Mike the Mad Biologist

Maybe if the Obama administration and the Blue Dog (corporate) Democrats fought for an economic policy that made the middle-class’ lives better, we wouldn’t be faced with the looming political failure to deal with environmental problems. From Politico:

Most House Republicans envision killing Nancy Pelosi’s special global warming committee if they claw their way back into the majority this November.

Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner wants to keep the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming alive so it can investigate climate science and police President Barack Obama’s green policies.

The 16-term congressman said he’s well-positioned to take on that leadership role, touting credentials as a former chairman of the Judiciary and Science and Technology committees, where he pried information out of the Clinton administration without ever signing a subpoena….

Sensenbrenner, a skeptic on the science connecting man-made carbon dioxide emissions to global warming, predicted in December 2008 that Democrats would lose the House if they pursued cap and trade. But he does employ a top-tier environmental staffer in Harlan Watson, George W. Bush’s former top climate negotiator. He also has options: He could attempt to reclaim the science committee gavel for two more years, for example.

It’s not entirely clear what this committee did, but using it to stall and hinder any initiatives to improve the environment is obscene. What the Administration never understood is that, if you’re not on offense, you’re on defense. They should have been attacking the Republicans on everything, non-stop. Because they didn’t, the rest of us are now suffering from post-partisan depression.

In 2009, we had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix so many outstanding problems. Instead, if the Democrats lose the House, the greatest environmental problem of our generation will essentially be ignored.

Again.

Comments

#1 darwinsdog
October 8, 2010

The Democrats have essentially ignored the problem for the past two years. So what difference will it make if the Republicans take control of the HoR? Both parties serve the status quo.
#2 klem
October 8, 2010

If the science is good, there is nothing to worry about. But we all know organizations have been fudging the data. Just Google Kiwigate for example.
#3 D. C. Sessions
October 8, 2010

I don’t think y’all are reading carefully. Once the POG gets control of the House, the Committee will “investigate climate science.” To understand this phrase, recall two things:

1) The neverending committee hearings that the POG used against the Clinton Administration. Since then they’ve learned that there’s no virtue in moderation.
2) Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli’s series of “investigations” into climate research by Michael Mann.

In other words, a humongous witch hunt. With luck, they’ll be able to put the Fear of GOP into anyone who even so much as took a class in climatology so that even if they lose control of the government again nobody will risk it.

And, yes, I’m specifically recalling the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.
#4 thingsbreak
October 8, 2010

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/10/wegman-plagiarism-investigation-/1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/05/AR2010100504908.html

Because things were so kosher the last time(s) the GOP “investigated” climate science.
#5 dean
October 8, 2010

But we all know organizations have been fudging the data.

Assertions can’t be more false than that one.
#6 Meme Mine
October 8, 2010

Scientists not only polluted the planet with their chemicals they developed, they produced cruise missiles, toxic chemicals, land mine technology, nuclear weapons, germ warfare, strip mining technology, deep sea drilling technology and now climate change. Consensus is an empty word because climate change isn’t observable by us because it’s a prediction, not a visible war we all would have been suffering together with, after 24 years of predictions. So when this prediction can’t be proved or disproved, saying just about anything is a free pass. Climatologists are to science what alter boy abusing priests are to the Catholic church. Voters have the real consensus. Not these a s s kissing mainscream media lab coat consultants they called saintly “scientists”.
#7 Gray Gaffer
October 8, 2010

Gee, only 6 comments so far and two of them already from ignorant trolls. And one not troll but a little mis-informed:

@1: What difference? Plenty. We have about 20 years to irreversible tipping point (maybe less – many predicted effects are already in progress ahead of their prediction – coral reefs, Arctic ice coverage, glacier retreat, …). The most optimistic estimates I’ve seen about mitigation require a good ten years of Manhatten-Project-level of global dedication to develop the necessary alternative technologies and another ten to put them into effective use. That means starting yesterday. So if the status quo continues we are screwed. Earth of course will be fine, but our civilization will not.

@2: I think you need more detail than @5′s comment. There was one single event of illegally stolen confidential emails from one location. One – one mind you – of those emails was deemed doubtful enough to warrant official investigation, and was found to contain maybe a slightly anti-social, perhaps even unprofessional, outburst of frustration. That was it. As usual, the witch hunters you agree with did not bother to take note of the outcome. No data was fudged, nobody was intimidated, no papers were denied rightful publication, none of that was true.

@6: I think you should sue your parents and your schools for terminally defective education. And if that is really what you think, what are you doing touching a computer – the product of that same science? In fact, unless you live on an Amish community farm, I cannot think of one single aspect of life, however trivial, that is not the product of recent scientific endeavor in today’s civilization. Note that this has not come about by guesswork. And all of it was funded by business and/or political interests. Scientists are lousy at business, by and large, and often have no idea of the common utility of their results. Similarly, GW is not a guess, it is observed fact, and the known anthropic contribution to greenhouse gases is computably consistent with observed and independently measured changes.
#8 Weel
October 9, 2010

What I have really been wondering about, oh for the past lifetime or so, is how the 99% can get their ass kicked by the wealthiest 1%, in a system where the will of the people is purportedly represented, and nobody changes that for generation on end.

I’ve been subscribing to Julian Assange’s (wikileaks) “Governance by conspiracy” stuff recently, but this is not an organized conspiracy. It just springs up naturally as a result of the wealthy exerting more than their fair share of influence (including over the stupid) at every turn, especially when no one is watching.
#9 yogi-one
October 9, 2010

@8 Weel -how the 99% can get their ass kicked by the wealthiest 1%,?

The 1% control the money. They can hire more people, get the best lawyers, hire propagandists, twist the media’s arm by putting the squeeze on advertising dollars, schmooze with big shot pols and CEOs, in short, do all the things that the 99% can’t do because they don’t have the money for those things.

And that is what they spend their time doing while the 99% are either looking for a job (er, that would be 20% these days right there), or going to their jobs every day in a never ending battle to stay afloat pay and for the houses they contracted to buy from some sheister banksters (who now freely admit they didn’t know who the hell they were lending money to for home-buying, and didn’t bother even to keep records in a lot of cases), and trying to have some semblance of a family life.

It used to be that it was not seen as profitable to conduct business in a way thet respects the environment. Now that that has been exposed as bullshit, it is simple, ugly ideology that makes them such vicious enemies of anything for the common good. And that ideologically-driven viciousness is what we’re seeing nowadays.

Fortunately for us, the US Military now wants to switch to renewables:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/science/earth/05fossil.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&hp

That means big government pork for huge corporations who can woo the military with renewables.

I think that’s the kind of tectonic plate-shifting we need to see more of. Also people who live in areas that regularly get flooded out, stormed out, hurricaned-out, and dried-out are finally starting to connect the dots. Mayors of big cities are starting to push heavily for renewables and there is a coming push in the architectural sector for revamping old buildings to be more energy-efficient and designing new ones with renewable energy sources envisioned in the building designs.

So there’s hope.

The ideological luddites will be the last to be dragged into the changes, kicking and screaming, but eventually they will be.

The money is not going to be in oil, mountain-top removal, or hummers. They will have to give up on those. And they know it’s coming.

The money-mongers have access to all the same statistics and they have access to hire people who can provide them accurate statistics. Betting wrong on the science will cost them their fortunes and they know it.

They saw what happened to BP. They got the memo.

Just like the US Military, who has gone green not because they want to listen to the hippies, but because they are getting their asses blasted by an enemy who figured out that their addiction to oil was a weak spot. The high-tech superpower army could be crippled by a low-tech old fashioned ambush on some oil tankers.

What we’re seeing now is backpeddling; the old tactic of putting up a screen of bullets while you retrench to a different position for the next phase.

Sun Tzu fully applies: you win by outhinking the enemy. We won’t beat them in the FOX newsroom. We’ll beat them in the deserts of the Middle East with the help of their own military fighting their own dumb wars, and with recruits from the ranks of the up-and-coming generation of mayors and state representatives whose constituents are recovering from climate and/or fossil-fuel industry disasters. They have also seen, in an era when cities are starved for funds, how much difference it makes to cut back on those fossil-fuel expenses.
#10 naturelove
October 11, 2010

it’s good to see science and technology is growing but i think they’re gonna kill us. i hope this war not comes and the world don’t die and all of us leave with peace.

Next
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