This guest post comes from a scientist who finds himself to be a Fish Out of Water.
Industry lobbyists have unlimited access to the White House to gut health, safety and environmental regulations proposed by the EPA and other regulatory agencies. A secretive, little known part of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), now run by economist Cass Sunstein, has consistently backed industry lobbyists over EPA’s environmental experts. The most notorious case was when the Obama administration, under political pressure from polluting industries, blocked the new stricter ozone (smog) standards that were developed based on solid scientific evidence to meet the Clean Air Act, humiliating Lisa Jackson, the head of the EPA, who had strongly supported the new standards.
When lobbying Congress and the president fails to delay or weaken a regulation, industry has learned over the years that Oira can be their last best resort, the report says.”A steady stream of industry lobbyists — appearing some 3,760 times over the ten-year period we studied — uses OIRA as a court of last resort when they fail to convince experts at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to weaken pending regulations.”
The lobbyists were particularly obsessed with trying to undo environmental protections. Corporate executives and indusry lobbyists turned up at the White House about once a week over the last decade to try to delay or weaken EPA regulations, or more than 440 meetings.
Since it came to be in 1980 Ronald Reagan, George Bush I used OIRA, to slow, weaken or stop the implementation of EPA’s regulations. Bill Clinton reduced OIRA’s power, increased transparency and cut the number of regulations it reviewed, but George W Bush II gave OIRA more power than ever and eliminated transparency. Under President Obama, Cass Sunstein has continued to run OIRA like the Bush administration did. The generalist economists in OIRA lack expertise in the health, safety and environmental sciences disciplines necessary to write and review the regulations competently. A detailed report by the Center for Progressive Reform (PDF 92p.) shows that OIRA tends to back industry lobbyists over the government experts, accepting industry calculations of costs, no matter how outrageous they are.
By doing that list, I just broke the cardinal law of debunking myths: Don’t lead with and (certainly) don’t bold the myth because, as per The Familiarity Backfire Effect, this just reinforces the myth. When done wrong, “debunking reinforces the myths. … emphasis of debunking should be on the facts not the myth. You goal is to increase people’s familiarity with the facts.”
Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there’s no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of myths. The Debunking Handbook boils the research down into a short, simple summary, intended as a guide for communicators in all areas (not just climate) who encounter misinformation.
Long concerned about the challenges of dealing with people’s false concepts in an effort to help foster more reality-based understanding that will enable better decision-making (at all levels), I have to say that Cook and Lewandowsky have done a great job of clearly and succinctly outlining the challenge(s) and providing actionable paths forward to deal with them. As Brad Johnson put it, the handbook is
a must-read summary of the scientific literature on how to extract pernicious myths from people’s minds and restore fact-based knowledge. … Although the examples used come primarily from the world of climate science, the tools in the Debunking Handbook are key for debunking other myths about science, economics, and society.
November 26th, 2011 · Comments Off on The power of incrementalism? And the colossal commute …
As the carbon count goes higher, inexorably, globally and the world community suffers from mounting challenges due to climate chaos, the value of incremental individual change can seem meaningless. So what if a household figures out how to save 500 kilowatt hours a year and $50 by installing cfl light bulbs (or by using LED Christmas lights) if they still head off to the grocery store in a McSUV? Our challenges are so immense that these incremental baby steps won’t solve them yet there is a good case to be made that we won’t meaningfully tackle those challenges without baby steps as part of the equation. This equivocation and uncertainty came to mind in reading a Toyota Today (the magazine targeted at Toyota dealers and sales staff) article entitled Prius Conquers Colossal Commute.
Bob Callen was reluctant to buy a Prius back in 2004. With a daily commute of 320 miles roundtrip, he was afraid he’d have to replace the battery in less than two years.
But, he says, “I decided to chance it and buy.”
His 2004 Prius has since racked up 500,000 miles – and it still has the original battery.
Satter seems to double down on reporting innuendoes and falsehoods disproven in multiple investigations by institutions around the world.
Although their context couldn’t be determined, the excerpts appeared to show climate scientists talking in conspiratorial tones about ways to promote their agenda and freeze out those they disagree with.
Even though noting that the “context couldn’t be determined …”, Satter decides to move forward with “excerpts appear” even though the 2009 “ClimateGate” stolen email leakage was shown, through the following year, to have been a manipulated effort by those seeking to undermine climate science. The stolen material released today all dates back, evidently, to prior to the first theft — this is old material that the thieves have had for years. And, even so, they have released only a small share of the material. And, even with that selective manipulation, what we have are appearances as opposed to some form of proof (for anyone other than the most serious anti-science syndrome suffering haters of a livable economic system).
Note that Satter is explicit about shortfalls in reporting,
The content of the new batch of emails couldn’t be immediately verified — The Associated Press has not yet been able to secure a copy — but climate skeptic websites carried what they said were excerpts.
Thus, Satter / AP are running with a story based solely on material provided by people who have repeatedly been documented as promoting deceitful information.
Satter at least had the common sense (decency) to engage and quote some of the targets of this selective and deceptive representation of stolen emails.
Penn State University Prof. Michael Mann — a prominent player in the earlier controversy whose name also appears in the latest leak — described the latest leak as “a truly pathetic episode,” blaming agents of the fossil fuel industry for “smear, innuendo, criminal hacking of websites, and leaking out-of-context snippets of personal emails.” He said the real story in the emails was “an attempt to dig out 2-year-old turkey from Thanksgiving ’09. That’s how desperate climate change deniers have become.”
Bob Ward, with the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said in an email that he wasn’t surprised by the leak.
“The selective presentation of old email messages is clearly designed to mislead the public and politicians about the strength of the evidence for man-made climate change,” he said. “But the fact remains that there is very strong evidence that most the indisputable warming of the Earth over the past half century is due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities.”
Juliet Eilperin, who simply should know (far) better than this, seems determined to jump on the bandwagon of conspiracy theorist rather than serious reporting. In a piece highlighting climate denial spinmaster Marc Morano (“Marc Morano, a prominent climate skeptic and editor of the website Climate Depot, welcomed the e-mails’ release.”), in the first paragraph, Eilperin theorizes that this release of stolen emails
may ignite a renewed debate, at least among some bloggers and climate-change skeptics, over whether scientists have exaggerated the link between human activity and global warming.
Later in the story, Eilperin quotes a University of East Anglia press release that comments on how investigations (repeated and exhaustive investigations) have found no scientific wrong-doing and nothing in these emails that undermines the Scientific Theory of Global Warming and humanity’s growing impact on the climate. E.g, quotes an involved party’s press release in a ‘he says, she says’ manner rather than providing truthful and direct reporting about these investigations.
Two years after a global rush to report, rather than investigate, facilitate a criminal conspiracy to undermine climate science, these two reporters have sadly provided a quick response to Brad Johnson’s question: Climategate 2.0: Have Journalists learned their lesson?
Earlier today I asked whether American news outlets would do their due diligence in evaluating the content of the newly-released batch of “Climategate” emails hacked from the University of East Anglia two years ago. It didn’t take long for our esteemed print outlets to disappoint.
Writing on the Washington Post’s website, Juliet Eilperin quotes an email exchange that she said was about “whether the IPCC has accurately depicted the temperature rise in the lower atmosphere” …. Astoundingly, Eilperin does not tell readers that these email exchanges took place in February 2005 and were about the first draft of a chapter of the IPCC report released two years later. The emails depict the authors of the chapter hashing out what should be included — exactly what you would expect this process to look like.
This is clearly an attempt to sabotage the international climate talks for a second time, and there has not been enough attention paid to who is responsible for these illegal acts. If this happened surrounding nuclear arms talks, we would have the full force of the Western world’s intelligence community pursuing the perpetrators. And yet, with the stability of our climate hanging in the balance with these international climate treaty negotiations, these hackers and their supporters are still on the loose. It is time to bring them to justice.
See the following for thoughts on the stolen leaked emails:
Years ago, a British Army general explained to me that the United Kingdom (U.K.) has a “lessons identified” rather than “lessons learned” program. “We identify lessons, only to forget them, and then to identify them at another time . . . often at too great a price.” He concluded, “. . . and we are striving to change this.”
A lesson is “learned” if, when the opportunity presents itself, behavior and action have changed due to those lessons.
When it comes to the mass media (journalists), such an opportunity has presented itself.
Starting almost exactly two years ago, the global community was regaled with story … after story … after story in what was cointed “Climate Gate”. This mass release of stolen emails supposedly (based on highly selective editing and misrepresentation) created the basis for questioning the global scientific consensus surround the Theory of Global Warming and humanity’s impact on the climate. As Brad Johnson highlighted earlier today
Sadly, the basic nature of human psychology works against the corrective process: a falsehood, once embedded is extremely difficult to turnaround. And, sadly, the very efforts at correcting often reinforce the falsehood. And, this is even without dealing with the fact that there is a massive fossil-foolish machine (with the serious support of Faux News and the rest of the Murdoch disinformation empire) seeking to reinforce and expand on that disinformation.
Earlier today, another batch of stolen emails were released (notice passive voice … who released them?) and the disinformation machine is already spinning up to foster continued and deepened global confusion about the status and quality of climate science. As climate scientist John Abraham put it
While Texas experiences record droughts that cost $9 billion and while the evidence of climate change becomes more clear, the denialists quit discussing the science. Instead, billionaire oil tycoons continue their personal attacks against scientists.
These emails are, reportedly, all from prior to 2009. E.g., those electronic thieves seeking to foster confusion about climate science held back this material for several years seeking an opportune moment to seek to create noise. That the world community is gathering in Durban, South Africa, to discuss climate issues creates an eerie similarity to the 2009 release just prior to the Copenhagen climate summit.
The question, this time around, is whether “the” media and journalists have actually learned a lesson from 2009 and will actually engaged in truthful reporting rather than providing stenographic services to truthiness and lies.
This is clearly an attempt to sabotage the international climate talks for a second time, and there has not been enough attention paid to who is responsible for these illegal acts. If this happened surrounding nuclear arms talks, we would have the full force of the Western world’s intelligence community pursuing the perpetrators. And yet, with the stability of our climate hanging in the balance with these international climate treaty negotiations, these hackers and their supporters are still on the loose. It is time to bring them to justice.
This guest post from scientist FishOutOfWater looks at the what might be the closest event in Earth’s history to what humanity, through its ever mounting carbon emissions, is rapidly heading the planet to …
The most precise study yet of the the earth’s most catastrophic extinction event, the end Permian, found that warming caused by natural releases of CO2 was greatly amplified by the collapse of tropical and temperate forest ecosystems which then caught fire releasing huge stores of carbon sequestered by trees. So much light 12Carbon came from burning and dying trees that the CO2 in air was significantly lighter for 20,000 years.
The extinction interval was less than 200,000 years, and synchronous in marine and terrestrial realms; associated charcoal-rich and soot-bearing layers indicate widespread wildfires on land. A massive release of thermogenic carbon dioxide and/or methane may have caused the catastrophic extinction.
This stunning report, by a team of MIT and Chinese scientists was published on-line today in Science magazine. So much carbon was released by this chain of events that the oceans became acidic, leading to the greatest mass extinction of marine species ever. According to the detailed chronology of this study fires ignited by volcanic eruptions contacting large deposits of coal and oil shale caused a chain of catastrophes. The drying and burning of the earth’s forests caused by the climate change brought on by the increased levels of greenhouse gases, led to catastrophic soil loss. The oxygen levels of the ocean and atmosphere dropped. Sulfurous gas levels rose. The combination of so many rapid disastrous changes caused the greatest extinction event in earth’s history.
In sports, the ‘psych’ game often can have as much — if not more — importance than actual physical engagement. Come to the starting line positively certain that you’re going to lose and, well, you’re likely to be watching others’ butts crossing the finish line. And, even worse, be so despondent that you don’t even go to the line, you have guaranteed that you won’t have a chance to surprise the crowd with an upset victory. And, refuse to acknowledge that there is even a competition and, well, don’t be surprised when others’ burn past you on the running track.
“When it comes to the clean energy race, America faces a simple choice: compete or accept defeat. I believe we can and must compete.”
When it comes to tackling 21st century challenges and seizing opportunities, too many seem determined to deny that there is a race worth engaging in and, often in the same breath, seem to suggest that the United States isn’t in a poisition to compete in the race.
Right now, listening to the Congressional hearing with Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the misguided national discussion (at least by part of the political system) comes through clearly. Rather than, universally, asking:
What can we learn from Solyndra to be more effective moving forward to foster a more competitive and prosperous nation in the years and decades to come?
Instead, after 100,000s of thousands of emails and $10+ million of investigation and countless skewed news stories and repetitive misleading news releases, the Republicans on the Committee remained focused on scandal mongering (where ‘scandal’ seems not really the issue) rather than on fostering identifying lessons to help the nation and government work better in the years to come.
To be clear, Solyndra’s technology works and is even elegant. And, considering the market conditions in terms of solar power raw materials looking back several years, Solyndra’s approach looked like it could be a breakthrough path for providing cost-effective solar power in the face of those costs. In the interim, the resource costs nose-dived (counter the predictions of at least some in the field) and the Chinese government massively invested in solar power systems. These combined to rapidly drive down the costs of solar pv electricity systems, which undercut Solyndra’s basic business model and thus drove it out of business. In the face of high resource costs, national investing in a path to be successful even with those costs certainly was (is) a reasonable path of risk management even knowing that if an ‘unsolveable problem’ is solved, the business model will collapse. Investing for return includes risk and Solyndra was a risk bet by the nation (and many private investors) as part of a portfolio to provide high returns for the years to come.
Sadly, the key issues related to climate change risks and clean energy opportunities only emerge in questioning from Committee Democrats.
In the end, Secretary Chu highlights
We are in a high technology race that is in the sweet spot of the United States.
In this $100s of billions market, do we want to be buyers or sellers. And, the United States has the technological capacity to be sellers.
As with the United States, Australia has faced a Murdoch media and fossil foolish driven effort to turn the nation’s back on science. In the face of this machine effort, not only has the Australian government adopted a carbon tax that will help turn the nation toward a more sustainable future but the Aussies have demonstrated some great humor.
Normally tangos aren’t my thing but here is a must listen to one that too many in the anti-science syndrome suffering community are dancing to …
November 10th, 2011 · Comments Off on A “China Syndrome” … in a different twist …
No, not a nuclear meltdown but a different form of nuclear option.
For many, one of the painful elements of European cap and trade along with other arenas enabling and funding carbon offsets is how it creates opportunity for gamemanship that exaggerate positive impacts and wastes resources.
One arena where this has seemed to be the case is with much of the money going into China to reduce emissions there. Put aside the simple fact that the Chinese economy is, essentially, the most cash-rich economy in the world and the society is about the most over-polluted, suggesting that there are the resources and the domestic drivers that should enable self-funding of pursuing cleaner energy agendas (which is what we are seeing with the massive subsidies into the solar market), there have too many cases and far too many rumors of situations where Chinese firms have created a factory at lower efficiency and higher polluting that they would have otherwise to then get carbon offset funding to profitably go in and do those efficiency and pollution control investments.
The vast amounts paid for HFC-23 offsets have led factories in China and elsewhere to manufacture far more HCFC-22 and its HFC-23 by-product than necessary, just to maximize the amounts paid to destroy HFC-23 through the UN-backed carbon trading scheme.
In part because of this fraud and the huge profit margins associated with many of these clean-up activities, and complaints about subsidizing Chinese industry to compete with home industries, and … Europe has been considering changing the structure of carbon credit funding.
In response, we’re seeing the potential for a China Syndrome nuclear-option reaction — if you’re not going to give us the carbon credit cash, we’re going to go ahead and do serious damage to the atmosphere.
“An environmental group [Environmental Investigation Agency] has accused China of climate blackmail after threats to vent powerful greenhouse gases if Europe cuts off carbon credits next year. The row over hydrofluorocarbon-23 offsets – which have a much greater warming effect than carbon dioxide and linger in the atmosphere for 200 years – has intensified before international climate negotiations in Durban this month. Since 2005, Chinese firms have received the bulk of the $6bn in carbon credits for the reduction of these gases, which are produced in the manufacturing of refrigerant chemicals. The money has mostly come from European firms that have bought the offsets under the clean development mechanism, but this source of funding will come to an end next year. The EU has banned HFC-23 offsets because they are inefficient: the value of credits is 70 times the cost of destroying HFC-23 gases.There are also widespread suspicions that Chinese and Korean firms have cynically created hydrofluorocarbon facilities in order to qualify for credits, which can generate twice as much income as selling the refrigerant. But Europe’s decision has angered Chinese officials responsible for administering the system, which has generated $1.3bn in tax revenues for the state.”
In a shocking attempt to blackmail the international community, Xie Fei, revenue management director at the China Clean Development Mechanism Fund, threatened: “If there’s no trading of [HFC-23] credits, they’ll stop incinerating the gases” and vent them directly into the atmosphere. In an interview with Bloomberg News, given at the Carbon Forum Asia in Singapore last week, Xei Fei claimed he spoke for “almost all the big Chinese producers of HFCs” who “can’t bear the cost” and maintain that “they’ll lose competitiveness”.
China’s claim belies the fact that HFC-23 can be destroyed for just €0.17 per CO2e tonne. The destruction of one CO2e tonne generates one Certified Emission Reduction (CER) under the CDM, which historically has been sold on carbon markets at an average price of €12 — 70 times the actual cost of destroying HFC-23.
Getting rid of HFC-23 and other super-GHG chemicals is one path to quickly have a meaning impact on climate risks — in no small part due to the reality that they are projected to increase massively over the coming years. However, due to these 70-1 profits on cost vs CDM payments, the Chinese have been roadblocking international efforts to reduce super GHGs as was done with CFCs in response to the global ozone problem.
Because of these vast profits, China has repeatedly rejected attempts to destroy HFC-23 emissions through the Montreal Protocol. At the 2009 and 2010 Meetings of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol, China blocked progress of a North American proposal to pay the actual costs of destroying HFC-23 emissions at plants not currently covered by the CDM, which account for over half of developing country HFC-23 production. HFC-23 is produced as an unintentional by-product of the refrigerant HCFC-22, itself a powerful greenhouse gas and ozone depleting substance. This means that the quantity of HFC-23 produced is directly related to the production of HCFC-22. HFC-23 is an important contributor to climate change because of its incredibly high 100-year global warming potential (GWP) of 14,800.
As with the “blackmail” comment, EIA isn’t mincing words about the Chinese comments re CDM payments and HFC-23.
“Attempting to force countries into squandering billions on fake offsets that actually increase production of greenhouse gases is extortion,” said Samuel LaBudde, Senior Atmospheric Campaigner with the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). “China is not the victim here, and a world order responsive to climate change cannot be predicated on unrepentant greed.” With a 65 per cent tax on CDM projects, the Chinese Government has already received $1.3 billion — enough to destroy all the HFC-23 it produces for decades to come. Despite this, China still vents at least as much HFC-23 as it destroys, since about half of its HCFC-22 production is ineligible for CDM funding. Xie Fei’s statement makes it clear that preventing emissions is not nearly as important for China as continuing the enormous CDM revenues that benefit its government and industry alike.
“Carbon offsets derived from HFC-23 crediting only serve to subsidize the production of greenhouse gases and have no place in the future of carbon markets,” said Mark Roberts, International Policy Advisor for EIA. “If China is genuinely concerned about climate change rather than profiting from a fatally flawed system, it will stop blocking efforts to control HFC-23 emissions and stop threatening to hold global climate hostage to its unrealistic demands.”
Let us be clear, it is not only fossil fuel producers whose rapacious greed is hastening our path to catastrophic climate chaos.
