Daniel J. Weiss’ article for ThinkProgress.org “States That Get The Most Disaster Aid have Sent Dozens of Climate Deniers To Congress” provides alarming statistics about the danger and costs of Global Warming.
Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress (CAP). CAP is a progress think tank, whose logo reads “Progressive Ideas For A Strong, Just, and Free America.” So, on one level, we have a pretty good understanding of the organizations political vision, but Weiss is letting the statistics do his talking.
We, here at OccupyDemocrats.com, do not avoid political controversy, so I thought I would take a more direct approach to the political implications of Weiss’ article.
“The federal government spent nearly $62 billion for disaster relief in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress. And these federal funds only cover a portion of the price tag exacted by extreme weather; private insurance and individuals harmed by the events also spent billions of dollars.”
“In these two years alone, there were 25 severe storms, floods, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires that each caused more than $1 billion in economic damages, with a total price tag of $188 billion.”
Weiss tells us that of the ten states that received the most federal recovery money, “to cope with climate-linked extreme weather have federal legislators who are climate-science deniers…elected 47 climate deniers to the Senate and House.” What he doesn’t say is that of these 10 states, the only blue state is Illinois, and it has a Republican Senator Mark Kirk, who is a climate denier. Interestingly, nearly two-thirds of the senators from these top 10 recipient states voted against granting federal emergency aid to New Jersey and New York after Superstorm Sandy. Coincidently, nearly two-thirds of senators 14 out of 20 are Republicans, most of whom are climate change deniers. It should be mentioned that when Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast last year Bloomberg Businessweek declared “It’s global warming, stupid“, which undoubtedly influenced the direction of Republican votes.
Some Republicans may be getting the message. It seems they are slowly starting to recognize that there may be a danger here, since 97% of climate scientists are in agreement that anthropogenic (man-made) climate change is a concern. Of course there are also Republican science deniers, but Steve Benen writing for MaddowBlog, comments that Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) “realizes that conservatives tend to be at odds with the reality-based community when it comes to climate science, but he nevertheless hopes the latter will be “tolerant” of the former. During a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on climate science, Wicker commented: “At the very least, I think it’s time for some tolerance in the public discourse regarding the many scientific viewpoints on climate change. Respect should be shown to those who have done the research and come to a different conclusion.”
Tolerance and respect asks Mr. Wicker, while; “more than one-third of the continental United States is suffering from severe, extreme, or exceptional drought as of August 27; the drought has shrunk available Colorado River water for cities dependent on it.”
Tolerance and respect asks Mr. Wicker, while; “the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation—the agency charged with managing water in the West—announced Friday [August 16] that it would cut the amount of water released next year by Lake Powell in Arizona by 750,000 acre-feet, enough to supply about 1.5 million homes.”
Tolerance and respect asks Mr. Wicker, while; “nationwide, nearly 35,000 wildfires have burned 3.9 million acres of land as of September 4, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. This includes the ongoing Rim fire in California, which has already burned an area the size of Chicago in and around Yosemite National Park.”
Tolerance and respect asks Mr. Wicker, while; the U.S. Forest Service, which receives 70 percent of federal fire-protection funding, has depleted its budget for wildfire response, forcing the agency to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from other programs to fight ongoing fires.
Tolerance and respect asks Mr. Wicker, while; “funding shortage exacerbated by the automatic across-the-board sequester budget cuts shrunk firefighting funds by five percent, forcing cuts of 500 firefighters and 50 engines.” Obviously, the Right will blame the President because sequester was his idea.
I have written recently that I believe that one of the major reasons Global Warming has become a political hot potato is that we no longer speak the same language: “Positions on significant problems become very polarizing when you cannot agree on common vocabulary by which to discuss them. This issue of Climate Change is not an intractable philosophical problem. However, when the parties to a scientific concern with the weight of Global Climate Change dig in, their positions become intractable and it makes intelligent rational decisions about our social, political, and economic interests impossible—but the danger does not go away.”
It is instructive to look at a couple of the reader’s comments at the end of Weiss’ article (all Right leaning folks).
An outright climate change denier believes that anthropogenic climate change is just not possible, and offers a metaphysical denial supported by misplaced scientific reasoning: “Are you people that naive enough to think we can literally influence the weather and stop mother nature from doing what she does. Over the last 15 years there has been no warming to speak of, it stopped even though Carbon output has went up. The arctic ice cap has grown 60% over the last year.”
Sounds as if he listens to Rush Limbaugh who recently claimed on his radio show that there are metaphysical forces in control that humans cannot impact. As to the second part of this comment, I do not know if the Arctic cap has grown 60% over that last year, I guess I can look it up, but the issue for science is not that the icecap grows in Winter, but rather climate change scientists are concerned with how much it melts in warmer weather, causing rise in the oceans.
In another comment there is some obfuscated political nonsense: “There are, in fact, as many reasons to anticipate a period of global cooling as to forecast continued warming; the latter regrettably has become a platform for further increased gov’t command and control in the economy.”
Obviously, the Right’s obsessive belief that the goal of the Obama Administration is to take away ‘freedom’ and control the economy, but taken to the next level you get: ”Climate denier? What’s that supposed to mean? Nobody denies climate. Many sensible people reject the profit-driven ‘climate change’ hoax pushed by Warmers, tree-huggers, & snake-oil salesmen like Gore, Redford, & McKibben.”
This argument is more Republican obstructionist rhetoric, and hatred for anything perceived to be Progressive or from President Obama. Since when is the Right critical of the profit driven motive? When, of course, the President, tree huggers, and/or people like Al Gore are the source of ideas.
One commentator must have heard Mr. Wicker’s comments: “Why can’t we monitor this a few more years – why do we have to do something now?” Now, we don’t want to sway this person by the ‘fact’ that Climate Change has been a political football for 40 years or more, and that a near consensus of climate scientists (97%) presently think we have a problem.
Of course, comments on websites lure crazies from all over, but dangerously, this nonsense from the Right comes from the leaders of their party and the people they elect to represent them.
Tolerance is not an operative word, its passive. We are not talking about a benign philosophical discussion, late one night, between a couple of undergraduates. Global Warming poses a real and great threat to our planet. Naturally occurring weather events, exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change are leading to more frequent disasters that are more costly than ever – $188 billion in 2011 and 2012. “This past June was the fifth-hottest month on record, and the first six months of 2013 were the “seventh warmest such period on record,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As of September 4, there were 44 presidential disaster declarations in 2013 due to climate-related extreme weather events. AON Benfield, a reinsurance company, estimates that extreme weather caused at least $32 billion in economic damages in the United States during the first half of 2013.”
Mr. Wicker is starting to believe there is a common language by which we can approach the problem of Global Warming, but: At what point Mr. Wicker does the urgency set in and enable us to stop tolerating the ‘misinformed’, and do something?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments now Powered by Disqus