Category: Global Warming/Climate Disruption

Dear Group,

I want to close out this week with a thought along a different vein, sparked by article I read in the New York Times, an article that came to my attention labelled “Most Emailed.” It appeared on November 27 in the Times Magazine, “The Insect Apocalypse Is Here.” It was competing for everyone’s attention from the froth of human social and political concerns, the latest offensive Trump tweet, Nancy Pelosi’s likelihood of keeping her position in the House of Representatives, what Paul Manafort’s lawyers are saying to Trump’s lawyers, the price of oil, and whether the stock market and the economy are going up or down. Yet here it was, an article on the natural world featured as “Most Emailed.” 

We humans are singularly self-absorbed and short-sighted, thoroughly pre-occupied with the activities of other members of our species, the children we try to raise, the stories we tell, the games we play, the wars we wage.

Step back. At the base of it all is the biosphere and the planet on which we depend for food, water, and a place to raise our young. The worldview each of us takes on during our lifetime conditions how we see and understand this ball of rock with its thin layer of life.

As I see it, worldview (at least in U.S.) lays out broadly on a spectrum. Stark Dominionism underpins one end, whereas on the other end is the sense that humanity is a particularly conceited and self-centered manifestation of natural life, thoroughly integrated into the biosphere.

For me, Dominionism is based on [From wikipedia]: “a reference to the King James Bible’s rendering of Genesis 1:28, the passage in which God grants humanity ‘dominion’ over the Earth.”

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Dominionism often includes a sense this human domination over the earth is carefully guided and nurtured by God, that is, that humanity is an instrument of God’s will and, as such, humanity is incapable of despoiling the earth. For some (many?) in this thought pattern, there is also an “end time” that somehow leads to God’s Kingdom, a glorious hereafter. I was brought up with one foot in this tradition. 

At the other end my spectrum of worldview is Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, the photograph taken in a look back from the Voyager 1 Space Probe in 1990, showing the earth as an tiny speck, a speck containing all of us, a speck nearly vanished in space, a speck which say to some “we are completely on our own and we’d better figure it out fast.” 

These ends of the worldview spectrum have been a source of tension in humanity’s understanding of itself for hundreds of years. Everyone who ever took a class in science in public school remembers or ought to remember the controversy between the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s geocentric view of the solar system and the heliocentrism of Galileo Galilei (and other scientists and astronomers) that came to a head around 1600. The underlying tension has never gone away.

This spectrum of worldview I postulate here, stretching from Dominionism to the Pale Blue Dot is a spectrum of orientation, it is not two well-defined buckets into which people’s mindsets sort simply. For folks who put some thought to it, there are many points along the spectrum where one’s views might lie.

But I digress.

“The Insect Apocalypse Is Here” for me was at the end of a string of disquieting articles for anyone on the Pale Blue Dot end of the spectrum.

U.S. Climate Report Warns of Damaged Environment and Shrinking Economy

The World Needs to Quit Coal. Why Is It So Hard?

What’s Happening to the Price of Oil? (which might make some rejoice, but for me heralds greater demand for gas-guzzling vehicles and ever more burning of carbon)

Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe. (the sad story of one of the last bipartisan efforts to cut back on the burning of fossil carbon)

I end the week with much to contemplate. Enjoy the weekend. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Dear Group,

Only the first hour of the debate at the Bing in Spokane on Wednesday, September 19th, was televised. That hour is available to watch here. Another half hour of audience questions followed, questions and answers KHQ did not post. Parts of that half hour I’ve transcribed from recordings made by members of the audience.

Thanks to Bob Gilles for the following question, which he posed in a very jolly, upbeat fashion I cannot express in print.

Bob Gilles: “What is your take on evolution and science? Do you believe the earth is more like 6000 years old or four and a half billion years old?”

CMR: “I get to go first, huh? [laughter] Well. OK. Ummm. The account that I believe is the one in the Bible that God created the world in seven days. [clapping] …made by His creation… [noise] I’m not here…I can’t say how old the earth is. I believe this is an exciting time for us to be living. I’m proud of the innovation and ingenuity of the American people. I’m proud to be an American. It’s the greatest country [loud clapping]…liberty and human rights and religious tolerance and self-determination. So this is a [murmuring] …and science. And I do believe that we need to…ah…know what the science is, respect the science…I’m battling right now to make sure we use science when it comes to making decisions around the Lower Snake River dams and the Snake River system…[trails off]”

It is a free country. Everyone is entitled to their point of view. The point of view McMorris Rodgers publicly endorsed in her answer (a little reluctantly) is consistent with her education. She has never been exposed to the foundations of geology and biology, except, perhaps, to discount the evidence. Her undergraduate degree was taken at the Pensacola Christian College where, among the Articles of Faith, one finds:

We believe that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days, and that God created all life (Gen. 1). We reject the man-made theory of evolution occurring over millions of years and believe that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old.

No instructor at such an institution would dare offer an unbiased presentation of the physical evidence for a planet that is three and a half billion years old. (The evidence is not only fossils in layers of rock but also the physics of the decay of radioactive isotopes, the stuff of basic science.) 

If everything one is taught begins with the unshakable belief the earth is around 6000 years old (a number calculated based on the “begats” in the Book of Genesis) one must intentionally disregard the bases of nearly all modern science, especially modern geology, continental drift, and, importantly, the geological understanding of the history of climate. (If all ice ages and past documented changes in climate all occurred over 6000 years then everything has to have happened fast. In that mindset modern day concerns over the speed at which climate is changing can be glossed over as unremarkable. McMorris Rodgers analysis, “We’ve been through times when the earth warmed and then also we’ve been through times when the Earth…there’s been more ice on…in the world” is a case in point.)

It is important to recognize adherence to the idea of a 6000 year old earth is not a majority view in America, probably not even among self-described Christians. Much of Christianity, including United Methodism, the tradition in which I was brought up, considers the biblical creation story to be allegorical: “We find that science’s descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not in conflict with theology.”  It is worth noting there have been recent (and un-successful) efforts to change Methodist doctrine to an anti-science view. Christianity is not monolithic, and McMorris Rodgers’ views represent only some of those who call themselves Christian. That realization is at the core of her hesitation to directly answer the question Mr. Gilles posed. 

Look at McMorris Rodgers’ answer again. She performed all almost immediate hard pivot to the only “scientific” refuge she knows, her claim of a scientific basis for preserving the Snake River dams, the same pivot she employs every time climate change comes up as a question.

In contrast, Lisa Brown used her time to address the broader issue of climate change:

Dr. Brown: I believe in science [applause] I believe there’s a scientific consensus that human activity and carbon being released into the atmosphere is contributing to climate change and that it is a major, major challenge facing our planet and that instead of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords like the Trump administration we should progressively work with other countries to come up with an agreement that will help us transition to a clean energy economy. And I also agree with the Congresswoman that we need to not put our head in the sand about science, but utilize science and our best technological practices as we address the issues related to declining fish populations and other important uses of the Columbia and Snake River system and get stake holders together looking at that science and coming up with solutions in a collaborative process.

McMorris Rodgers is entitled to her belief system, but at least in her case that belief system prevents her from comprehending scientific issues of the utmost importance. Lisa Brown was brought up in Roman Catholicism, a faith tradition that, like United Methodism, does not reject scientific consensus. Lisa has the intellectual tools to grapple with scientific issues.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Dear Group,

I am taking this day off from writing. For those who may have missed this piece in the very successful New York Times published September 16th. Consider my copying it as an unsolicited advertisement for the NYTimes. I have subscribed to the online version since shortly after the Trump election. Here is the article:

Nature Roars. Washington Hears Nothing.

The elements offer a rebuke as President Trump rolls back policies designed to address global warming.

By The Editorial Board

As if this past summer of merciless heat waves, droughts and megafires were not warning enough, in the past several days the elements sounded another alarm about the state of a world made warmer by the burning of fossil fuels. It came in the form of a one-two punch of wind and rainfall from Hurricane Florence, which like Hurricane Harvey a year ago, has derived much of its wallop from unusually warm ocean waters and stalled weather systems linked to climate change. “Supercharged” is the word one prominent climate scientist, Michael Mann, used to describe Florence, echoing the findings of the federal Global Change report in 2014 that, along with a rise in other extreme weather events, “hurricane intensity and rainfall are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.”

To no one’s surprise, this linkage went unacknowledged in President Trump’s Washington. Quite the contrary. On Tuesday, in a further retreat from President Barack Obama’s ambitious promises to reduce America’s emissions of the greenhouse gases deemed largely responsible for global warming, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed weakening rules aimed at reducing leaks of methane from oil and gas operations. Methane, a principal component of natural gas, is a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas that represents about 9 percent of this country’s total greenhouse gas emissions; one-third of it comes from oil and gas operations.

Though the changes seem small — reducing the frequency of inspections and fixes to wells and pipelines, for instance — they may well presage an administration decision to get out of the business of regulating methane altogether. (The Interior Department, in a companion move, is soon expected to release its own proposal to roll back Obama-era rules regulating the venting and flaring of methane from drilling operations on the millions of acres under its control.)

The change in the methane rule is just plain dumb. The savings to industry would be trivial, $75 million a year by the Environmental Protection Agency’s estimates, a rounding error for the powerful oil industry. The industry could in fact end up a loser, since captured methane can be sold at a profit. Moreover, leaking methane undercuts the industry’s claim that natural gas can be a bridge fuel to a cleaner energy future. Though the burning of natural gas emits only about half the carbon dioxide of coal, the leak rate — as high as 2.3 percent, according to studies organized by the Environmental Defense Fund — erodes much of that advantage.

Finally, and most sadly, the change pretty much completes the demolition job on Mr. Obama’s climate strategy: the rollback of automobile fuel efficiency standards announced in August; the planned repeal, also announced last month, of Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants; and now the methane pullback. These three programs, plus an effort to regulate climate-forcing gases used in refrigerants, formed the basis for Mr. Obama’s pledge at the 2015 climate summit in Paris to reduce America’s greenhouse gas output by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025.

To redeem that pledge — and to reassure the other signatories of the Paris agreement that much of America still cares about climate change — was the purpose of the Global Climate Action Summit, an extraordinary gathering last week of 4,000 or so climate advocates, foreign dignitaries, investors and state and local officials. The meeting, co-hosted by Gov. Jerry Brown of California and Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, was a bright spot in a week dominated by atmospheric fury in the Carolinas and political fecklessness in Washington.

Unlike the Paris summit, the meeting had no power to set goals or to legally commit anyone to do anything to reduce emissions. What it did have was messaging power. And the message was one of defiance as well as concern.

According to a report prepared for the conference, the states, cities and businesses that have joined the cause — what Mr. Brown and Mr. Bloomberg call the “coalition of the willing” — now represent over half the population of the United States, over half the American economy and more than a third of its nationwide greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks partly to their efforts (plus, of course, market forces, not least the declining cost of renewable energy sources and the switch in the power sector from coal generation to natural gas), the United States is almost halfway to meeting Mr. Obama’s Paris pledge. Simply honoring existing commitments and policies at the state and local level will get the country two-thirds of the way there.

The tough part is the rest of the journey, and to that end, the report offers strategies that it believes state and local governments can undertake without any help from Mr. Trump. Most are familiar: tougher ordinances to encourage more energy-efficient buildings, stronger state mandates for renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, more rapid deployment of electric vehicles (as California requires) and efforts to begin phasing out the super-polluting compounds used in commercial and residential cooling systems. And, as if in direct rebuke to Mr. Trump, the group called for new and tougher state and local regulations to stop methane leaks from oil and gas wells and municipal distribution systems.

Uniting these leaders is a belief that human ingenuity can lead us out of a predicament that humans have helped create and a faith in collective action that is almost impossible to find on the Potomac.

McMorris Rodgers carefully avoids saying in so many words that climate change is a hoax. Instead, whenever climate change/global warming is mentioned she quickly pivots to her defense of the Snake River damns and the renewable hydropower they provide. When confronted with a direct question as to her understanding of global warming she wanly notes the earth has been colder sometimes. Then last summer she and her Republican cronies in the House took time out from their busy schedule to declare in a resolution that a carbon tax would hurt the economy. 

McMorris Rodgers’ ideology prevents her from acknowledging the basic science of global warming. There is no amount of climate disruption sufficient to shake her conviction. It is time to vote her out.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry