal with them later — from property losses to public health crises to emergency aid. These huge risks are not currently in official future estimates or federal budget plans.

To cover those costs, we will have to increase the deficit; raise taxes; or significantly cut spending on defense, our social safety net, and public investment including infrastructure, education and basic research. Which means that, whatever your public policy views, whether you care about our national debt and deficits, our tax rates, or government investment in everything from national security to job creation, you should care about the costs of coping with climate-related damage. By forcing policymakers to recognize likely future expenditures — and the trade-offs required to make them — we may increase the political appetite for policy changes now.

Second, investors should demand that companies disclose their exposure to climate risks, including the impact that climate change could have on their businesses and assets, the value of their assets that could be stranded by climate change, and the costs they may someday incur to address their carbon emissions. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was a co-chair of the “Risky Business” report, and former Securities and Exchange Commission chairwoman Mary Schapiro are leading an effort to encourage businesses to incorporate such reporting into their quarterly disclosures, but it is still considered optional by the SEC. I believe that such disclosures should be considered material and mandated by the SEC, not just requested by investors. If companies were required to highlight their exposure to climate-related risks, it would change investor behavior, which in turn would prod those companies to change their behavior.

Third, I believe that gross domestic product — the current standard measure of national economic health — is inadequate and misleading, because it fails to account for significant externalities, beginning with climate change. Others might think we should incorporate additional externalities beyond climate impacts, and that’s a good discussion to have. But we should start with a parallel GDP that incorporates the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. Without that, we are using an incomplete measure of economic output to inform policy decisions. Currently, GDP simply reflects the goods and services produced by our economy. However, it does not account for the present and future damage resulting from the emissions involved in producing those goods and services. And bad data leads to bad policy.

We do not face a choice between protecting our environment or protecting our economy. We face a choice between protecting our economy by protecting our environment — or allowing environmental havoc to create economic havoc. And a major step toward changing the debate is to change the way we measure the health of our economy, our fiscal conditions, and the health of individual companies and businesses to better reflect the world as it will be.

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology

Arquivo da tag: Estados Unidos

The surprising links between faith and evolution and climate denial — charted (The Washington Post)

Guerra do clima (Folha de S.Paulo)

Geoengineering report: Scientists urge more research on climate intervention (Science Daily)

The Climate Science Behind New England’s Historic Blizzard (Climate Progress)

Study: California drought is the most severe in at least 1,200 years (Washington Post)

Record Drought Reveals Stunning Changes Along Colorado River (National Geographic)

Survey shows what Americans fear most (Science Daily)

U.S. and China Reach Climate Accord After Months of Talks (N.Y.Times)

The new GOP Senate is already gearing up to cause climate mayhem (Grist)

Climate change denier Jim Inhofe in line for Senate’s top environmental job (The Guardian)

Midterm Elections, the Senate, and Republican Science Denial (Slate)

Coping with water scarcity: Effectiveness of water policies aimed at reducing consumption evaluated (Science Daily)

NASA study finds 1934 had worst North American drought of last thousand years (Science Daily)

Pentagon: global warming will change how US military trains and goes to war (The Guardian)

Battle between NSF and House science committee escalates: How did it get this bad? (Science)

Voices from the People’s Climate March: Indigenous Groups Lead Historic 400,000-Strong NYC Protest (Democracy Now!)

TRANSCRIPT

The Changing Face of Climate Change (Slate)

Jon Stewart Obliterates Republicans By Highlighting Their Ignorance On Climate Change (Politicus USA)

A Future as Clouded as Their Past (New York Times)

Southwest U.S. may face ‘megadrought’ this century (Science Daily)

Norte-americanos estão conscientes do impacto dos seus hábitos de consumo no meio ambiente (Akatu)

The Climate Swerve (The New York Times)

Harvard historian: strategy of climate science denial groups ‘extremely successful’ (The Guardian)

Congressional rift over environment influences public (Science Daily)

Robert Rubin: How ignoring climate change could sink the U.S. economy (Washington Post)