William K. Wolfrum

You know in the movie “Happy Feet” how the plucky penguin survives and manages to save the whole species? Well, here in the real world we drown penguins in oil as we rapidly work to kill them all off because the little buggers are just getting in the way of progress.

Hundreds of Oil-Covered Penguins Surface in South America

Hundreds of oil-covered Magellanic penguins have surfaced off the Atlantic coast of South America in the past few weeks, according to an animal welfare organization.

Magellanic penguins are medium-sized South American penguins. The species is classified as “near threatened” because of its vulnerability to oil spills, which kill tens of thousands of the animals yearly off the coast of Argentina.

Oil spills harm numerous types of marine life, including seabirds. Oil interferes with their waterproofing abilities. This forces penguins, which are birds, out of the frigid waters in a state of hypothermia, leading to dehydration and sometimes starvation.

A continuous stream of oil from spills has created a chronic problem across South American waters and other parts of the world, said Rodolfo Silva of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, one of the agencies helping to treat the penguins.

This week, 36 Magellanic penguins were being treated at the Society for the Conservation of Biodiversity in Maldonado (SOCOBIOMA) center in Uruguay, where more than 40 of the penguins surfaced.

“After being stabilized and fed, the washing process is in full motion right now, and we expect to be able to release them back to the ocean in about 15 days or so,” said Lourdes Casas of SOCOBIOMA.

–WKW

It is one thing to feel saddened by humanity’s lack of foresight when it comes to Global Warming. But when leaders ignore basic history in order to profit is when you start to realize that the term “blood money” no longer carries with it much stigma.

To wit: The Republican-led Galveston City Council will agree to allow a development which will sever the area’s sea wall, which was created more than 100 years ago following the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, in terms of lives lost.

Basically, the Council commissioned geologists to study the effect of the development on the area, then after not liking what the geologists had to say, ignored the report and will proceed anyway.

Critics: Galveston development goes against logic

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Shockingly, those intrepid reporters at the National Review - who only care about science, not ideology — seem to have missed this one.

19 mins, -1.8C: the first swim at the North Pole

Clad only in his Speedo trunks, cap and goggles as required by the rules of the Channel Swimming Association – which also forbid any buoyancy aids, swimming caps that offer any thermal protection or trunks cut above crotch level – Mr Pugh spent just under 19 agonising minutes in the melted sea ice navigating a path in a crack between broken floes.

The feat would not have been possible ten years ago, when the water was entirely frozen over, even in summer. …

Scientists predict that by 2040 the Arctic could be virtually free of ice in summer. Mr Pugh said yesterday that his achievement was a bittersweet victory. “It’s a triumph and a tragedy – a triumph that I could swim in such ferocious conditions, but a tragedy that it is now possible to swim at the North Pole.”

Don’t worry, though, I’m sure NRO can somehow spin this into a way to make Al Gore and Live Earth look bad. It’s what they do. At least when they are not cowering fearfully from Middle Eastern countries, tearfully begging their leader to drop more and bigger bombs on any ME nation not named Saudi Arabia.

–WKW

Attention Global Warming deniers: Please cease at once your claim that the sun is to blame for Global Warming.

‘Sun not responsible for climate change’

The strongest evidence to date that the sun is not responsible for recent global warming has been set out by scientists.

The new study by Prof Michael Lockwood of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxfordshire, and Claus Fröhlich of the World Radiation Center in Davos, Switzerland, overturns claims by climate sceptics who say that the planet’s climate has long fluctuated and that current warming is just part of that natural cycle - the result of variation in the sun’s output and not greenhouse gas emissions. Their study appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

The study found that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays.

Some researchers had also suggested that the latter might influence global warming because the rays trigger cloud formation.

Prof Lockwood said that the comprehensive study was a response to misleading media reports. He cited ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, a television programme shown in March by Channel 4, as a prime example.

So please, kill that talking point. This means you, and you, and Jim Inhofe, and Fox News, and “Planet Gore” and … well, you know who you are.

And don’t worry, you’ll find plenty of other ways to try and destroy science. Your leaders work at killing it every day, it seems.

–WKW

Fox News, like the National Review and countless other right-wing outlets, have proven time and time and time again that ideology trumps all, even facts. Whether you’re speaking of war, health care or the environment, the good Bushie will always do or say whatever it takes to make sure their ideology looks good, truth be damned.

Here’s a video from Robert Greenwald (”Outfoxed”) showing you what so many Fox News viewers fervently believe - that Global Warming is a big hoax:

Get involved: The Sierra Club has a petition to sign asking Home Depot to stop advertising on FOX News

And while you’re at it, take Teh Portly Dyke’s 30-Day Angst-Loss Challenge.

(Update: And now it’s back on. But my point remains)

Having seen a couple stories from folks complaining about the Live Earth Concert in Brazil being canceled, I figured, as someone who lives here, I’d make a couple simple points.

“Who knows what pressure the government is getting from global warming deniers to cancel this concert, so help us give them the support to change their minds and hold it instead,” wrote Carolyn Kay of Makethemaccountable.com.

While I truly believe Kay’s heart is in the right place, her common sense just isn’t. Currently, Brazilian police in Rio are busy trying to keep the city from completely exploding in violence.

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As surprising as it will likely seem, I, in fact, don’t know everything about global warming. Of course, I couldn’t tell you how a fax machine works, either, but I also believe in their existence.

So on occasion when people give me goofball alternative ideas to global warming, I’m not intellectually equipped to give the solid, conversation-ending rebuke I so desire. So I’m forced with calling them a “moron” which is in its own way satisfying, but generally regarded as not intellectual.

Luckily for me, New Scientist Environment has come through with everything I need to know with “Climate change: A guide for the perplexed”.

“With so much at stake, it is right that climate science is subjected to the most intense scrutiny. What does not help is for the real issues to be muddied by discredited arguments or wild theories,” writes Michael Le Page, who impressively put it all together. “So for those who are not sure what to believe, here is our round-up of the 26 most common climate myths and misconceptions.”

Here are a couple to get you started:

“They predicted global cooling in the 1970s”

Yes they did. But it was a highly debated position in the science community and eventually the main proponent of the concept of global cooling admitted he wasn’t sure what the future would bring.

The calls for action to prevent further human-induced global warming, by contrast, are based on an enormous body of research by thousands of scientists over more than a century that has been subjected to intense – and sometimes ferocious – scrutiny. According to the latest IPCC report, it is more than 90% certain that the world is already warming as a result of human activity.

“Many leading scientists question climate change”

No. They don’t. They just don’t. The most you’ll get is disagreement of the future consequences of global warming. There’s just too much evidence, and the “scientists” you do see coming out against it generally have an agenda.

Climate change skeptics sometimes claim that many leading scientists question climate change. Well, it all depends on what you mean by “many” and “leading”. For instance, in April 2006, 60 “leading scientists” signed a letter urging Canada’s new prime minister to review his country’s commitment to the Kyoto protocol.

This appears to be the biggest recent list of skeptics. Yet many, if not most, of the 60 signatories are not actively engaged in studying climate change: some are not scientists at all and at least 15 are retired.

Compare that with the dozens of statements on climate change from various scientific organisations around the world representing tens of thousands of scientists, the consensus position represented by the IPCC reports and the 11,000 signatories to a petition condemning the Bush.

Check out New Scientist’s entire list of 26 climate myths. It’s great reading and will give you some valuable information when faced with those who will tritely try and use mythical reasoning to debunk climate change. Then afterward, ask them how a fax machine works, just for the heck of it.

–WKW

Crossposted at Shakesville

National Public Radio’s “Intelligence Squared U.S.” started in October and has been an interesting series of Oxford-style debates covering topics ranging from “Debating a Nuclear Iran” and “Hamas: Government or Terrorist Organization?” to “Is America Too Damn Religious?”

The series features a wide variety of noteworthy and often eclectic debaters - three to a side on each issue - and is held in front of an audience. Each member has opening and closing statements, along with time to debate each other, as well as answer questions from the audience. The audience is polled before and after the debate in order to determine a “winner.”

On March 22, a group gathered together to debate the question: “Global Warming Is Not a Crisis” and judging by the results, it is quite obvious that in the ultimate debate over Global Warming, we’ll all likely be losers.

Author Michael Crichton, MIT professor Richard S. Lindzen and University of London professor Philip Stott were for the motion “Global Warming is not a crisis,” while Climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel, climate modeler Gavin Schmidt and Scripps Institution of Oceanography Richard C.J. Somerville were against the motion.

Prior to the debate, the audience’s opinion was thus: 30 percent agreed with the motion, with 57 percent against and 13 percent undecided. How those numbers changed by the end of the debate shows how the debate over Global Warming has been framed, as well as the overwhelming amount of work over convincing the public at large that Global Warming is a serious issue, and that changes need to be made.

Schmidt’s opening statement shined a light on the unholy relationship between science and politics.

“Particularly when scientific results are perceived to have economic or moral implications, it’s common for political debates to get shifted into the scientific arena. It makes the political argument seem much more scientific, and therefore logical. But since the basic disagreement is still political, this is a disaster for any kind of action.

Let me give you a few examples of how that works - creationists have argued that the eye is too complex to have evolved. Not because they care about the evolution of eyes, but because hey see the implications of evolution as somehow damaging to their world view. If you demonstrate the evolution of eyes, their world view won’t change, they’ll just move on to something else.

Another example, when CFCs from aerosol cans and air conditioners were found to be depleting the ozone layer, the CEO of DuPont, the main manufacturer, argued that because CFCs were heavier than air, they couldn’t possibly get up to the ozone layer, so there was no need to regulate them. That was pure fantasy, but it sounded scientific. …

… These arguments are examples of pseudo-debates - scientific-sounding viewpoints that are designed not to fool the experts, but to sew confusion and doubt in the mind of the lay public. This is a deliberate strategy, and you’re hearing it tonight.”

As the debate progressed, an audience member asked a question, framing it in such a way as to show that this deliberate strategy of the politically motivated has been a resounding success.

“My name is Heather Higgins, I’m not a scientist, so pardon my ignorance when I hear ‘the scientific establishment believes in something’ I immediately think of flat-earth consensus, and the fact that there’s no geography that should be admitted as science, and that women are all hysterics not to be bled. So that assurance that the scientific community believes something does not take me very far.”

Crichton, who literally spent the majority of his speaking time arguing that the world needs to help those in poverty instead of battling Global Warming, was the last to give a closing statement on the issue.

“There is a time when I worked in a clinic and one day a young woman came in. She was in her early 20s and in for a routine checkup, I said ‘what’s going on with you?’ and she said ‘I’ve just become blind,’ and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, when did this happen?” and she said “just coming to the clinic, just walking up the steps to the clinic, I became blind.’ And I said ‘oh’ and by now I’m looking through the chart and I said ‘well, has this happened before?’ and she said ‘yes, it’s happened before, I’ve become blind in the past.’

What she had, of course, was hysterical blindness, and the characteristic of that is that the severity of the symptom is not matched by the emotional response that’s being presented. Most people would be screaming about that, but she was very calm, ‘oh yes, I’m blind again.’ And I’m reminded of that whenever I hear whether you want to call it a crisis or not, a significant global event of importance where we’re going to have species loss and so on and so forth, but that we can address this by changing our light bulbs. Or that we can really make an impact by unplugging our appliances or not using them.

It’s very much out of whack. And so if we’re going to only do symbolic actions, I would like to suggest a few symbolic actions that might really mean something. One of them is very simple, 99 percent of the American population doesn’t care, is to ban private jets. Nobody needs to fly in them, ban them now (applause). And in addition, let’s have the NIDC, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members cannot fly on private jets, they must take their houses off the grid, they must live in a way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously?”(applause)

The truly disturbing part of it all? Upon polling the audience following the debate, here is how the numbers changed: 46 percent agreed with the motion, with 42 percent opposed and 12 percent undecided.

So while we are bemused at the audience member’s extremist lack of trust of scientists, and while we scoff at Crichton’s rambling non-sequiturs, keep in mind one vital thing that this meeting of the minds taught us - they are winning this debate. And if the public can be so easily swayed on whether or not Global Warming is actually a problem by a barrage of logical fallacies, then what hope is there to actually slow it down or stop it?

Click here to listen to the debate in full.

crossposted at Shakesville

–WKW