May 13th, 2009 · Comments Off on Energy Dumb Dana Shows His Face
Energy Dumb Dana Rohrbacher showed his face on the House floor with a studied effort at willful ignorance a year ago several weeks before Senate Republicans stooped to the lowest forms of obstructionism to avoid having to have a substantive and meaningful debate about Global Warming legislation. Rohrbacher’s speech is worth a few minutes of notice since it is such a studied effort, with strong framing language, of misleading deceptiveness and outright deceit on what might be the most critical issue that we face through this century.
To gain a feel for the extent of deceit, let us look at part of Rohrbacher’s opening comments:
Mr. Speaker, I preface my remarks with a personal statement that, while I am opposed to the advocates of man-made global warming theories, I am committed to a clean and healthy environment, to purifying our air, our water, and our soil; all of this for the sake of the people of this planet, including my three children, Anika, Tristan and Christian. I do this not because of some paranoid theory that humans are changing the climate of the world, but instead, I am very concerned about the health of the people of the world and, thus, committed to clean air, clean soil, and clean water.
Yes, Dana Rohrbacher is concerned, concerned mightily about “a clean and healthy environment”. Of course, we should simply take him on his word for this. Should’t we? After all, he is a sitting member of Congress. Well, let us take Ronald Reagan’s words to heat: “Trust, but verify.” Okay, Mr Rohrbacher, i will trust you but will verify. The question, how to verify?
There could always be the League of Conservation Voters ratings of members of Congress. According to LCV, Dana has not scored about 17% on his votes over the past decade and only 10% in votes on issues of environmental impartance. 10 of 100? That doesn’t seem to indicated a commitment to “clean air, clean soil, and clean water.”
But, perhaps LCV is simply a bunch of left-wing Democratic Party operatives. Perhaps time to look to another organization. Why not the Republicans for Environmental Protection? That might be a little more friendly to a senior Republican member of Congress. According to REP’s rating of Congressional voting (pdf), Dana’s score? He scored a blazingly high 17 of 100 for the 2005-2007 period. An average dragged down by the 13 of 100 score for 2007.
Get the idea. This was just the first paragraph. Pull the threads and things unravel quickly.
Media reports today are suggesting that OMB has found fault with with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA)’s proposed finding that emissions of greenhouse gases from motor vehicles contribute to air pollution that endangers public health and welfare. Any reports suggesting that OMB was opposed to the finding are unfounded.
Peter R. Orszag,
Director
Office of Management and Budget
When the director of an organization weighs in (quickly) to discuss reporting of an organizations work, that often suggests that the reporter just didn’t get it.
There are a number of fast, win-win-win paths for making real dents to turn the tide on Global Warming’s rising tide. A quick win-win-win, for example, would be ‘white-roofing’ (increasing the albedo) as much of the urban (man-made) landscape as possible. This can save energy, reduce the urban heat island impact, and cut into global temperature increases. Related, in a way, to that Another quick win-win-win is starting to get more attention: the challenge of Black Carbon.
Think that snow bank next to the highway in the middle of winter. All that “black snow”, blackened by particulates from automobile (mainly diesel) emissions. When the sun comes out, which snow melts more quickly: that blackened snowbank or the pristine snow in your backyard?
Think through the implications of fireplaces and cookstoves, kerosene lamps and diesel trucking globally and you might start to think of the scale of the problem. In fact, after CO2 emissions, black soot might just be the second most serious human contributor to global warming.
The good news? This is something that we can do something to change … quickly. And, that quick change can help buy the time for shifts that will massively reduce humanity’s CO2 emissions (getting off coal, learning how to sequester on large scale via (for example) bio-char, deploying renewable energy, shifting off oil for transportation). We can stop the soot, in the developed and developing countries.
If we took seriously our need to Stop the Soot, the impact could be significant. One analysis concludes that “reducing fossil fuel and biofuel soot particles would eliminate about 40% of the net observed global warming”
Looking at these, you have to wonder: when it came to Barbara Boxer and the ACP, was the motto “progressive, knowledgeable, environmentalists need not apply?
Let us step back for a moment. There can be a power to taking key players ‘from the other side’. They can help formulate strategy that might ‘win over’ some votes and/or people; they might have insights on anti-science syndrome (ASS) sufferers’ plans and approaches to combat movement forward toward sensible energy and climate-change strategies; and, ‘poaching’ key opposition team players might weaken their ability to operate. Thus, there are understandable and even legitimate reasons that can be used to spin these hires …
Yes. It is possible to “spin” these hires, to create seemingly plausible justifications. At the end of the day, however, these hires seem to be a strong slap in the face to the hundreds (if not thousands) of serious, capable, knowledgeable, and dedicated people who have worked to turn the tide on Global Warming’s rising seas.
May 10th, 2009 · Comments Off on Olympia Snowe on The Party of Exclusion
“We’re excluding the young, minorities, environmentalists, pro-choice — the list goes on,” says Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of two moderate Republicans left in the Senate after Specter’s switch. “Ideological purity is not the ticket to the promised land.”
May 10th, 2009 · Comments Off on A reason to open the Washington Post …
As regular readers of these pages (these electrons) are aware, there are many , Many, MANY reasons to find frustration in The Washington Post opinion pages which are, on occasion, balanced by sanity in responding letters and OPEDs. There is, however, one quite consistent voice who makes opening those pages worthwhile: the Post’s pulitzer prize-winning Tom Toles, who is quite possibly the best political cartoonist in the nation when it comes to climate change issues. (Collections of political cartoons on energy/environmental issues.) Another ‘on-target’ piece today:
Say the words “global warming” and “editorial cartoonist” in the same sentence, and most climate change wonks likely will conjure up the work of Tom Toles. … Toles likely has penned more global warming editorial cartoons – and for that matter more environmental editorial cartoons – than any other editorial cartoonist.
To be honest, Toles is one of the few reasons (along with local coverage) left why my household still gets the Post. Evidently, it mattered for us to let the Post know that.
His global warming cartoons for years “were never popular,” generating little positive feedback and some reader complaints that he was “obsessively interested in the subject and people were tired of hearing about it.”
Happily, this seems to have turned around, with ever more people letting Toles (and The Post) know that they appreciate that “someone else gets it”.
Sigh … the Post’s columnists must not look to Toles for inspiration since they simply don’t Get It
The Washington Post used to have a great advertising slogan: “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.” Over time, for many of us at The Post and in the Washington area, “If you don’t get it…” (said with a weary tone) became shorthand to describe folks that, well, just don’t get it.
With ever-more attention being given to Black Carbon, ‘simple’ technology solutions like solar cookers and more efficient stoves have ever more appeal. In the same realm of ‘small’ can make a great difference, providing just a low level of lighting for the night can provide tremendous economic boosts in developing countries. Think one efficient light bulb and how much better a child might do in school work, being able to read by light one hour each evening. And just as solar ovens and efficient stoves can cut into the pollution and costs (monetary, time, and otherwise) of burning wood, more modern lighting options can carve into the pollution and costs of, for example, using kerosene for lighting.
After the fold, a discussion of two different companies that have ‘business’ models for getting that efficient lighting into the homes of the world’s poor.
