Confronting the Climate Disinformation Campaign at Penn State: Video

Here is the video for the free presentation given on April 30, 2012 on Penn State's University Park Campus. Penn State professors Michael Mann, Donald Brown, Janet Swim and Rick Schuhmann, and graduate student Peter Buckland spoke Monday evening at “Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change,” a talk that focused on climate change denial. Mann is director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center and part of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Susannah Barsom, with the university’s Center for Sustainability, moderated the event, which included a question and answer session.

Earthships

There are a lot of thing that some people in the transition community seem to really want. One of them is surely to have a home off the grid, something that doesn't contribute to climate change and is built in a way that is bioregionally appropriate.

Enter the Earthship, a home concept that can be built in any (really?) environment. And it must have gotten somewhere when it's on the Weather Channel. Come on guys, there's a guy who works for the oil and gas industry living in one. Why? Because he understands the planet's systems.

Watch.



But can you retrofit houses in the northeast to be biotecturally in sync?

Higher Education in a Warming World

Last night about 200 people came to Thomas building to hear and see "Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change."  The Centre Daily Times reports today:

Penn State professors Michael Mann, Donald Brown, Janet Swim and Rick Schuhmann, and graduate student Peter Buckland spoke Monday evening at “Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change,” a talk that focused on climate change denial. Mann is director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center and part of the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Susannah Barsom, with the university’s Center for Sustainability, moderated the event, which included a question and answer session.  

See images of the event here or our sister publication, Voices of Central Pennsylvania.

The five speakers walked the audience through the dilemmas climate change, climate change disinformation and various kinds of climate change denial create. In particular,  they addressed why and how universities should do better to confront these issues.

"Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change": Update 4.29.2012

Universities need to take clear stands for meaningful action on climate change.

Climate change is real. It is affecting the lives of people across the globe and it presents all of us – especially the most educated among us – with an incredible dilemma. Skepticism is a real virtue and something most of us should practice. But our dilemma is made awfully difficult by industry-funded, deliberately deceptive, anti-science denialism campaigns that feed fear. This is neither reasonable or virtuous skepticism.

Tomorrow, April 30th at 7:30 pm in room 101 Thomas Building at Penn State’s University Park (map), a group of esteemed Penn State faculty and one graduate student/lecturer will confront the climate change denial machine. Doors open at 7 pm.

Over the last few years, we have been discouraged by the successful of “the merchants of doubt,” a well-organized and well-funded climate change disinformation campaign. The five presenters of “Changing the Moral Climate on Climate Change” believe that as people working at a top-flight research and teaching institution, they have a responsibility to both inform the public about the many aspects of climate change – from social to environmental – and call for better action from universities in democratic society.

They will call on the University to educate civil society about the disinformation campaign and fulfill its educational role in a democratic society. They will explain the so-called “skeptics” campaign and who is behind it, distinguishing between deceitful disinformation from responsible skepticism. They will explore the problems colleges and universities face in a democratic society whose economy runs on fossil fuels. They will also explore relevant psychology findings around climate change. The audience will will learn about a college class that has confronted climate denial directly and learn about the backlash the professor received. Finally, you will hear from Dr. Michael Mann who has been at the epicenter of the international assault on mainstream science.

Presentations come from (pictured top to bottom): Dr. (Juris) Donald Brown from Science, Technology, and Society and former Clinton administration UN representative and blogger at Climate Ethics, Peter Buckland, A.B.D. in Educational Theory and Policy and co-host of Sustainability Now Radio, Dr. Janet Swim from Psychology and chair of the 2009 American Psychological Associations task force on the psychology of climate change, Dr. Rick Schuhmann, an environmental engineer and Director of Penn State’s Engineering Leadership program, and Dr. Michael Mann, director of Penn State’s Earth System Science Center, member of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

Following the presentations, the panelists will answer audience questions.

Sponsors Include:

Penn State Center for Sustainability

Campus Sustainability Office

Rock Ethics Institute

Department of Science, Technology, and Society

Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment Program

Sustainable Agriculture Club

Centre County Democrats

Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future

Elk County C.A.R.E.S.

Juniata Valley Audubon Society

National Wildlife Federation

Pennsylvanians for Clean Air and Water

PennEnvironment

Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium (PERC)

Pennsylvanians for Clean Air and Water

Pennsylvania Interfaith Coalition for the Environment

Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light

Sierra Club Pennsylvania

Sierra Club Moshannon

Sustainability Now Radio

Voices of Central Pennsylvania.

Questions can be sent to Peter Buckland by email: pdb118@psu.edu.

How Should Bob Stop the Train from Hitting that Child and Dog?

Let’s start with a little thought experiment from Peter Singer’s “Singer Solution to World Poverty.”

Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can't stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed —but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents (picture courtesy of Eastern Horizon).

Bob's conduct, most of us will immediately respond, was gravely wrong. Unger agrees. But then he reminds us that we, too, have opportunities to save the lives of children.

Most of us will respond this way. My students often hem and haw on the matter but when confronted with the actual value of children’s lives versus the value of a Bugatti, they acquiesce and agree that Bob should put the Bugatti in front of the train. We can and should sacrifice for the health of others. I can be happy without a Bugatti.

Now complicate the story a lot. Imagine there were two people who came and talked to Bob. One begins carefully and calmly explaining that there is a train coming well before he can see or even hear it. The train will certainly kill the child but it can be stopped if he goes down the rail and throws some switches that will slow the train down and divert it. There is another man dressed to the nines who shows up and says there is nothing to worry about. The kid will be fine. Everything is fine.

Mann Scores a Goal with Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

In his new book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Dr. Michael E. Mann (pic at left from Scientific American) recounts a moment on the Great Wall of China just months before his daughter was born. He wonders about “what sort of world our new child and her generation would inherit.” It will be…No. It already is a world whose land and climate industrial humans have radically changed. The only truly moral response from any father must be to work for a world that mitigates human impacts on the climate so that his daughter and her children and her children’s children can live well and live happily. That means reducing our reliance on fossil fuel and creating new strategies – moral, behavioral, and technological – for living today and living tomorrow.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars is a combination of personal storytelling, reflection, and science education that grants readers a tour of climate science. More importantly it shows us how our political process has been poisoned by shameless and corrupt interests. Reading Mann’s work is to get a sense of what it means to strive for thorough and important work as a “gee whiz” kid. But then we witness the “gee whiz” kid get schooled in the art of power politics and come out having outsmarted his opponents. For now anyway.

In 2009, I read story after story about hackers who’d stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University and then released them. Journalists, eager for the next headline, ripped chunks from the climate change disinformation narrative. Thus was born “Climategate,” a shameful continuation of attacks on climate scientists by ideologues and fossil-fuel-funded institutes. Among the primary targets were "Penn State geosciences professor Dr. Michael Mann, co-winner [with many others] of the Nobel Prize in 2007 for his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the hockey stick" graph.

April 30th: Real Skepticism and Phony Deceit

Eco Cars?

The United States is the home of the automobile. Since Henry Ford pushed the car onto the streets and we were changed from a walking, horse riding, and bicycling people, American life is different from other places. Fast food became what it is because people like Ray Kroc figured out that people in southern California wanted to eat in their cars.

"We the people" spend over 500 hours a year in cars. That has significant health and environmental impacts. If you don't smoke and are otherwise healthy, a long commute in a city could be the most unhealthy thing you do because you are exposed to enormous amounts of air pollution from car and truck exhaust. And the environmental effects of all that fuel combustion is clearly having a large impact. Carbon monoxide, ozone, and particulate matter generate air pollution. In total, 33% of the United States' carbon dioxide emissions come from the transportation and 60% of that comes - roughly 19% of the whole pie - comes from personal automobile use. All that time in the car pushes our waist bands, our lungs, and the planet's climate.

Our second guest today, Penn State student Taylor Kidd, is working to push the automobile's envelope. As part of Penn State's Advanced Vehicle Team, he is competing in the Eco Car 2 competition, an educational competition between 15 teams at colleges and universities across the U.S. sponsored by GM and other companies. The goal is to outfit a Chevy Malibu so that it "reduces fuel consumption, reduces well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions, reduce criteria tailpipe emissions, and maintains consumer acceptability in the areas of performance, utility, and safety."

How do you do that? Kidd is going to talk to us about the competition, his car, and the future of car design.

Call in with questions this afternoon from 4-5 pm: (814) 865-9577. You can also join us on Facebook and Twitter as well.

"If there's a new way..."

Yesterday, Megadeth founder Dave Mustaine more or less endorsed Rick Santorum for president (pic at right courtesy of The Atlantic Wire). As of late, he's said he hasn't "endorsed him" but the effect has been kind of endorsement. I've been a Megadeth fan for years. I know Mustaine has converted to Christianity, something I don't find particularly upsetting, but his endorsement of Santorum was very confusing. So I wrote him a letter (also posted to their Facebook page that they have since removed).

So what's the rub? Megadeth's songs include some of the best metal criticisms of political corruption and complicated human-induced environmental problems. Selecting Rock Santorum is more than a little bit confusing. I admit that selecting any major party politician today faces us with with some big problems. But on the environmental front, Santorum has been a major part of what Chris Mooney named "the Republican war on science." It's really too bad.

Their most famous song, "Peace Sells...But Who's Buyin'" says,

If there's a new way
I'll be the first in line
But it better work this time

[...] What do you mean I couldn't be the president of the United States of America? It's still 'We the people' right?

Right or RIGHT? As someone who has worked on sustainability issues now for several years, I can't get how it is going to work this time, especi

Here's my letter...type-o's and all:

Dave,

I can respect your views and find them confusing. It’s too bad you removed my comment. There’s a bigger point here that several people are talking about. We are frankly confused how one of the most seemingly environmentally aware and politically intelligent people we have looked up to can even entertain the idea of voting for Rick Santorum. Well…we might be able to understand it but we don’t really get it.

Before I go on, I want to say that I don’t mean this to be shouting at you. I’m mostly confused and want an explanation. I guess you don’t have to give me one. I’m just one guy who was once a kid who heard “Holy Wars,” “Hangar 18,” and “Five Magics,” and was totally thrilled. I’ve gone on to write the “Heavy Metal” entry for an encyclopedia coming out in the next year, The Encyclopedia of Music and American Culture. Megadeth certainly earned its place in that entry.

On one hand, I get that you are not the person you were when you wrote most of your albums. You’ve led a very public life. Part of that life has been about politics. Seriously, when you did the MTV Rock the Vote stuff in ’92, I thought that was pretty cool. I was 16 and from a politically-minded family.

Unlike some commentors on this thread, I don’t think Megadeth is “just music.” It’s clear that you, like Sepultura, Testament, Xentrix, Nuclear Assault, Kreator, Revocation, Heathen, Forbidden, and some other awesome bands work to raise social consciousness. It’s not dumb kid’s noise. It has a purpose. You’ve always had a purpose…full-fledged aggression mixed with a moral approach to the world that is neither condescending nor authoritarian. I’m sure I’m about the thousandth person who’s written to you to say that lines like from Rust In Peace and Countdown to Extinction played in my mind over and over again. As someone who’s minded politics and the environment, Megadeth serves a special place.

I can’t help but note that Countdown to Extinction came out in 1992. That’s the year of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The young girl talking in the song “Countdown to Extinction” is forever linked in my mind with the young girl who spoke at the Rio Summit. I get it. Those are my links and they’re not many other people’s. But I bring it up for a reason. Rick Santorum will be an environmental ruin for this country.

I’ll just give three examples: hamstringing the EPA, climate change, and hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling for natural gas in Pennsylvania. First, Santorum, like too many Republicans these days would like to defund, hamstring, or eliminate the federal Environmental Protection Agency. In a world where corporate influence far outweighs the good work of some religious people or the ability of common people to protect their water, their air, or their children, this is baffling. The EPA is sometimes the only bulwark “we the people” have to protect us from industrial pollution.

Second, Santorum denies climate change. He calls the science behind it “junk science.” That is junk thinking. It is basic chemistry and physics. The trend line from an incredible amount of data – some of it going back tens of millions of years – shows that the earth today is at a particularly warm period. More importantly, the earth is warmer than it has ever been during human history. That warming trend, which is continuing and accelerating, is inextricably linked to the release of carbon dioxide and methane from humans burning fossil fuels. The only “junk” out there on this comes from the fossil fuel industry and the politicians – like Rick Santorum – who have enslaved themselves to those industries. [See point #1 about the EPA above.] I find it interesting that you would vote for Santorum given what you wrote in “Dawn Patrol”:

Pretending not to notice

How history had forbode us

With the greenhouse in effect

Our environment was wrecked

That’s a pretty clear warning to me. Are you backing away from that? Santorum isn’t the only Republican with this view by any means but he is the most vocal of the four left standing.

Third, Pennsylvania where I live and where Santorum is from has been undergoing a natural gas rush. Santorum recently told a crowd in Oklahoma that there is “nothing” to worry about. In case you don’t know, two new technologies have been put together to get at massive gas reserves in shale beds. We can drill thousands of feet into the earth and turn the drill bit and go horizontally for thousands of feet. Then, having bored a hole around a mile down and a mile across (give or take depending on conditions) the well is hydraulically fractured. By blasting a mixture of fresh water, some sand, and a cancerous (literally) cocktail of biocides, lubricants, and other chemicals into the earth at upwards of 14,000 pounds per square inch, the shale bed can by stimulated into releasing gas back up the well bore to the well head. People refer to this process as fracking. It is an environmental and community health ruin.

I have met people from across the state now who can’t drink their well water because of these processes. Some of them can set their taps on fire. That’s cool a couple of times. But it’s not cool to have to have a gas ventilation system set up in your house because your water leaks so much methane your house could explode. I know people who have been ripped off. Cattle, dogs, horses, cats, chickens, song birds, and fish have all been killed by fracking. I know people whose property value has plummeted 85% because of damage to their water. Little kids waking up in the middle of the night with their noses bleeding and doctors reporting that kids have elevated levels of toxins in their bodies. People losing hair. Headaches. Just wait for the cancer clusters. Just two weeks ago, Carl Stiles killed himself because he had become so ill from what his family is certain was fracking pollution.

Santorum called this all “the boogey man.” He said, “Ooh, all this bad stuff's going to happen, we don't know all these chemicals and all this stuff, What's going to happen? Let me tell you what's going to happen, nothing's going to happen." Call me uncouth, but as a Pennsylvanian, that’s garbage. The people of Dimock, Pennsylvania lost their water from gas drilling. When the state government and the company stopped providing that water who stepped in? First it was neighboring communities. But then the EPA came and has supplied the water. Once again, we are back at number one.

So I know you said you admired Santorum for his going back to be with his kid. As a father myself, I too am touched by that. Every day that I get to spend with a healthy and happy boy is a day worth more than my life. And I mean no disrespect to you when I say that it affects you differently than it does me given your family history and your father’s negligence as you’ve written about it. Santorum’s devotion to fatherhood is admirable. And certainly, given your vocal embrace of Christianity, his faith is too.

But why does it stop with his son? What about the son getting ill from fracking operations or the arsenic in his water from mountain top removal in West Virginia or Kentucky? What about the boys and girls exposed to the pollution of coal and gas power plants around this nation that create cancer clusters and literally billions of dollars in medical treatment for human-caused industrial disease. It’s no accident that asthma, leukemia, and other awful illnesses proliferate near, downwind, and downstream of polluting industries. Why isn’t Santorum a father for those people and protect them as much as he would protect his own children?

If you’re still reading this I appreciate it. Yeah. My first reaction was pretty strong. I felt like maybe never buying another Megadeth album. Maybe it would be boycott time. But I guess that I, like a lot of other people, can’t square this circle. We just want to understand.

See, it’s not that I ain’t kind. I’m just not his kind. And, like you, I still believe that it’s all for we the people…not we the corporations. If there's a new way, I'll be the first in line. Rick Santorum is not the new way.

He should never be president. Ever.

Peter Buckland

Getting from Here to There

Do you ever feel like sustainability-minded folks are just singing the Talking Heads song, "Road to Nowhere"? I do. Derrick Jensen maybe says it best in an article at Orion: "The most common words I hear spoken by any environmentalists anywhere are, We’re f***ed." We hear it all the time. But as Jensen also says, we can step out of this defeat and actually do something. In doing, there is hope.

Today's show is all about hope in action. Our three guests are journeying to change our collective journey. First, Jon Brockopp will join us to talk about his pending bike ride to Washington, D.C. - 200 miles in 4 days. Along with two other men, he will be stopping at congregations, colleges and CSAs along the way to spread the word about Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light and our moral responsibility to respond to climate change.

Then we will be joined by Eileen Flanagan who is part of the Earth Quaker Action Team, who is part of the Green Walk for Jobs and Justice. They are walking 200 miles across Pennsylvania from Philadelphia to the PNC Bank headquarters in Pittsburgh to call on PNC to end its financing of mountain top removal of coal. George Lakey of EQAT says, "We can green our money." How?

Finally, Jason Bell will come on the show. Jason has initiatiated the Tour de Frack, "an action oriented way to explore rural communities and the effects unconventional gas drilling from the saddle of your bike." It is a two week bike tour from July 14-July 28, 2012 from Butler, Pennsylvania to Washington DC along the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O towpath.

Given my own ride last year from Pine Grove Mills to Harrisburg to accomplish a similar goal, I had to have these people on the show. They are people putting the rubber to the road. Step by step and pedal stroke by pedal stroke they are walking or riding on a road to a better future. As Michael Bagdes-Canning of Tour de Frack says, "We have a democracy problem." One way to better our democracy is to help the conversation and call on others to be accountable and do the right thing.

In honor of all three of our guests today, I leave you with a Wendell Berry poem Badges-Canning quotes in this video.

"The Peace of Wild Things"

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at
the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry

There is great hope in such people.

As always, listen in on your local dial at 90.7 fm or stream us online. Call in with questions or comments: (814) 865-9477. You can also join us on Facebook and get involved with a conversation about this show and other sustainabilty topics.

What if Paris floods from climate change?

Since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out a few years ago, people in the United States have idly entertained the idea that Miami or New Orleans could flood. In worst-case scenarios, New York City could be submerged - a story made morbidly fascinating in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us. But in the world of history and culture, few cities hold water (no pun intended) like Paris.

What if it floods from climate change? This is a scenario eerily represented in this video.



As TreeHugger notes:

More than 100 miles from the Atlantic, Paris is safe from rising sea levels for the foreseeable future, but coastal cities around the world aren't as lucky. The entire population of the nation of Kiribati, in the Maldives, is relocating to Fiji as its 32 islands disappear under the water. They are not the first rising-sea refugees, either.

To put the video's version of Paris in perspective, the best case scenario for this century is a 50cm rise in global sea levels. New reports show things will likely be worse.

Rising seas not only make coastal areas uninhabitable, they compromise drinking water supplies. The use of Paris, the famously beautiful city, as the potential victim could bring attention to a climate issue that is largely ignored.

Where would the art go? Berlin? Basel? Vienna? I have to admit a certain fascination and interest in such a problem. What kind of transition of culture would have to occur? I'm envisaging a modern version of the Irish monks of the medieval period who preserved so much in their cloistered corner of the world while Europe's powers plundered one another. Imagine the contingencies for the Mona Lisa. What about what's in New York's Museum of Modern Art? What future scenarios will there be besides A World Without Us or John Carpenter's campy Escape from New York?

A lot of people will argue New York is safe for a long time. And they may be right. The pumps that free the subways (and all of the island from the daily deluge of water that made the island a meadowland) run, more than likely, on coal. Coal, left unchecked, will power our machines for a long time. Maybe nuclear power fuels them. Maybe it will more. Maybe tidal will one day do it. But if its coal, and coal is left unchecked, that means an escalation of climate change. A real double bind. And one that makes for great apocalyptic story telling. I'm not saying the stories will necessarily or really won't happen. I don't know.

Right now, they're just stories. But each day with more coal dumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, the more traction the doom scenarios will get more traction and the more the Mad Max fans will say that thunderdome is on its way. Others will watch this video and think, there must be a different way to do things so that doesn't happen.

The Rotten Heart of the Heartland of Denial

As you probably know from today's show with Penn State science education graduate student Beth Hufnagel and the National Center for Science Education's Mark McCaffrey, the Heartland Institute's efforts to work climate denialism into secondary school science classes. The Climate Reality Project is pushing back with the following video lampooning the real junk science.



Ezra Klein at the Washington Post puts it in good terms:

And so, according to internal documents from the Heartland Institute, the group is paying $100,000 for David Wojick, a coal-industry consultant, to develop “modules” for classroom discussion. (Wojick has confirmed this.) These modules would include material for grades 10-12 on climate change (“whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”) and carbon pollution (“whether CO2 is a pollutant is controversial”). In fact, none of these issues are scientific controversies — the vast majority of climatologists believe, with a high degree of confidence, that man-made carbon-dioxide emissions are heating the planet.

But could Heartland actually spread its views? Rosenau says that Heartland could do what creationist groups like the Discovery Institute have been doing for years and simply mail out supplemental materials to educators far and wide. “There will be teachers who are sympathetic to the skeptic view or who think the material looks useful, and they’ll say to themselves, okay, I’ll bring this into the classroom,” he explains. It’s worth noting that the Heartland Institute had already developed a video along these lines — titled “Unstoppable Solar Cycles,” which laid out the long-debunked theory that the sun is driving recent warming — and shipped it off to teachers. (These earlier efforts, according to one Heartland document, met with “only limited success.”)

Even if these materials turn out to be wildly inaccurate or out of sync with a state’s science-education standards, keeping tabs on their use would be quite difficult. “In almost all cases,” Rosenau says, “there are no policies that would prevent a teacher from using such material.” Quite the opposite: A few states, such as Louisiana, have non-binding laws that urge teachers to embrace “supplemental” material on heated topics like evolution and climate change.

And that's why we need organizations like the National Center for Science Education and teachers and their teachers who are literate in climate science and, I might add, a group I'd wager can't afford to pay $100,000 for one person to create great climate education materials. Instead, they do it for the love of good knowledge, good science, healthy people, and a healthier planet.

On a final note, as a media service on sustainability, we believe a free press is imperative for democracy. But being a press service comes with responsibility and the need for good information so that we can make good collective decisions. The great American philosopher John Dewey said, "A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experiences." If we are to live together in associated living then our communication about our experiences needs to be clear, warranted, and just. We can't deceive ourselves or others. We have to have good reasons to believe what we believe. And whatever we do about it must be equitable and fair. Denying climate change to school children undermines all of that.

Climate denialism undermines democracy.

Opening a Closing Door with Good Climate Change Education

"The door is closing. I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
~ Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency as quoted in The Guardian

If we are to get dodge climate catastrophe, we need to understand it. To understand it, we need good information reaching students in schools, taught by capable and well-informed teachers. All of that requires a supportive environment that confronts reality, uses science and communication effectively, is grounded in responsibility, and keeps what Isaac Asimov called "the armies of the night" out of schooling. That's really hard to do in a democracy and especially hard in a country with extremely powerful religious and corporate factions discrediting science on ideological grounds.

When I walk and bike into the forests near my house each week I see damage linked to climate change. Stands of my favorite trees, the Eastern hemlock are infested with the woolly adelgid, a tiny insect that kills the trees by destroying their nutrient gathering capacity. Steadily, the hemlocks are dying, a tragedy whose proportions you can begin to understand in Charles Little's The Dying of the Trees. The problem started in the south because adelgids were checked by frequent enough or deep enough cold snaps in north Mid-Atlanic and New England states. But winter temperatures have steadily risen with anthropogenic global warming and the adelgid has traveled north to Pennsylvania and New England. This winter is the 11th warmest on average. It's February and it's been in the 40s and 50s often in State College. It's weird. [Picture of my son with hemlocks and rhodedendron in Rothrock State Forest at right.]

Most of us are familiar with the big signs. Melting ice caps, polar bears drowning, "drunken trees" in the northern boreal forests, and the statistical images like the "hockey stick." The increasing frequency of "extreme weather" events like the Moscow heatwave now likely happen more frequently because of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate forcing from burning fossil fuels. There is widespread suspicion that the Texas heatwave and drought last year, the intense monsoons in the Indian subcontinent, floods in Pakistan, and the drought on the Horn of Africa are more intense than they would have been without anthropogenic climate change.

So it's not just happening somewhere else. It's not going to happen later. It is happening now. Author Bill McKibben calls this new world Eaarth because humans have altered it so much.

The quotation I opened with reflects predictions from the International Energy Agency. As The Guardian reported,

The new research adds to that finding, by showing in detail how current choices on building new energy and industrial infrastructure are likely to commit the world to much higher emissions for the next few decades, blowing apart hopes of containing the problem to manageable levels. The IEA's data is regarded as the gold standard in emissions and energy, and is widely regarded as one of the most conservative in outlook – making the warning all the more stark. The central problem is that most industrial infrastructure currently in existence – the fossil-fuelled power stations, the emissions-spewing factories, the inefficient transport and buildings – is already contributing to the high level of emissions, and will do so for decades. Carbon dioxide, once released, stays in the atmosphere and continues to have a warming effect for about a century, and industrial infrastructure is built to have a useful life of several decades.

Yet, despite intensifying warnings from scientists over the past two decades, the new infrastructure even now being built is constructed along the same lines as the old, which means that there is a "lock-in" effect – high-carbon infrastructure built today or in the next five years will contribute as much to the stock of emissions in the atmosphere as previous generations.

The "lock-in" effect is the single most important factor increasing the danger of runaway climate change[.]

And yet there are still politicians in denial. None of the current Republican presidential candidates will touch the reality of climate change. Rick Santorum has said "there's no such thing as global warming" and the science behind it is "junk science" while Newt Gingrich has flip-flopped on the issue (read here). None of them is quite as bad as Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma who called climate change "the greatest hoax ever." Chris Mooney made the first strong case about this largely Republican phenomenon in his book The Republican War on Science. [Hear a great interview between Mooney and McKibben on climate change and climate denial here.] Some of Oklahoma's state legislature seems to agree.

Just a few days ago, the National Center for Science Education reported Sally Kern had gotten the state's House Common Education Committee to consider an anti-evolution and anti-climate science education bill. Last February the bill went down in a 7-9 vote. Three days ago, Republican representative Gus Blackwell brought the the bill back to the same committee. The bill's language has been changed slightly, now mimicking a similar law in Louisiana pushed through a few years ago with the aid of the conservative Seattle-based Discovery Institute. The bills says,

"the Legislature further finds that the teaching of some scientific concepts including but not limited to premises in the areas of biology, chemistry, meteorology, bioethics and physics can cause controversy, and that some teachers may be unsure of the expectations concerning how they should present information on some subjects such as, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."

The House Common Education Committee voted 9-7 to accept it, and assuming nothing holds it up, the full House of Representatives will be voted up or down by March 15, 2012, before proceeding to the state Senate.

Attacks on evolution in American schools, school boards, and legislatures are old. Americans infamously distrust evolution as the explanation for the emergence and diversity of life on earth. In large part, many Americans' ideas about Biblical inerrancy and literal interpretations of the Book of Genesis conflict with evolution. According to the Pew Research Center, an August 2006 survey found "63% of Americans believe that humans and other animals have either always existed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guidance of a supreme being" while "26% say that life evolved solely through processes such as natural selection." A 2005 poll "found that 64% of Americans support teaching creationism alongside evolution in the classroom." That distrust has resulted in famous educational, political, and legal showdowns from the famous Scopes trial, Epperson v. Arkansas, McLean v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard, and the 2005 Pennsylvania case Kitzmiller v. Dover which also featured the Discovery Institute (Sustainability Now co-host Peter Buckland attended Kitzmiller). But climate change is a newer form of denialism and the denialists aren't the same.

This Friday we are going to dive right into this. Mark McCaffrey is the newly hired Programs and Policy Director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE). McCaffrey has worked on a number of projects for climate literacy and holds an M.A. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from University of Northern Colorado. He is charged with helping to develop better "climate change education in formal and informal educational environments, in order for future citizens to be able to make scientifically informed decisions about the consequences of climate change." With the recent attacks in legislatures, the revelation that the Heartland Institute had been preparing anti-climate science curriculum for K-12 schools (pdf) (the leaker of those Heartland documents was Peter Gleick who resigned from NCSE's board), and the recently renewed attacks on Dr. Michael Mann by the Common Sense Movement in the wake of his newly released book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars (here and here). Hear a new interview with Michael Mann on his book by Chris Mooney here on this fight.

We will also be joined by Beth Hufnagel, a doctoral student in Penn State's Curriculum and Instruction program focusing on science education. She is currently working as an assistant for a class that teaches climate change and evolution education content and strategies to future elementary school teachers. She worked as an environmental researcher in New Jersey and then as an Environmental Science teacher in Boston for several years before starting her doctoral program in 2010.

What's good climate education? Is science enough? Do children need to learn the ethical lessons? How do we open the door the IEA says is closing?

The show airs at 4 pm EST on Friday on The Lion 90.7 fm. Stream it online and feel free to call in (814) 865-9577 with questions or comments. As always, feel free to leave questions here, at our Facebook page (ask to join), or at our Twitter account.

Taking Out the Keystone and Building Something Else

A "keystone" plays an integral role in an arch of a bridge or any span. It is the incredible wedge maintaining the whole vault's structural integrity. If you want to call something necessary, call it the keystone.

So calling the Keystone XL pipeline a "keystone" is to repeat the name of a thing deemed necessary. It's to say that we absolutely need the pipeline to the tar sands if we are to continue having what we have. But some people won't have it.

As we reported last fall, local Toni Brink decided to protest the Keystone XL pipeline and was subsequently arrested along with over two thousand other citizens. Before leaving she said, "I think it’s really important. Future of life on our planet depends on it.” Like Josh Fox, climate activist and environmental leader Bill McKibben, consumption critic and author Naomi Klein, climate scientist James Hansen, and others, the she recognizes that climate change is real, it's upon us now, and that investing in the dirtiest form of petroleum extraction and production constitutes an enormous loss.

For its opponents, this pipeline is the keystone of a bridge that mustn't be built. It's a bridge at the edge of the world that leads to a climate nightmare. It sort of wraps up the problem of sustainability in one package.

The current Republican house continues to fight for the Keystone XL after President Obama nixed it last month. They are still citing inflated jobs numbers and ignoring a host of human health, water, air, land, and climate problems, not the least of which is the continued despoliation of a swath of Alberta the size of Florida. People like McKibben have joined with Friends of the Earth, the Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club, and and the ever-justice-minded Occupy groups have banded together to get 500,000 petitions and letters sent to the U.S. Senate to fight the newest move.

It seems the current Republican house leadership will not stop pushing for new fossil fuel development. In the last 40 years, there hasn't been this much environmentally-related rancor. Some see it as a sign that the old way is crumbling and doing whatever it can do to hang on. The oil barons, the coal tycoons, and the gas giants will spend more money and more resources to get at less and less fossil fuel. And to do that, they have to spend even more to corrupt our politics, paying enormous sums to political campaigns and even more on lobbying.

People like Richard Heinberg, a fellow of the Post Carbon Institute likely read this as the desperate strangulation of an industry clutching its bags of money and lashing out. But at some point, tired of being abused, we will turn to more harmonious and sustainable ways of doing things. We'll take the bricks that were going to build that bridge off the end of the world and build something much better.

At least some of the future of life on earth might depend on it. That's what Toni might say anyway.

Denialism, Hockey Sticks, Climate Wars, and Radicalism

Today I went to Dr. Michael Mann's talk at the Penn State Forum, "Confronting the Climate Change Challenge." It was a talk meant to prelude and outline his forthcoming book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. In it, he laid out the scientific case for climate change, the validity of "the hockey stick" and climate change models since James Hansen's in the 1980s, and the subsequent valid predictions climate scientists have made. Depending on our fossil fuel choices, we will have different futures.

Already we have a world where gardeners, hikers, hunters, anglers, and farmers already see climate change in North America. Species of plants and animals are migrating north for warmer temperatures. Others, ill-adapted for a warmer world including polar bears and walruses, are being selected out. The world is changing and it's getting plainer and plainer to see. It's common sense for attentive people to see.

But common sense is exactly what seems to be lacking, especially by people who claim to be at the front of the The Common Sense Movement, a coal industry front group that bought ads on local radio attacking Mann's credibility and climate science (see here). This group joined dozens of other industry astroturf groups (fake grassroots movement) and public relations moves by the merchants of doubt to scientize politics. It is, as Mann noted today, a way to "wage politics as usual...to use science as a political football," including the climate denialism and sought-after political and professional persecution campaigns of current Republican presidential candidates, Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok), Representative Joe Barton (R-Tx), and the Republican Attorney General of Virginia. Mann, in short, has been the victim of a Republican War on Science. Climate science anyway. (David Frum and Kevin Silber have tried to point out that republicans aren't universally opposed to science.)

And it was interesting to hear Mann respond to questions. A lot about dealing with the "merchants of doubt" as Oreskes has called them and combating climate denialism. He dealt with being a political football. With education. With capitalism. Interestingly, he didn't attack capitalism but instead attacked the way we've structured our economy. Capitalism "has been stacked" he said. Toward what? Fossil fuel economics. In so many words, he was referring to sunk costs.

But what some of you might be most interested in was how he discussed shale gas drilling.

He talked about its lower carbon footprint as a burned fuel. It is "cleaner burning" with roughly one half the carbon footprint of coal per btu. However, and I think this might have stunned the powers that be, he cited a study released in the last week that showing that fugitive emissions from shale gas drilling might nullify the carbon benefits of burning natural gas. With 105 times the climate forcing potential over a 20-year span, methane leaked at 4% from shale gas operations demolishes the climate bridge fuel argument. As he seems to like to do, and many academics do for good reasons, he encouraged us to have discussions with evidence before us.

From a more radical sustainability view, some people would find Mann's talk a little disappointing. The personal steps he has taken (or at least the stated ones) were technological household fixes like changing lightbulbs and using lower-energy appliances. Don't get me wrong by any means, do it. But given our guest last week Richard Kahn, it seems that deeper and deeper transformations are needed. Mann certainly confronts the status quo of the big fossil fuel industry, but there was no call for a radical restructuring of all society right now. But...and it's a big BUT...he recognizes that climate change is a civilization-challenging issue.

Alarm? Yes. Alarmist? Maybe. Radical? Not really. I'd actually call him pretty calm.

Calm or not. You have to get a picture with a Nobel-Prize sharer.

Attacking the messenger is the coal lobby's favorite tactic

In case you haven't been following, Dr. Michael Mann is under attack by the merchants of doubt. Again. As if the manufactured extreme doubt of the odiously named "Climategate" scandal two years ago weren't enough, the climate ostriches have restarted a fullscale character assassination and attempts at blacklisting campaign.

Mann created one of climate sciences most enduring images, "the hockey stick." The image shows the unequivocal correlation between rising annual temperatures and rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's the best visual out there showing us that humans burning fossil fuels causes climate change. Burning coal, oil, and natural gas releases CO2 into the atmosphere. It's very simple. But the ostriches and the industry-financed doubt mongerers who laughably call themselves skeptics are throwing their money behind propaganda campaigns to silence voices of reason.

One local radio station WBUS has been airing an ad asking listeners to ask Penn State to cancel an upcoming talk by Mann. Who's behind it?

The Common Sense Movement, a coal industry front group with a PAC called Secure Energy for America Political Action Committee (SEAPAC). They have a stock letter-writing campaign that sews doubt where there is a great deal of certainty on climate impacts.

On February 9th, the Penn State Forum Speaker’s Series is featuring
Professor Michael Mann in a speech regarding global warming. This is the same
professor who is at the center of the ‘Climategate’ controversy for
allegedly manipulating scientific data to align with his extreme political
views on global warming. Join us in calling on the administrators of Penn State
to end its support of Michael Mann and his radical agenda.

It attacks Mann's credibility, calling him "disgraced." Mann was cleared of all alleged scientific wrongdoing by Penn State and National Academy of Sciences and other investigations. So if by disgraced they mean one of the most decorated climate scientists at Penn State today and one of the most distinguished scientists in the world, I guess that's accurate. Somehow, I suspect they mean something else.

No doubt the laughably named Common Sense Movement is upset because Mann has a new book coming out called The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars that takes the denial machine to task and explains very clearly that climate science shows us we are in a very bad place regarding climate stability. The summary reads:

The Hockey Stick became a central icon in the “climate wars,” and
well-funded science deniers immediately attacked the chart and the scientists
responsible for it. Yet the controversy has had little to do with the depicted
temperature rise and much more with the perceived threat the graph posed to
those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect our
environment and planet. Michael E. Mann, lead author of the original paper in
which the Hockey Stick first appeared, shares the real story of the science and
politics behind this controversy. He introduces key figures in the oil and
energy industries, and the media front groups who do their bidding in sometimes
slick, bare-knuckled ways to cast doubt on the science. Mann concludes with an
account of the “Climategate” scandal, the 2009 hacking of climate scientists’
emails. Throughout, Mann reveals the role of science deniers, abetted by an
uninformed media, in once again diverting attention away from one of the central
scientific and policy issues of our time.

The worst of the worst are the polluting fossil fuel industries are hellbent on maintaining their grip on government, policy, regulation, and the market. If they leash the other powers that be, then renewables will be delayed and the CEOs of the corporate kleptocracy can keep us leashed.

This is a perfect example of Don Brown's arguments about ethics in climate change messaging. These include:

Lying Or Reckless Disregard For the Truth
Focusing On Unknowns While Ignoring The Knowns.
Specious Claims Of "Bad" Science
Creation of Front Groups
Manufacturing Bogus Climate Science
Think Tank Campaigns
Misleading PR Campaigns
Creation of Astroturf Groups
Cyber-bullying Scientists and Journalists

Lying, specious claims, and cyber-bullying accounted for. Definitely a front group using a misleading PR campaign. It's hogwash from beginning to end. Unethical is the nice way to refer to this kind of bile. I prefer to call it toxic "bullshit" meaning it is both lying and nonsense.

Interestingly, people have been taking the Common Sense Movement to task. They've attempted to hijack the letter-writing campaign. They've gone to the group's Facebook page (which has apparently stopped fans from leaving comments). They've urged WBUS to yank the commercial. Others are calling Penn State President Rodney Erickson and telling them they support Mann.

The blogosphere is up in arms about it too. Andy Revkin and Joe Romm have pieces up.

What is a university if not a place for challenging ideas and practices? By the Common Sense Movement's actions it's a place for corporately controlled speech and the unfettered pollution and bought speech.

Not at my university.

Post Carbon Institutue: Resilience and Hope in the Face of Ecocide and Greed

Is it possible to comprehensively rise to the sustainability and resilience challenges of the present day? Can we work as individuals, communities, businesses, and governments to tackle local, regional, and international economic, social, and environmental problems? Are there movements afoot looking these issues in the face and fostering social movements to change our directions? Yes. And this Friday

This Friday we'll be hosting Asher Miller, Executive Director of the Post Carbon Institute. Post Carbon brings together the people working on issues like climate change, energy, agriculture, education, economics, and more to foment creative action toward sustainable, resilient, and healthy societies and economies within a healthy environment. Their fellows include well-known leaders like David Orr, Richard Heinberg, and Bill McKibben, champions of sustainability themselves for at least three decades and emerging sustainability wizards like Majora Carter who has been fostering resilience in New York City with incredible results.

But it is Post Carbon which means the end of fossil fuel use. To get a sense of their take on the end of the carbon age, watch this video.

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We'll talk about these issues and people this Friday at 4 pm on The Lion 90.7 fm. Feel free to call in (814) 865-9577.

Who's responsible for climate change?

A few days ago we posted some video of Dr. Don Brown talking about the eight ethical dimensions of climate change. To go farther into that, we are posting a talk by Peter Singer, the world's most famous living philosopher.

Morality is not Abstract for Climate Change

Former guest, Don Brown, explains the eight moral dimensions he and others have found in the climate change discussion.

Water is Rising

Penn State's Center for the Performing Arts will be showing Water is Rising on November 8th. Water is Rising brings together thirty-six artist from the smallest countries in the world - Kiribati, Tokelau and Tuvalu (population 1000, 1,500 and 12,000 respectively). With elevations of only 2-3 meters above sea level, life on coral atolls requires a deep respect for the forces of nature. Their survival depends on communal values and cooperation; music and dance are a key to developing and expressing these values.

The synchrony and joy of group performance speaks to their collective solidarity, empathy, self confidence and self-awareness of these Pacific Islanders. Gracious gestures describe the abundance of their ocean; forceful movement shows the vitality of a seafaring life; and poems speak of a heroic past. As they tour the U.S. for the first time, these artists will share stories of atoll life amid climate change and rising sea waters.

Their world is threatened by climate change. As ice caps and glaciers melt and oceans rise because from more and warmer water, nations like Tuvalu and Maldives and their cultures in their homelands will probably disappear.

Following the film, a panel will discuss the film's meaning and ramifications. The panelists include Anne Clements from PSU School of Music, Jamison Colburn from Environmental Law and Policy, and former Sustainability Now guest Don Brown of the Rock Ethics Institute and blogger at Climate Ethics.