You can’t buy the poster from Max Temkin anymore — it’s sold out — but the idea remains:
Just wash your spoon, eh?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Grist. For the search engines, full text of the poster below the fold.
Easy energy
July 21, 2011
5 Comments | 
Art, Conservation, Energy, Environmental protection, Life, Oil, Philosophy | Tagged: Art, Conservation, Energy, Environmental protection, Life, Oil, Philosophy | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Annals of Global Warming: Toles cartoon, seven years ago we were a decade overdue for action
July 14, 2011
A Tom Toles cartoon from 2004
Insert a definition of “filibuster” here.
Then pray for action.
Then call your congressman, and him/her to act, now.
_____________
Note on Tom Toles from the Department of Earth Sciences, G-107 Environmental Geology, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI): “A political cartoon from the Washington Post on climate change. Tom Toles, a political cartoonist, often pens cartoons on environmental issues. His cartoons are often reprinted in other newspapers (Washington Post/Universal Press Syndicate).”
2 Comments | Cartoons, Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Environment, Environmental protection, Global warming, Political cartoons, Politics, Science | Tagged: Cartoons, Climate change, denialism, Global warming, Political cartoons, Politics, Science, Tom Toles | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Marxism from Republicans? Sad, but true . . .
July 12, 2011. . . Groucho Marxism.
(From Horsefeathers; longer version of entire scene, here.)
The U.S. House of Representatives scheduled a vote today to force light bulb manufacturers to keep manufacturing bulbs the market has rejected — Marxist socialism at its apex! — in order to overturn energy conservation standards signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007.
Lately it seems that the House Republican leadership is against everything that isn’t pre-approved by Big Oil or the Tea Party. Perhaps the most outlandish example of this Groucho Marx approach to public policy is today’s vote on the BULB Act, H.R. 2417. It would repeal the energy efficiency standards for light bulbs established in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, or EISA, P.L. 110-140. It would also prevent California from setting its own light bulb efficiency standards. The original author of the provision is House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-MI), who is now supporting the repeal of his own idea after conservatives attacked it along with other clean energy programs.
EISA, with Rep. Upton’s efficiency measure, passed the House in 2007 by a bipartisan vote of 319-100, with support from 49.7 percent of Republicans who voted and 98 percent of Democratic votes. President George W. Bush signed it into law.
Afterwards, Rep. Upton bragged in a press release, “Upton Measure to Upgrade Energy Efficiency Standards for all Light Bulbs Now Law” . . .
Mark Twain observed that it takes just one man of conscience to stand up to a mob and frustrate stupid mob action. Fred Upton is not that man of conscience, alas.
Meanwhile, PopVox has a poll on the bill. Go on over there and vote “no,” meaning you wish to keep the conservation standards.
Tip of the old scrub brush to ThinkProgress via Jennsmom.
33 Comments | Cost of Green, Environment, Environmental protection, Green Politics, Political Smear, Politics, Rampant stupidity | Tagged: Cost of Green, Energy Conservation, environment, Environmental protection, Groucho Marx, Light Bulbs, Marxism, Political Smear, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Rep. Fred Upton | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Are you ready to deal with effects of global warming?
July 12, 2011Why not? These guys argue that the most rational solution is to get ready to deal with the problems, and stop worrying about the science behind “whether.”
If a global warming debate about certainty and cause only deepens doubt and defensiveness, what kind of debate would create support for action? We saw Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to shift from the tired debate over cause and prevention to a new discussion about preparedness, thus reframing global warming from certainty to uncertainty and from limits on human activity to greater activity. Regardless of the cause, global warming is here and we need to prepare for it in the same way we prepare for any other imaginable natural disaster, not knowing exactly when or where it will strike. Global Warming Preparedness was created to test the possibility that action on global warming could be taken, not in spite of uncertainty, but because of it. (Breakthrough Institute, Plan for Global Warming Preparedness)
Are they right?
(Reminds me of the old wisdom from the Starbucks coffee cup.)
1 Comment | Climate change, climate_change, Disasters, Environment, Environmental protection, Global warming, Politics, Science | Tagged: Breakthrough Institute, Climate change, Disasters, environment, Global warming, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Tea partiers: Constipated, now in the dark — what else can they screw up?
July 9, 2011Life is just a constant bitch for tea partiers.
Rand Paul revealed why he’s full of . . . that certain fecality, shall we say. He did that in a hearing about light bulbs, and appliances. Energy conservation gives Rand Paul formication (look it up).
Burning money: Republicans prefer more heat than light, less energy conservation, and the libertarian, self-help yourself to others' money philosophy popularized in recent movies.
But what about efforts to undo the energy conservation bill that practically forces long-lived, low-energy light bulbs on us? The Tea Party doesn’t like that idea, either. Michael Patrick Leahy, writing at the blog for Rupert Murdoch’s Broadside Books, explains why he thinks the Tea Party should oppose Fred Upton’s bill to repeal the energy standards Rand Paul castigated.
Basically, none of these guys knows beans about energy, nor much about the technology or science of electricity and lighting — they just like to whine.
Leahy wrote:
Section 3 [of the “Better Use of Light Bulbs Act,” HR 2417] states that “No Federal, State, or local requirement or standard regarding energy efficient lighting shall be effective to the extent that the requirement or standard can be satisfied only by installing or using lamps containing mercury.” This reads to me that Congress is attacking the mercury laden CFL bulbs. The point of the individual economic choice guaranteed in the Constitution, however, is that Congress ought not to favor CFLs over incandescents, just as it ought not to favor incandescents over CFLs. I’m no fan of CFL bulbs personally, but look for CFL manufacturers like GE to make this argument against the bill at every opportunity.
Section 4 of the Act is designed to repeal the light bulb efficiency standards in effect in the State of California since January 1 of this year. The standards are essentially the federal standards that will go into effect January 1, 2012, but moved up a year. While I personally question the legal status of these very specific rules promulgated by the California Energy Commission based on a vague and non-specific 2007 California statute, it seems to me that there are serious Constitutional questions surrounding a Federal law prohibiting a State to establish its own product efficiency standards. While a good argument can be made that the Commerce Clause grants Congress the right to repeal California state regulations, a reasonable argument could be made by opponents of the bill that Congress can’t do this because the state of California is merely establishing local standards, which is its right.
Given these concerns about Sections 3 and 4, what purpose does it serve to include them in the bill? Both raise potential objections to the passage of the bill on the floor of the House if it comes to a vote this week.
Now, granted this is the House of Representatives, and not the Senate where Sen. Paul keeps a chair warmed, occasionally. Still, is it too much to ask the Tea Party to support the bills it asks for? Leahy said:
A full and open discussion of these issues in public hearings held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would have been the right way to begin a legislative process that would have identified and addressed these potential objections. That’s the course that a Committee Chairman seriously committed to repealing the light bulb ban would have taken. Instead, Chairman Upton has followed this secretive, behind closed doors, last minute rushed vote approach.
There was a hearing in the Senate — good enough for most people — and of course, there were hearings on the issue in the House. The Tea Party was unconscious at the time. The bill they’re trying to repeal was a model of moderation as touted by the president when it passed, President George W. Bush — and it’s still a good idea to conserve energy and set standards that require energy conservation (the law does not ban incandescent bulbs).
Also, while they’re complaining about the mercury in Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs), remember, Dear Reader, they oppose letting our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) protect you from mercury in your drinking water or the air that you breathe. Pollution is only worrisome to them if they can use worry as a tool to whine about people making life work without pollution. A rational person would point out that the mercury released by coal-fired power plants to produce the energy required by repeal of the conservation law would more than equal the mercury from all the CFLs, even were all that mercury to be released as pollution (which it isn’t, if properly disposed of):
8 hours: The amount of time a person must be exposed to the mercury in a CFL bulb to acquire the same mercury level as eating a six-ounce can of tuna, according to Climate Progress’s Stephen Lacey.
Is it too much to ask for reason, circumspection, and a touch of wisdom from these guys? You’re supposed to drink the tea, Tea Party, not smoke it.
A wet shake of the old scrub brush in the general direction of Instapundit, who never met a form of pollution he didn’t prefer over clean water or clean air.
_____________
Update: Mike the Mad Biologist talks sense about the light bulb vote planned by the dim bulbs:
Because it’s not like more efficient light bulbs would be helpful at all:
The American Council on an Energy Efficient Economy says that the standards would eliminate the need to develop 30 new power plants – or about the electrical demand of Pennsylvania and Tennessee combined.
Only Republicans can make the current crop of Democrats look good…
Mike provides more points that make the Upton bill look simultaneously silly and craven: The current law does not ban incandescent bulbs at all, for example, one manufacturer has introduced two new incandescent bulbs in the past year. Tea Party Republicans: No fact left unignored, no sensible solution left undistorted and unattacked.
Also see:
- Los Angeles Times on crazy Texas Lege work to get around the federal law
- New York Times editorial on the light bulb vote, “Dim and Dimmer”
- Detroit News carries an op-ed supporting killing the energy standards, showing that mainstream media entertains fools despite Tea Party claims
- Houston Chronicle blog reports that the Upton bill, pushed by U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington Texas, will raise electrical bills for consumers
- Online Daily Green reports just the facts — including the fact that the proposed bill is anti-business
- Tarrant County, Texas, Tea Partiers call for the boot heel of Big Government to be ground into the face of American Business to squelch consumer choice for energy conservation
35 Comments | Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Conservation, Energy, Environment, Environmental protection, pollution, Regulation | Tagged: CFLs, Clean Air, Conservation, Department of Energy, Energy, environment, Environmental protection, EPA, Light Bulbs, pollution, Rampant stupidity, Regulation | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Solar power at your house? “How to do it” graphic
June 28, 2011While a few (crabs?) argue that solar power will never make a significant contribution to our daily energy budgets in the U.S., others quietly slip the bonds of the grid and go solar. If solar works, it will work one house at a time.
If you wish to go solar, where do you start? The Orange County (California) Register provided a great graphic to illustrate some of the considerations a homeowner needs to make, and how much it might cost.
From the Orange County Register, accessed June 2011 - click for larger image
Orange County, California, is the hotbed of conservative politics, and warming denialism such as it exists in California. In Orange County, solar power is a question of practicality, and one’s desire to save money on electricity. It’s in the Home and Garden section of the newspaper, not politics, not business.
Another gift from mainstream media that bloggers don’t equal, yet.
Is a Smart-Meter required for solar, today?
1 Comment | Electricity, Energy, Environmental protection, Newspapers, Science, Technology | Tagged: Electricity, Energy, Environmental protection, Newspapers, Orange County Register, Science, SmartMeter, Solar Cells, Solar Power, Technology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Punchline too brutal for work: Why it is that environmentalists are the real humanitarians
June 21, 2011The fictional but very popular memes that environmentalists hate humans, humanity and capitalism wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t blind their believers to larger truths and sensible policies on environmental protection.
One may argue the history of the environmental movement, how most of the originators were great capitalists and humanitarians — think Carnegie, Laurance Rockefeller, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and all the early medical doctors who warned of the dangers of pollution-caused diseases — but it falls on deaf ears on the other sides.
Here’s the 30-second response, from Humon, in cartoon form:
Facts of life and environmental protection – from Humon at Deviant Art
Facts of life and environmental protection – from Humon at Deviant Art
Tip of the old scrub brush to P. Z. Myers, and Mia, whoever she is. Myers noted, “Environmentalism is actually an act of self defense.”
11 Comments | Art, Cartoons, Climate change, climate_change, Environment, Environmental protection, History, Humor, pollution, Science | Tagged: Art, Cartoons, Climate change, Environmental protection, Gaia, Global warming, History, Humon, Humor, pollution, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Annals of global warming: Al Gore didn’t invent it, Isaac Asimov explained in 1989
June 8, 2011Amber Jenkins wrote over at NASA’s site:
I stumbled upon this video earlier today. It’s Isaac Asimov, famous science fiction writer and biochemist, talking about global warming — back in January 1989. If you change the coloring of the video, the facial hair style, and switch out Asimov for someone else, the video could pretty much have been made today.
Asimov was giving the keynote address at the first annual meeting of The Humanist Institute. “They wanted me to pick out the most important scientific event of 1988. And I really thought that the most important scientific event of 1988 will only be recognized sometime in the future when you get a little perspective.”
What he was talking about was the greenhouse effect, which, he goes on to explain, is “the story everyone started talking about [in 1988], just because there was a hot summer and a drought.” (Sound familiar, letting individual weather events drive talk of whether the Earth’s long-term climate is heating up or cooling down??)
The greenhouse effect explains how certain heat-trapping (a.k.a. “greenhouse”) gases in our atmosphere keep our planet warm, by trapping infrared rays that Earth would otherwise reflect back out into space. The natural greenhouse effect makes Earth habitable — without our atmosphere acting like an electric blanket, the surface of the earth would be about 30 degrees Celsius cooler than it is now.
The problem comes in when humans tinker with this natural state of affairs. Our burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) constantly pumps out carbon dioxide — a heat-trapping gas — into the atmosphere. Our cutting down of forests reduces the number of trees there are to soak up some of this extra carbon dioxide. All in all, our atmosphere and planet heats up, (by about 0.6 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution) with the electric blanket getting gradually thicker around us.
“I have been talking about the greenhouse effect for 20 years at least,” says Asimov in the video. “And there are other people who have talked about it before I did. I didn’t invent it.” As we’ve stressed here recently, global warming, and the idea that humans can change the climate, is not new.
As one blogger notes, Asimov’s words are as relevant today as they were in 1989. “It’s almost like nothing has happened in all this time.” Except that Isaac Asimov has come and gone, and the climate change he spoke of is continuing.
Asimov’s full speech can be seen here.
Scientists have been on the job that long, yes. Al Gore didn’t invent global warming or climate change, contrary to the working beliefs of much of the “no human warming” crowd.
One of the commenters at Jenkins’ blog put things in perspective:
Jim
January 8, 2011 – 10:22 PSTInterestingly, 1988 was
• the last year that we were not in ecological overshoot
• the last year we were at 350 Parts per million CO2
• the publication date of Joseph Tainter’s he Collapse of Complex Societies http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies
6 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, CO2, Environment, Environmental protection, Global warming, History, NASA, Science | Tagged: Amber Jenkins, Climate change, CO2, environment, Environmental protection, Global warming, Greenhouse Effect, History, Isaac Asimov, NASA, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
From the Presbyterian Church to environmental activism
June 1, 2011Breeding ground for environmentalists? Potomac Presbyterian Church, Potomac, Maryland, photo by Sarah Beth Hensley, courtesy Potomac Patch
Shouldn’t this make the self-appointed, self-appointed Christians, anti-environmentalists, and global warming . . . um . . . disbelievers howl?
According to an environmental historian I know, the ranks of the Presbyterians have produced many of this country’s well-known environmentalists: John Muir, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, the list goes on.
Just think: Environmentalism as the result of a Christian upbringing? How could such a thing be?
The fawning John Galt Fan Club will similarly be disamused. They claim environmentalists come from Stalin and the communists, not from Presbyterians.
What will the neighbors say?
Could it be true?
8 Comments | Environment, Environmental protection, History, Rachel Carson, Religion | Tagged: Edward Abbey, Environmental protection, History, John Muir, Rachel Carson, Religion | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
LA Times on the Texas drought
May 29, 2011Contrary to the Warming Contrarians (WCs), Texas is still in a drought — a bad one.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
LA Times on the Texas drought, posted with vodpod
Oddly, the great story on the Texas drought that showed up in the Dallas Morning News last week, does not show up on their website. Because this is a climate change-related issue, I think we should track it.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Michael Tobis at Only In It For The Gold.
3 Comments | Agriculture, Business, Climate change, Economics, Environmental protection, Global warming, Science, Texas | Tagged: Agriculture, Business, Climate change, Economics, environment, Farming, Global warming, Los Angeles Times, Texas | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Chronic drought complicated by chronic denialism
May 26, 2011Which is worse: To be in the depths of a drought, or to deny drought where it exists?
I ask the question because, as one cannot tear one’s eyes away from a train wreck about to occur, I watch Steve Goddard’s blog. Occasionally Steve or one of his fellow travelers says something so contrary to reality or fact that I can’t resist pointing it out.
In some discussion over there, Goddard suggested that because there is above-average snowpack around Salt Lake City and in Northern Utah, Lake Powell’s decade-long struggle with extreme drought is over. Therefore, to Goddard, global warming does not exist.
(No, I’m not really exaggerating. Seriously. Go look. No one there seems to have ever had a course in logic, nor in English composition and essay writing. If Al Gore got svelte, one suspects half the commenters there would never be able to speak again.)
It is true that this year, contrary to the past decade, snowpack is high along the Wasatch Front and in the Uinta Mountains of Utah, and in Wyoming and Colorado areas that drain into the Green and Colorado Rivers. Consequently, forecasters say that Lake Powell may gain a few feet of depth this year. Powell is down about 50 feet, however, and even a record snowpack won’t erase the effects of drought on the lake. (Yeah, I know: The Wasatch doesn’t drain into the Colorado system — it drains to the Great Salt Lake, as indeed do many of the streams that have great snowpack in Utah — so a lot of the record snowpack won’t get within 400 miles of Lake Powell. That’s geography, and it would be one more area that commenters would embarrass themselves in. Don’t ask the pig to sing if you aren’t going to spend the time to teach it; if you need the aphorism on teaching pigs to sing, look it up yourself.)
Since Lake Powell won’t lose a lot of elevation this year, the Goddardites (Goddardians? Goddards? Goddardoons?) pronounce the U.S. free of drought.
Right.
Check it out for yourself, Dear Reader. Here’s an animation from the National Drought Center, showing drought measurements in the contiguous 48 states plus Alaska and Hawaii, over the past 12 weeks:
Drought in the U.S., 12 weeks ending May 17, 2011, National Drought Mitigation Center, U of Nebraska-Lincoln - click on map for a larger version at the Drought Monitor site.
Here’s the drought outlook map from the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA:
U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook Map, released May 19, 2011, NOAA and the Climate Prediction Center - click image for a larger version at NOAA's site.
It would be wonderful were these droughts to break soon. But that is very unlikely.
So, why would anyone deny it?
Then, just to indicate the bait-and-switch logic these guys use, Goddard came back with a claim that the 1956 drought in Texas was worse, as if that means the current drought doesn’t exist. Fore reasons apparent only to those whose heads get pinched by tinfoil hats, he also notes the CO2 levels for 1956. I think I know what point he’s trying to make, but someone should tell him that apples are not oranges, and comparing apples and oranges to pomegranates doesn’t increase the supply of tennis balls.
Let’s just stick to the facts. The experts who must operate the dams and lakes and get water to Mexico on schedule say the drought along the Colorado persists. Who are we to gainsay them?
Resources:
- Bureau of Reclamation site on Upper Colorado River management, with lots of statistics
- Upper Colorado snowpack map (it looks good, if you like a surplus of snow, except for the drainage area right around Lake Powell, where the drought is still strong)
- Deseret News story on Utah legislators and government officials taking a tour of Colorado River snowpack sites
- Discussion of what Utah could do with the surplus water (Deseret News); discussion of floods expected from the snow, which will melt too fast in the spring (the warming that Goddard denies) (note data on Lake Powell, 45 feet low, expected to rise by as much as 25 feet this spring — which will still leave it 20 feet low).
- The late, great Utah Gov. Scott Matheson commented on snowmelt floods that required Salt Lake City to turn major roads into rivers: “It’s a helluva way to run a desert.”
- Current drought in Lake Powell started in 1999, says the Bureau of Reclamation
- Lake Mead at historic low levels from drought, November 1, 2010 story in the Arizona Republic (Mead is the lake behind Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas, downriver from Lake Powell)
- Earlier post on Lake Powell and climate change denialists at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub (this past April 20)
- NASA Earth Observatory slides showing shrinking of Lake Powell between 2000 and 2010
- “Western drought: The worst is yet to come,” ScienceNow (AAAS), February 2007
- See photos of the drought’s effect on Lake Powell between 2000 and 2004, below
GEOSat photos of Lake Powell and drought, 2000 to 2004 - Dr. Paul R. Baumann, SUNY - Oneonta College
51 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Colorado River, denialism, Environment, Environmental protection, Global warming, History, Politics, Rivers, Science, Utah, Water | Tagged: Climate change, Colorado River, denialism, drought, environment, Global warming, History, Lake Powell, Politics, Rivers, Science, Steven Goddard, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Utah, Water | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Pure political smear from Walter Williams, or is there any factoid to back his claim?
April 30, 2011Walter Williams wrote a column a dozen years ago in which he made some wild claims about Stanford population biologist Paul Ehrlich.
What did he really say? Stanford University Prof. Paul R. Ehrlich – L A Cicero image
Williams wrote:
Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, widely read on college campuses during the late sixties. Ehrlich predicted that there’d be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s . . . hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and that by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were worse: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
Recently Williams revived that claim for another column, and the revived claim is all over conservative sites.
Steven Goddard, who appears to be making a living on screwing up references to the work of others, though had restricted most of his error to sciency issues like climate change denial, put up a post repeating Williams’ claim.
I imagined Ehrlich might have said something like that, but most likely in one of his “scenarios” like the three much different disaster scenarios he proposed in his 1968 book Population Bomb. So I asked Goddard for a reference (pollution and economic scarcity, disease, and food shortages, were the three apocalyptic horsemen Ehrlich wrote about then).
It didn’t occur to me that the quote attributed to Ehrlich was wholly fictitious, but in more than a week of searching, neither Goddard nor Maurizio Moribito commenting at Goddard’s site can find anything even close to what Williams claimed. I’ve pored through my old copy of Population Bomb, and it’s not there that I can find, not without a much more thorough reading I don’t have time for right now. (My copy of Ehrlich’s Population, Resources and Environment is buried somewhere here in my bookshelves — that was the textbook Ehrlich wrote, a book used in a population and ecology course I took in the Biology Department at the University of Utah way back when. It’s also a favorite book for conservatives to quote mine, wringing fantastic mischaracterizations from the early edition or a later one where Ehrlich and his wife were joined by John Holdren, now an adviser to President Obama.)
Dear Readers, help me out: Did Ehrlich say anything like what Williams via Goddard claims he said, or did Williams pluck this smear from a some unlighted private library? Was Williams just playing fast and loose with the truth (again)?
Did Ehrlich ever “predict” 65 million deaths from starvation in America in the 1980s? Can anyone source the quote?
More, strings to follow:
- Court in India questions why starvation deaths are allowed to occur
- In Arabia, Sir Bob Geldof warns of food wars and starvation deaths if food distribution problems are not fixed (1 billion suffering chronic hunger in 2010)
- North Korea to blame for North Korean food shortages
- Arusha region of Tanzania suffering food shortages
- U.S. lifted trade sanctions on Sudanese bank
- Economist: Only 10 million children under 5 starved to death in 2006
- Malnutrition deaths to elderly in the U.S.
Even more stuff on the topic:
- Seed magazine interview of and story about Ehrlich, August 4, 2009
- Nearly-rational discussion of Population Bomb at Primate Diaries, the blog; note especially the discussion of “nuclear winter,” a discussion that “global warming skeptics” frequently quote mine and misappropriate odd quotes from.
- Notes on Ehrlich’s bet with Julian Simon, and why it cannot be analogized to global warming — at Economix, a New York Times blog
- New York Times review of the Ehrlichs’ 1990 book The Population Explosion; according to the review, the answer to over-immigration from Mexico is to beef up Mexico’s economy so the economic drivers of emigration from Mexico are reduced. This is the opposite of what commenters at Goddards blog claim.
60 Comments | Accuracy, Economics, Environmental protection, Political Smear, Politics | Tagged: Accuracy, Economics, Environmental protection, Food Shortages, Paul Ehrlich, Political Smear, Politics, predictions, Resource Scarcity, Starvation, Steve Goddard, Walter Williams | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Walt Kelly: “met the enemy, and he is us”
April 23, 2011
Walt Kelly's Pogo daily cartoon strip, from Earth Day 1971
Walt Kelly’s little cartoon possum Pogo turned out to have been a sage observer, and adviser, for much of the 20th century. This classic cartoon, on the second Earth Day, in 1971, well summarizes the problems of pollution, making historical allusion to that famous message from Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry after the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
It is a mark of what the internet lacks that I could find just one quick copy of this cartoon on my first search. All of Kelly’s work should be available, but it’s largely missing from internet searches. I’m sure this is still under copyright, but I haven’t yet found the information.
_____________
Oh, of course: The line is too good to have been used just once. Kelly used the idea for the quote in the forward to a book in the 1950s, and used it on a poster for the first Earth Day. The famous comic strip followed in 1971.
1 Comment | Cartoons, Environmental protection, History, War of 1812 | Tagged: Cartoons, Earth Day, Environmental protection, History, Oliver H. Perry, Pogo, Walt Kelly, War of 1812 | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Pareidolia? No, there’s no link between Earth Day and Lenin
April 23, 2011This is mostly an encore post — sad that it needs repeating.
You could write it off to pareidolia, once. Like faces in clouds, some people claimed to see a link. The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, coincided with Lenin’s birthday. There was no link — Earth Day was scheduled for a spring Wednesday. Now, years later, with almost-annual repeats of the claim from the braying right wing, it’s just a cruel hoax.
No, there’s no link between Earth Day and the birthday of V. I. Lenin:
One surefire way to tell an Earth Day post is done by an Earth Day denialist: They’ll note that the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was an anniversary of the birth of Lenin.
Coincidentally, yes, Lenin was born on April 22 (new style calendar; it was April 10 on the calendar when he was born — but that’s a digression for another day).
It’s a hoax. There is no meaning to the first Earth Day’s falling on Lenin’s birthday — Lenin was not prescient enough to plan his birthday to fall in the middle of Earth Week, a hundred years before Earth Week was even planned.
My guess is that only a few really wacko conservatives know that April 22 is Lenin’s birthday (was it ever celebrated in the Soviet Union?). No one else bothers to think about it, or say anything about it, nor especially, to celebrate it.
Inventor of Earth Day teach-ins, former Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson
Wisconsin’s U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, usually recognized as the founder and father of Earth Day, told how and why the organizers came to pick April 22:
Senator Nelson chose the date in order to maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an “environmental teach-in.” He determined the week of April 19–25 was the best bet; it did not fall during exams or spring breaks, did not conflict with religious holidays such as Easter or Passover, and was late enough in spring to have decent weather. More students were likely to be in class, and there would be less competition with other mid-week events—so he chose Wednesday, April 22.
In his own words, Nelson spoke of what he was trying to do:
After President Kennedy’s [conservation] tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called “teach-ins,” had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me – why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?
I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.
At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air – and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.
Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:
“Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’…coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned….”
Nelson, a veteran of the U.S. armed services (Okinawa campaign), flag-waving ex-governor of Wisconsin (Sen. Joe McCarthy’s home state, but also the home of Aldo Leopold and birthplace of John Muir), was working to raise America’s consciousness and conscience about environmental issues.
Lenin on the environment? Think of the Aral Sea disaster, the horrible pollution from Soviet mines and mills, and the dreadful record of the Soviet Union on protecting any resource. Lenin believed in exploiting resources, not conservation.
So, why are all these conservative denialists claiming, against history and politics, that Lenin’s birthday has anything to do with Earth Day?
Can you say “propaganda?”
Good information from 2011:
- Interview with Kathleen Rogers of Earthday Networks, Washingtonian’s Capital Blog
- “The Best Earth Day Investments,” from Reuters Blogs
- Natural Resources Defense Council says it’s time to act
- Time Magazine blog: Earth Day Network’s launch of the Billion Acts of Green campaign
- Brookings Institution calls for green schools in the U.S.
Good information from 2010:
- National Geographic Society, “Earth Day at 40 – How It Began, Where It’s Going“
- Calgary Herald
- ABC News (North America, not Australia)
- Bill McKibben in the Washington Post, notes that the environment, and Earth’s people, are losing the environmental fight
- Earth Day reading from The Baltimore Sun
- USA Today worries that Earth Day has run too far in the opposite direction from Lenin, too corporate
- Washington Post on Earth Day activities in 2010
- EPA on Earth Day
Wall of Lenin’s Birthday Propaganda Shame from 2011:
- The formerly respectable Human Events pushes the hoax, still
- RightSide News hoaxes its readers
- The New American pushes the hoax, and slams children singin. Go figure.
- Steven Hayward went haywire at Powerline; keep your fingers out of the sockets, guys!
- Canada Free Press engages wholly in fiction
- The Orange County (California) Register, of course — Agnew-land
Wall of Lenin’s Birthday Propaganda Shame from 2010:
- David Zeimer, writing in The Wisconsin Law Journal (This guy is particularly nutty. He notes the successes of cleaning up the air and water in and around Milwaukee, and then claims that clean air and water are false goals. Nuts.)
- Orange County Register comments (of course)
- Inaptly named (propaganda doublespeak?) American Thinker (Sussman runs with an odd crowd; and why does his friend always shout “Lenin’s birthday!” at Sussman’s speeches? Who needs a friend like that?)
- One of the ways you know Earth Day is innocently timed is that the FBI investigated it; in 1970, the FBI investigated hippies, but not organized crime. Go figure.
- Capitalism Magazine announces they have fired all of their fact checkers
- Front Page pushes the Lenin hoax
- Careful Thought blog abandons its name
- Tarpon’s Swamp just scrambles history and current issues inexplicably
- Don Surber may be as nutty as Zeimer, above — he notes words of concern from 1970, then dismisses the progress that resulted because people worked to change things; clean air is bad, to him, I guess
- Free Republic, never concerned with clashing facts, or facts at all, gets things exactly wrong
- Lubos Motl, a man not known for getting any facts straight, joins in the hoax at the Reference Frame (and don’t pretend Motl doesn’t know it’s a hoax)
- Making the case that economics should be left to professionals, the Amateur Economist pulls out a laundry list of hoaxes
Warn people not to be sucked in by the hoax:
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Environmental protection, History, Hoaxes, Politics | Tagged: April 22, Earth Day, Environmental protection, Gaylord Nelson, Hoaxes, Pareidolia, Politics, V. I. Lenin | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Canada? It’s in North America? What?
March 27, 2011And in other news that didn’t make most U.S. local newspapers today, the government of Canada fell yesterday.
"The Conservative government in Canada was toppled on Friday after a vote of no-confidence passed in the parliament by 156 to 145." Cartoon at Politically Illustrated by Cam Cardow
You know: Canada. That nation north of North Dakota, the one that keeps Alaska stuck to the North American Continent. Remember? It’s got about 20% of the world’s fresh water. Those guys who helped us whip Hitler on D-Day.
Oh, c’mon. Google the place, will you? It’s the nation where, when you go there, ‘those bastards with the drug problem south of the border’ is the United States.
No, no, it’s probably not important. We buy a lot of our oil from Canada. Canada is our biggest trading partner. They buy a lot of the goods that we still produce here.
And the conservative government there, under a parliamentary system that kids in the U.S. are never tested on in Texas, lost a vote of confidence Friday, in Ottawa.
Ottawa? It’s the capital of Canada. No, Montreal isn’t even the capital of Quebec.
Oh, come on! Quebec. Quebec! It’s the province of Canada with all the French speakers. Yeah, Quebec City is the capital of Quebec.
Ottawa’s in Ontario. No, Ottawa is the capital of the whole nation, Canada. Ontario’s capital is Toronto.
Lone Ranger? No, Toronto has nothing to do with the Lone Ranger. It’s the biggest city in Canada.
Anyway, to get back to the topic, Canada’s government failed. Conservatives lost a vote because of ethics issues.
Ethics issues, conservatives. No news there. No wonder it wasn’t covered better.
Elections in May. You’d know this, if you read the blogs of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
As if anyone cared.
Hey, get this: Ontario alone has more than 250,000 lakes, natural lakes. In a good, very wet year, Texas has two, maybe three natural lakes.
You could look it up.
No, NATO won’t intervene. Canada is part of NATO.
More seriously:
Energy- and environment-interested people should take note. Canada is our largest source of imported oil at about 2 million barrels a day — more than Mexico and Saudi Arabia imports combined — and we share two ocean coasts with the nation. See what Susan Casey-Lefkowitz said at her blog:
Hopefully, whoever takes over next in Canada will be a bigger proponent of clean energy and fighting climate change than the Harper government has been. The Harper government has been a vocal proponent of tar sands oil expansion – pushing this dirty fuel in the United States and in Europe. In fact, the Harper government has been instrumental in undermining clean energy efforts at home and abroad all to promote the tar sands oil industry. A fresh approach in Canada gives the country a chance to get back to its green roots and to listen to its provincial governments such as Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia who have been developing innovative ways to promote clean energy and fight climate change. A fresh approach also provides an opportunity to lessen Canada’s dependence on the oil and gas sector and its heavy control over the Canadian dollar leading many to fear “Dutch disease.”
Clean energy and fighting climate change are critical issues now and in the coming decades. Hopefully, Canada can step forward as a leader on both in the future.
We can overlook the abuse of the word “hopefully” to extract important information, I think. Did your local paper cover this story today?
More, resources:
- MSNBC carried an AP story, “Canadian election campaign kicks off”
- Voice of America: “Harper no-confidence vote topples Canada government”: “In calling for the no-confidence vote, the opposition parties alleged that Mr. Harper was in contempt of parliament for failure to fully disclose financial details of his anti-crime legislation, corporate tax cuts and plans to buy 65 American-made stealth fighter jets.”
- Wall Street Journal reports the Canadian dollar weaker as a result (they call their dollar “the loonie”)
- CBC: “Leaders cross country to woo voters”
- Toronto Star: “Persichilli: Layton and Harper miss the bus”
9 Comments | Canada, Elections, Energy, Environmental protection, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Government, Oil | Tagged: Canada, Elections, geography, Government, Oil, Parliamentary Systems, Politics, Stephen Harper | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 