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Climate Progress

AGU Scientist Asks, ‘Is Earth F**ked?’ Surprising Answer: Resistance is NOT Futile!

By Joe Romm on Dec 9, 2012 at 2:29 pm

Yes, geophysicist Brad Werner actually titled his talk at the huge American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting last week, “Is Earth F**ked?” The talk’s abstract (searchable here) appeared to offer a pessimistic answer:

In sum, the dynamics of the global coupled human-environmental system within the dominant culture precludes management for stable, sustainable pathways and promotes instability.

We have met the enemy and they are us! But Werner, who works at the Complex Systems Laboratory at UC San Diego, offers hope in the subtitle, “Dynamical Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism.”

Slate‘s Jonathan Mingle attended the talk and reports on the source of Werner’s pessimism and optimism in his piece, “Scientists Ask Blunt Question on Everyone’s Mind: Why Earth and atmospheric scientists are swearing up a storm and getting arrested.”

The bulk of Werner’s talk, as it turned out, was not profane or prophetic but was a fairly technical discussion of a “preliminary agent-based numerical model” of “coupled human-environmental systems.” He described a computer model he is building of the complex two-way interaction between people and the environment, including how we respond to signals such as environmental degradation, using the same techniques he employs to simulate the dynamics of natural systems such as permafrost, glaciers, and coastal landscapes. These tools, he argued, can lead to better decision-making. Echoing Anderson and Bows, he claimed it as a legitimate part of a physical scientist’s domain. “It’s really a geophysics problem,” he said. “It’s not something that we can just leave to the social scientists or the humanities.”

Active resistance by concerned groups of citizens, analogous to the anti-slavery and civil rights movements of the past, is one of the features of the planetary system that plays an important role in his model. If you think that we should take a much longer view when making decisions about the health of the “coupled human-environmental system”—that is to say, if you’re interested in averting the scenario in which the Earth is f**ked—then, Werner’s model implied, resistance is the best and probably only hope. Every other element—environmental regulation, even science—is too embedded in the dominant economic system.

Certainly anyone who follows the scientific literature understands that if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path, we are most certainly f**cked (see “An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces“).

More and more more climate scientists are willing to tell this most inconvenient and unpleasant of truths (see Lonnie Thompson on why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization”).

Werner thinks scientists need to do more than just speak out:

I asked Werner what he sees as scientists’ role in contributing to this kind of resistance, the kind of direct action taken by researchers like [James] Hansen and [Jason] Box. Werner views his own advocacy as separate from his scientific work. “To some extent, [science is] a job, and a job I really like, and I have the good fortune and privilege to have,” he told me. “In my other life, I am an activist, but there’s a line. Both sides inform the other. And I think that that is healthy. But when I’m doing geophysics, I’m a geophysicist. When I’m doing activism, I’m an activist.”

Here is the full abstract:

Read more

Economy

Key Republican Admits Tax Cuts For Middle Class Would Pass In The House

By Igor Volsky on Dec 9, 2012 at 1:12 pm

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), the first Republican to publicly call on House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to allow a separate vote on a bill extending the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans, predicted on Sunday that such a measure could pass in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Cole’s admission come as Republicans are pressuring leadership to back off its opposition to increasing marginal tax rates on individuals making more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000 a year.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Cole said, “Yeah, honestly I think if it got to the floor, it would carry”:

“I think it would,” said Cole, a deputy majority whip. “Look, that’s my judgment, but I spend a lot of time counting votes and looking around. But this doesn’t say we’re going to raise taxes on anybody, it says OK this group for sure, your taxes aren’t going up. Get that done with, get it over with.”

A growing number of lawmakers are advising Boehner and GOP leadership to allow a vote on the measure as part of a package to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Politico on Saturday that the GOP should vote “present” on such a bill — one version of which has already advanced in the Senate — and on Sunday Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) predicted that if the measure passed, Republicans could regain leverage and demand steep cuts to entitlements. Last month, Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the Republican Conference Chairman, said that while he wouldn’t personally support a measure that raises taxes, “there may be enough Republicans who would vote for something like that.”

Despite their rhetorical support, however, Republican members have yet to sign the discharge petition filed by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that would force the House to vote on the middle-income tax cut extension.

Security

David Gregory Sits Idly By As Santorum Absurdly Claims That Obama Hasn’t Condemned ‘Radical Islam’

By Zack Beauchamp on Dec 9, 2012 at 12:50 pm

NBC host David Gregory allowed former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) to get away with making false and misleading claims about Sharia law and President Obama’s stance on radical Islam. Speaking on Meet The Press’ web supplement Press Pass, Santorum claimed that the President has never condemned “radical Islam,” an assertion that Gregory simply lets stand without challenge:

Sharia law means women have to have head coverings, have no rights — and you don’t hear the President say a word about Sharia. You haven’t heard him condemn Sharia law or radical Islam.

Watch it:

The notion that Obama hasn’t condemned radical Islam is absurd: the President told a Muslim audience in Cairo that “the first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms” and that “among some Muslims, there’s a disturbing tendency to measure one’s own faith by the rejection of somebody else’s faith,” among many other instances. He also has a particularly aggressive record of taking military action against Islamic extremists.

Obama hasn’t aggressively attacked “Sharia law” because, in the most basic sense, Sharia is the code of conduct that defines how Muslims ought to live, somethign reasonably similar to the same religious ethical codes that people of all faiths hold to. It doesn’t say that women “have no rights.” Hyperbolic rhetoric about the dangers of Sharia law is commonly employed by an Islamophobic activist network that has pushed through discriminatory anti-Sharia legislation in several states.

Health

Top Senate Democrat Backs Away From Raising Medicare Eligibility Age

By Nicole Flatow on Dec 9, 2012 at 11:43 am

As rumors swirl that Democrats may consider raising the Medicare eligibility age to reach a deal before the looming “fiscal cliff,” a top Senate Democrat expressed opposition to that option Sunday. Speaking on Meet the Press, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said raising the age at which seniors can receive Medicare from 65 to 67 would leave retired seniors with a dangerous gap in their health coverage:

DAVID GREGORY (HOST): I want to pin you down on one point about Medicare. You say you want to basically put off this discussion until later. But bottom line, should the Medicare eligibility age go up? Should there be means testing to really get at the benefits side, if you’re going to shore this program up, because as you say, 12 years before it runs out of money?

DURBIN: Here’s what it comes down to David. I do believe there should be means testing. And those of us with higher income in retirement should pay more. That could be part of the solution. But when you talk about raising the Medicare eligibility age, there’s one key question–what happens to that early retiree? What about that gap in coverage between their workplace and Medicare? How will they be covered? Now I listen to Republicans say we can’t wait to repeal Obamacare and the insurance exchanges. Well, where does a person turn if they’re 65 years of age and the Medicare eligibility age is 67? They have two years there where they may not have the best of health. They need to have accessible, affordable medical insurance during that period.

Earlier this week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also rejected raising the Medicare eligibility age as part of a year-end deal on spending cuts and tax increases, saying, “I am very much against it, and I think most of my members are.” President Obama was reportedly willing to support raising the Medicare eligibility age during 2011 debt negotiations, but has not said where he stands on the issue as part of the current deal.

A Congressional Budget Office study of the proposal to raise the Medicare age to 67 found it would have “little effect on the trajectory of Medicare’s long-term spending” because the youngest Medicare beneficiaries are the healthiest and least costly to the program. The costs, meanwhile, would include an estimated net increase of $5.6 billion in out-of-pocket health insurance costs for beneficiaries who would have been otherwise covered by Medicare, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study. Seniors in Medicare Part B would also face a 3 percent premium increase, the study found, since younger and healthier enrollees would be routed out of Medicare and into private insurance. Beneficiaries in health care reform’s exchanges would see a similar spike in premiums with the addition of the older population.

LGBT

Conservative Pundit: Accepting Same-Sex Marriage Is Common Sense

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Dec 9, 2012 at 11:40 am

Mary Matalin

Republican political strategist Mary Matalin must have finally gotten the message that a growing number of Americans support marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. On ABC’s This Week, as the show discussed the Supreme Court’s decision to weigh in on the matter, Matalin softened her opposition and said that the pattern of children born out of wedlock was “more problematic” for society than two men or two women getting married.

Previously, Matalin has defended “traditional marriage” and said that marriage equality was not a “civil rights issue.” But on Sunday, Matalin opted to fall back on the argument that unwed parents, not gays and lesbians, are leading to the downfall of American morality:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (HOST): The lines have crossed. Forty eight percent, approaching going above 50 percent support gay marriage in the country. Forty eight percent now support gay marriage in the country.

MATALIN: Well, because Americans have common sense. There are important constitutional, biological, theological, ontological questions relative to homosexual marriage. People who live in the real world, say, the greater threat to the civil order are the heterosexuals who don’t get married and are making babies. That’s an epidemic in crisis proportions. That is irrefutably more problematic for our culture than homosexuals getting married. I find this important dancing on the head of a pin argument, but in real life, looking down 30 years from now, real people understand the consequences of so many babies being born out of wedlock to the economy and to the morality of the country.

Watch it:

Washington Post columnist George Will, who appeared alongside Matalin, also dismissed the potency of the issue for Republicans. “There is something like an emerging consensus,” he said. “Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people.”

Indeed, the latest polls on the issue show support steadily growing for marriage equality. In one recent Quinnipiac poll, 48 percent voiced support for marriage equality, while 46 percent opposed the right. Another poll from USA Today and Gallup showed higher numbers, with 53 percent in support of marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized marriage equality.

Climate Progress

150,000 Years Of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates Of Future Sea Level Rise

By Climate Guest Blogger on Dec 9, 2012 at 11:33 am

by Rob Painting, via Skeptical Science

The last few million years of Earth’s climate has been dominated by the ice age cycles. These consisted of long cool periods (glacials) where giant icesheets have grown on the continental land masses at, and near, the poles. With the water evaporated off the oceans being locked up as ice on land, this ice sheet build-up substantially lowered global sea level. During the shorter, warmer, intervals (interglacials) the ice sheets have disintegrated, and with their glacial meltwater draining back into the oceans, sea level has risen. From the coldest part of the last ice age (roughly 20,000 years ago) to present, global sea level has risen an astounding 120 metres.

Although all the details are not well understood, the driving force behind these glacial/interglacial cycles are slow variations in Earth’s orbit as it circles the sun, which slightly decreased/increased the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. For the current interglacial, the orbitally-driven warming eventually came to an end after the Holocene Climatic Optimum (HCO), and by 4-5000 years ago all the vulnerable land-based ice had disappeared. The volume of the global ocean was static until the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, and by the 19th Century global sea level had begun to rise again. Despite undergoing short-term accelerations, and decelerations, globally-averaged sea level has undergone long-term acceleration up to the present day (Church & White [2006], Merrifield [2009]).

Figure 2 – Global mean sea level from 1870 to 2006 with one standard deviation error estimates (Church 2008).

With some 60-70 metres worth of global sea level equivalent locked up in the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, and with global warming well underway, it raises the question of how much sea level rise we are likely to see this century (and beyond), and just how fast this might happen. Because the dynamics of ice sheet disintegration are only very crudely known, and ice sheet modelling is in its infancy, there is a large range of estimates of future sea level rise. Many now seem to converge on 1-2 metres of sea level rise by 2100 – much higher than current rates. But is this realistic? A recent paper, examining past ice sheet disintegrations, lends credence to these estimates.

Rapid Coupling Between Ice Volume and Polar Temperature

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Economy

Lawrence O’Donnell Confronts Gingrich: Asks Him To Apologize For Predicting Clinton Tax Increases Would Lead To Downturn

By Igor Volsky on Dec 9, 2012 at 11:19 am

On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell confronted Newt Gingrich for falsely predicting in 1993 that the economy would suffer if then-President Bill Clinton raised marginal tax rates.

Republican are making a similar argument against President Obama’s call to raise marginal tax rates on the richest Americans, even though the economy and jobs grew exponentially during the Clinton years when the top marginal tax rate was at 39.6 percent for the top income earners.

O’Donnell read off Gingrich’s false prediction and asked him to apologize to Americans:

O’DONNELL: Who said this? ‘The tax increase will kill jobs and lead to a recession, and the recession will force people out of work and onto unemployment, and actually increase the deficit.’ That’s Newt Gingrich, in 1993, on the Clinton tax increase, and those of us who were working on the other side of that tax increase, Newt, have been waiting for your apology for 20 years for being completely wrong about that.

GINGRICH: I don’t agree with you.

O’DONNELL: But the economy soared. No one lost a job because of that tax increase.

GINGRICH: Baloney.

O’DONNELL: There was no recession, you said there would be a recession. There was no recession.

GINGRICH: The fact is, if you look at all the indicators when I was elected Speaker, virtually all of the economic growth occurs after the Republicans take control. Virtually all of the increase in the stock market, in fact all of the increase in the stock market is after the Republicans take control.

O’DONNELL: You did not reduce the rates, Newt. You said the rates would cause a recession.

GINGRICH: When we balanced the budget, we balanced the budget with a tax cut, not a tax increase. Four consecutive balanced budget with a tax cut, not a tax increase.

O’DONNELL: A tiny tax cut compared to the biggest tax increase in history, which is what Bill Clinton did. You didn’t dismantle it.

Watch it:

Indeed, in 1993 when President Bill Clinton raised taxes on the top income earners, Gingrich and the Republicans argued that the hikes would result in economic decline and result in huge deficits. They were proven wrong. The country experienced the “longest period of economic growth in U.S. history, increased business investment, 23 million jobs added, and, of course, budget surpluses.” The same boom did not materialize after President George W. Bush enacted his tax cuts; the country experienced large deficits and the weakest job and income growth in the post-war era.

NEWS FLASH

Cory Booker ‘Seriously Considering’ Governor And Senate Bids | Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) said Sunday morning that he is weighing runs for both the New Jersey Governorship in 2013 and U.S. Senate seat in 2014. Speaking to Bob Schieffer on CBS’ Face the Nation, Booker said he’d decide “in the next two weeks” if he was running for Governor. Booker is “the biggest player” in New Jersey Democratic politics, as he is “the only Democrat in the state who can match Christie’s star power and fundraising prowess.”

Economy

Top Michigan Newspaper Turns On Snyder: Slams Governor For Sneaking Through Anti-Union ‘Right-To-Work’ Legislation

By Josh Israel on Dec 9, 2012 at 10:42 am

Gov. Rick Snyder (R-MI)

The Detroit Free-Press, which endorsed Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) in his 2010 campaign and has generally supported him since, blasted his decision to ram through a union-busting “right-to-work” law in a lame-duck legislative session. At Snyder’s urging, the state House and Senate each passed versions of the law this week. The editorial board slammed his move as a “failure of leadership” and observed that his “about-face” amounted to a betrayal of Michigan’s voters.

The paper noted that while it “trusted Snyder’s judgment,” that trust “has now been betrayed.” It expressed disappointment on behalf of independents who thought Snyder more independent and visionary “than partisan apparatchiks like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker or Florida’s Rick Scott,” adding:

His insistence that the legislation was designed to promote the interests of unionized workers and “bring Michiganders together” was grotesquely disingenuous; even as he spoke, security personnel were locking down the capital in anticipation of protests by angry unionists.

Snyder’s ostensible rationale for embracing right-to-work legislation — it was, he insisted, a matter of preserving workers’ freedom of association — was equally dishonest.

The real motive of Michigan’s right-to-work champions, as former GOP legislator Bill Ballenger ruefully observed, is “pure greed” — the determination to emasculate, once and for all, the Democratic Party’s most reliable source of financial and organizational support.

While Snyder and the Republicans in the legislature claim “right-to-work” is good for the state’s economy, studies show such legislation can cost workers money. The Economic Policy Institute found that “right-to-work” laws cost all workers, union and otherwise, $1,500 a year in wages and that they make it harder for workers to obtain pensions and health coverage. “If benefits coverage in non-right-to-work states were lowered to the levels of states with these laws, 2 million fewer workers would receive health insurance and 3.8 million fewer workers would receive pensions nationwide,” David Madland and Karla Walter from the Center for American Progress wrote earlier this year.

Earlier this year, Snyder told a U.S. House committee, “Right-to-work is an issue that is a very divisive issue… we have many problems in Michigan that are much more pressing… I don’t believe it is appropriate in Michigan during 2012.”

But Thursday, Snyder announced he had changed his mind and, a day later, both chambers of the Republican-controlled legislature rammed through similar anti-union bills with little debate.

Climate Progress

President Obama Can Keep His Promise To Cut Oil Use In Half

By Climate Guest Blogger on Dec 9, 2012 at 10:16 am

by David Friedman, via Union of Concerned Scientists

During his first term, President Obama made history by setting the first ever global warming emissions standards for both cars and trucks and putting our nation on a course to double new vehicle fuel economy by 2025, fulfilling his 2008 campaign promise to cut oil use 2.5 million barrels per day.

Now it is time for him to cement his legacy on oil by going where none of his predecessors have gone before — President Obama must commit the nation to a realistic path to cut our projected oil use in half over the next twenty years.

A Campaign Promise Kept

When first running for office, candidate Obama promised to cut U.S. oil consumption by 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, take 50 million cars-worth of pollution off the road, and save Americans more than $50 billion on gasoline.

Soon after taking office, the President set in motion steps to deliver on this promise. Following a key Supreme Court decision backing the Clean Air Act and the scientific finding that carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases endanger our health and welfare, he directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to develop a harmonized set of fuel economy rules and the nation’s first greenhouse gas standards for cars and light trucks.

Over the course of two rulemakings and in partnership with California, those two agencies put in place standards that will nearly double the fuel economy of new cars and light trucks and cut their global warming emissions in half by 2025. On top of that, those same agencies set the world’s first greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for new commercial trucks, from heavy-duty pickups to garbage trucks to big-rigs, covering 2014 to 2018.

Based on our analysis and that of others, Politifact is now rating Obama’s oil saving goal as a promise kept. By our calculations, the combination of the three standards will deliver oil savings reaching 2.6 million barrels per day by 2025. In that year alone, the combined standards will save consumers about $120 billion, even after paying for the improved vehicle technology, and will cut global warming emissions by the equivalent of taking over 70 million typical cars and light trucks off the road for a year. These savings will continue to grow, reaching more than 4 million barrels per day by 2035, with even more money in consumers’ pockets and emissions saved.

Commit to Half the Oil, Because We Can ½ It!

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