Tag Archives: Climate Change Deniers

CLIMATE CHANGE: General Electric rejects GOP climate-change skepticism

Posted on by
4

Image via net_efekt on Flickr


Corporations, like people, will be affected by climate change. As a result, corporations such as General Electric are accepting climate change as fact and are responding prudently by implementing policies that address concerns over energy availability and carbon emissions. More via Pilita Clark for the Financial Times:

“We found enough data there to have a company like GE respond and we have responded,” said Mark Vachon, head of the “ecomagination” sustainable business initiative GE launched in that year. He said revenues generated by operations in his portfolio now totalled $100bn and were growing at more than twice the rate of those in the rest of the company.

GE’s environmental strategy had also helped it shave $140m from its own energy bill and meant “we’re viewed as relevant in the world”, he said.

Mr Vachon was responding to questions about how GE, a company that has positioned itself as a champion of climate-friendly technologies, views the prospect of voters electing a president reluctant to accept the scientific consensus that carbon emissions from fossil fuels such as coal and oil are warming the earth’s climate.

Continue reading this article at the Financial Times.

GLOBAL WARMING: Do trees cause global warming?

Posted on by
2

U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican — naturally — from California’s 46th congressional district, doesn’t believe that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. However, he believes that if it is occurring, then governments should implement policies of deforestation to curb carbon dioxide emissions. He asks, “Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?” He continued, “Or would people be supportive of cutting down older trees in order to plant younger trees as a means to prevent this disaster from happening?” Of course, “the focus of global warming policy actually centers [and should center] on keeping the world’s trees standing, especially in places like the Amazon, Congo and Indonesia.” According to Politico, Rohrabacher’s comments are reminiscent of “Ronald Reagan’s much-lampooned statement that trees cause pollution.”

The issue of energy availability, which is connected to environmental degradation and climate change, is perhaps the most important issue facing the world’s governments and their citizens today. However, ignorant statements from politicians such as Rohrabacher will not take us forward or allow us to solve the most pressing problems facing the world today. Ignorant, uninformed, and dithering politicians, who fail to do their homework in order to educate themselves on the most pressing issues, only take us backward at our detriment. More via Politico:

Jay Gulledge, a senior scientist at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said Rohrabacher is correct that 80 to 90 percent of gross greenhouse gas emissions do come from nature, with humans producing the rest. But it’s that small percentage that is changing the Earth’s climate — not to mention that trees help absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in huge quantities.

“How he’s using it is totally off the wall,” Gulledge said. “It’s beyond the pale. It makes no sense.”

And here’s a nugget from Bill McKibben:

Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas — fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been — the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.

If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest — resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi — could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.

It’s far smarter to repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change. There have been tornadoes before, and floods — that’s the important thing. Just be careful to make sure you don’t let yourself wonder why all these record-breaking events are happening in such proximity — that is, why there have been unprecedented megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan in the past year. Why it’s just now that the Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years.

.       .       .

Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.

It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.

VIDEO: Watts up with sea ice?

Posted on by
4

Peter Sinclair, via YouTube, tackles disinformation regarding climate change and Arctic sea ice melt:

CLIMATE POLITICS: Energy Committee chairman candidate claims God promised no more catastrophic climate change

Posted on by
Reply

It’s bad enough to blend politics and climate change, but U.S. Representative John Shimkus, a Republican from Illinois who’s seeking a chairmanship on the Energy and Commerce Committee, takes climate change denialism to another level. In the video below, Mr. Shimkus highlights everything that’s wrong with the GOP, and he illustrates how people use religion to impose their own biased and uninformed beliefs onto the rest of society. To declare that humans can’t destroy the Earth, because only God can, is foolish, ignorant, selfish, and unreasonable. Via Informed Comment.

CLIMATE POLITICS: Under Republican leadership, Texas has decided to ignore upcoming federal greenhouse gas emission rules

Posted on by
2

Image via melancholic optimist on Flickr

In Texas, the Republican Party is taking aim at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its obligation to regulate carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. EPA, held that the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (footnotes omitted):

On the merits, the first question is whether § 202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles in the event that it forms a “judgment” that such emissions contribute to climate change. We have little trouble concluding that it does. In relevant part, § 202(a)(1) provides that EPA “shall by regulation prescribe … standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in [the Administrator's] judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” 42 U.S.C. § 7521(a)(1). Because EPA believes that Congress did not intend it to regulate substances that contribute to climate change, the agency maintains that carbon dioxide is not an “air pollutant” within the meaning of the provision.

The statutory text forecloses EPA’s reading. The Clean Air Act’s sweeping definition of “air pollutant” includes “any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical … substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air … .” § 7602(g) (emphasis added). On its face, the definition embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe, and underscores that intent through the repeated use of the word “any.” Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons are without a doubt “physical [and] chemical … substance [s] which [are] emitted into … the ambient air.” The statute is unambiguous.

SCOTUS also determined that the EPA can’t ignore science or its statutory obligations:

Under the Act’s clear terms, EPA can avoid promulgating regulations only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do. It has refused to do so, offering instead a laundry list of reasons not to regulate, including the existence of voluntary Executive Branch programs providing a response to global warming and impairment of the President’s ability to negotiate with developing nations to reduce emissions. These policy judgments have nothing to do with whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change and do not amount to a reasoned justification for declining to form a scientific judgment. Nor can EPA avoid its statutory obligation by noting the uncertainty surrounding various features of climate change and concluding that it would therefore be better not to regulate at this time. If the scientific uncertainty is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment, it must say so. The statutory question is whether sufficient information exists for it to make an endangerment finding. Instead, EPA rejected the rulemaking petition based on impermissible considerations. Its action was therefore “arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law,” § 7607(d)(9). On remand, EPA must ground its reasons for action or inaction in the statute.

Despite SCOTUS’s ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, Texas, under Republican leadership, is “refus[ing] to meet new federal greenhouse gas emission rules that go into effect in January.” More via the Los Angeles Times:

Texas is staking out a role as the anti-California.

With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, powerful Texans such as Rep. Joe L. Barton of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have vowed to check the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to use its existing authority to curtail greenhouse gases.

An even more ambitious challenge is coming directly from the Texas state government and leading Texas politicians. State Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott, with the support of Republican Gov. Rick Perry, has filed seven lawsuits against the EPA in the last nine months.

In some ways, Texas’ attack was bound to be bigger and bolder than it might have been from other states. After all, Texans proudly trace their lineage back to the defiant stand of Texas patriots at the Alamo and the days when Texas was an independent republic under the Lone Star flag.