A Change in the Wind
Last weekend with friends we went to the Sespe, in Ventura County’s backcountry wilderness. Much of the chaparral on the northern side of the river is gone (although regrowing from the roots), but even there, survivors remain, including this yucca, which lost many of its longer fronds, but now in its flowering looks virtually unscathed…
So argues a fascinating letter to Dan Froomkin’s hard-hitting White House Watch internet column. Noting that a group of eleven moderate Republicans went to tell Prez Bush that, gee, guess what, it’s not working in Iraq, and Republican voters have noticed, Mark Fox argues that it’s no coincidence the Congressmen went to see the Prez when the V-P Dick Cheney just happened to be out of town:
"My feeling is the ‘Tuesday Group’ choose a day when the VP was unavailable so that they could get their unvarnished message into and thru the ‘Bush Bubble.’ With Cheney gone, they wouldn’t be bullied, and they could speak their mind. Maybe the GOP isn’t afraid of President Bush; it could be they are only afraid of crossing the VP."
Sounds right to me. Check out the bumper sticker I saw just today:
No political cartoonist outrages right-wingers more than Ted Rall, but that’s because he has less than zero respect for militarism, which drives the so-called conservatives wild.
Rall also has had the nerve to criticize victims and victims groups, and appear on right-wing talk shows, and be a member of Generation X. I don’t always agree with him, but I admire his fearlessness.
He doesn’t often focus on environmental topics, so when he does, it’s worth noting. In this one, he points out a principal flaw in our belief in the ever-expanding economy. Today capitalism is a virtual religion, especially on the right, but in a couple of generations, it’s quite possible that we will look back at capitalism as the ideology that ruined our climate. How might we view it then?
Yesterday a fire threatened Los Feliz, in Los Angeles, Today a fire threatens Avalon, on Catalina Island. The city is being evacuated. The fire began five miles east of the airport, which is on top of the island. This means the fire is moving quickly downhill towards the town, which is not typical fire behavior (although the usual evening on-shore winds may mean this is typical for Catalina).
Early reports say that waterdrops from helicopters are having an effect, but the pictures do not look good, and back in l915, an arson fire destroyed half of Avalon. Given that this is May, before the traditional season even begins, this is seriously bad news for Southern California.
As I predicted last December, FOX News, following its chairman Rupert Murdoch, has changed its stance on global warming. I expected that FOX would begin running disaster scenarios. That hasn’t happened–yet– but News Corporation has announced a plan to reduce emissions, and Murdoch all but promised disaster scenarios to come. In a speech to his employees in Manhattan, reported by Grist’s Amanda Griscom Little, he said:
"The challenge is to revolutionize the [climate change] message. [We need to] "make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior."
Disaster movies can be fun. Expect more from 20th-Century Fox, which made over a half-billion dollars from The Day After Tomorrow. But let’s hope they’re better movies…
A month ago, L.A. had a spectacular wildfire that burned on the north side of the Hollywood sign. Today the city sees a fire burning near on the eastern side of the famous sign, near the zoo, closer to downtown L.A., in Griffith Park.
This picture from Chucks Chicken seems to me to get across the scariness of a big wildfire at night. As of midnight, it had burned 600 acres. Temps today hit 97 degrees downtown.
This might sound like an overly-fine distinction, but climate scientist Christina Hulbe argues for The Left Coaster that part of what is happening in the Arctic is a long-standing oscillation of systems called the "northern annular mode," or NAM. This oscillation is not enough to account for arctic ice melting without the "anthropogenic signal" (global warming) but it’s part of the story. She concludes:
In the end, the story here is not that the Arctic sea ice is retreating "faster than expected," as some news outlets have reported, but that it is retreating faster than climate models can simulate.
In response to a question from yours truly, she suggests (see the comments box, #26) that at this time next year the models will have been revised and re-run, and we should have a better sense of their ability to project changes in Arctic sea ice coverage.
Tom Toles has a slightly different view:
Nice pic by Raymond Powers, published last week in the popular Ojai Post.
"I want to send word to our American friends to tell them they can count on our friendship, which has been forged by the tragedies of history that we have confronted together. I want to tell them that France will always be at their side when they need her. But I also want to tell them that friendship is accepting that friends can think differently, and that a great nation like the United States should not be an obstacle to the fight against global warming, but on the contrary should take the lead because the future of all humanity is at stake."
Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly-elected President of France, considered a candidate from the right.)
(Translation: I’m a conservative, not a climate change denier.)
The New York Times editorial board:
the world’s most authoritative voice on climate change asserts that significant progress toward stabilizing and reducing global warming emissions can be achieved at a relatively low cost using known technologies.
The Los Angeles Times front-page story:
A United Nations panel on Friday released its most comprehensive strategy to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming, but experts said political and economic realities likely doom it to failure.
Hope vs. Experience? Propaganda vs. Fact?
I must say, the idea that reducing the very real and escalating risks of climate change will be easy seems to me to be fatuous. Is it wrong to say so? (That’s not what the NYTimes editorial actually says, to be fair, and the risks of the do-nothing policy the U.S. is following at present are huge, but the implication remains.)
For those of us who believe in facing facts, this conflict (between the low chances for real action and the apparent need to claim real action won’t be difficult) will not go away.
Kit Stolz 