"Besides being a ready-made meme, it’s usefully imponderable: while peer-reviewed scientific estimates put the annual American death toll of birds from collisions and from outdoor cats at more than three billion, no individual bird death can be definitively attributed to climate change (since local and short-term weather patterns have nonlinear causes). Although you could demonstrably save the lives of the birds now colliding with your windows or being killed by your cats, reducing your carbon footprint even to zero saves nothing. Declaring climate change bad for birds is therefore the opposite of controversial. To demand a ban on lead ammunition (lead poisoning is the foremost cause of California condor deaths) would alienate hunters. To take an aggressive stand against the overharvesting of horseshoe crabs (the real reason that the red knot, a shorebird, had to be put on the list of threatened U.S. species this winter) might embarrass the Obama Administration, whose director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, in announcing the listing, laid the blame for the red knot’s decline primarily on 'climate change,' a politically more palatable culprit. Climate change is everyone’s fault—in other words, no one’s. We can all feel good about deploring it."
Writes Jonathan Franzen in a New Yorker article titled "Carbon Capture/Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?"
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"But climate change is seductive to organizations that want to be taken seriously."
Relies on the organizational corollary to the AA hypothesis "that people take the positions that are comfortable to them."
The goal of any clever social movement is to define the conditions of comfort. Alarmism isn't quite there yet, but getting closer.
California farms are dying. The Obama administration and Democrats everywhere blame global warming for the drought.
I spent 35 years of my life in California, we always had droughts. So why is this one so severe?
Oh yes, because of the Delta Smelt, environmentalists diverted all the water into the ocean to save this tiny little fish.
Clever. They created their own problem and they've got the solutions to fix it. Unfortunately, they are breaking a lot of eggs to make their omelets.
This Unreal Hoax has tried for 25 years and a Trillion Dollars spent to turn a colorless trace gas that has NO effect on warming anything and NO effect on sea levels into a BLACK DIRTY CARBON POLLUTION POISON THAT IS DESTROYING ALL LIFE ON EARTH, hoping crisis politics and a UN Coup D'etat will let them take control over all energy production and distribution wealth.
It's as seductive as Racial Fear and a State Religion working together to enslave us.
i
See this is why 'Conservatives' visit this blog run by a University Liberal. You're not going to find this on Daily Kos.
I know this is off topic, but it serves as evidence from yesterday's "is Althouse a conservative" discussion.
Which...of course...the good Professor is not.
Wind turbines kill between 200K and 300K birds annually. But of course that is only a small portion compared to the the 1.4 to 3.7 billion killed by cats.
Looks like we are going to have to eliminate cats.
Climate Change is also something that people can act concerned about, and still separate their money from their mouth.
The ridiculous Carbon footprints left behind from the private jet, mansion owning,liberal elite (Gore, Dicaprio)fall well inside Fen's Law.
If you've ever visited a carbon credit website, the do nothing relief of pretend guilt is hilarious.
"You too can help the planet through the purchase of this snake oil, while not having to change an f___ing thing in your personal life!"
Lots of bird victims of "climate change."
There is the lesser prairie chicken a victim of destruction of habitat in order to grow more corn for ethanol demanded by AGW alarmists.
There are plenty of eagles, bald and golden, destroyed by wind turbans, those eco crucifixes of the green movement.
Paleo climatologists have long known that North America is subject to long term droughts, on the order of centuries, and it is maybe one reason why no great civilizations arose here pre-Columbus.
And let me tell you, when a turban destroys an eagle, it is a sight to see!
... must use preview...
Oh yes, because of the Delta Smelt, environmentalists diverted all the water into the ocean to save this tiny little fish
That doesn't quite explain the lack of snow in the Sierras (<10% of normal, lowest since who-knows-when) unless the Delta Smelt has previously unheard-of powers.
Of course, snow *might* still fall this season, but don't bet your Almond Tree Farm on that.
And I do agree with Franzen -- the uproar/concern/what-have-you over AGW/Climate Change/etc. does seem to suck the air out of any other environmental concern.
Unless you link to Climate Change, people aren't gonna listen. Well, it's not all about CO2 levels all the time.
Science is not either liberal or conservative. Science is only valid data from repeatable tests or it is a total fraud.
So Global Warming can be freely discussed by a liberal because it is a total fraud behind the political War being waged against the USA by a fifth columnist enemy now in the White House.
Banning cats, major killers of songbirds and vectors of zoonoses, would be a great step.
Amerikans criticize the Chinese for killing elephants for ivory and rhinoceres for aphrocisiac horns, all the while spending billions of dollars to maintain their killer cats.
An animal lover would never keep a cat, just as a woman lover wouldn't keep a woman.
'Banning Cats' Like that would work.
My cat serves a great purpose: It takes down any unfortunate rodent that gets in the house.
Also a very nice furnace on a winter night.
@Madman, California has had droughts before. It will have them again. A government run by Democrats for Democrats for decades has failed to plan for and forestall water shortages. As always it's the working poor that pay the price. Barbra Streisand and Mark Zuckerberg can always afford to get water.
Would the billions already spent on high speed rail have served California better if used to build aqueducts, reservoirs, and pipelines? I'd bet the average Californian would give a different answer today than two years ago.
Climate change policy can not be taken seriously unless the following is agreed upon:
1. An ideal temperature for any 10-20 year average
2. We should halt decreased CO2 production if we hit that ideal temperature
3. If the temperature begins decreasing below the ideal temperature threshold, we should immediately begin increasing CO2 production as invariably global cooling by a few degrees is far, far worse for humanity than global warming.
...
If these things can't even be POSITED by the climate change community to be debated or agreed upon in some form, then this is invariably a scientific joke.
MadisonMan,
I didn't say the drought was caused by the delta smelt.
Its made worse. California used to have aqueducts and aquafers and all sorts of ways for the farms to store water.
Then they diverted billions of gallons of water to save the delta smelt. They created these water saving strategies decades ago because they couldn't count on the dry, hot, weather to provide them with the rain and water run off that they needed.
Well, now they don't have the rain and the water run off, plus they don't have the saved water. And now you have dead, dusty, farms.
Surprise!
jimbino said...
Banning cats, major killers of songbirds and vectors of zoonoses, would be a great step.
Amerikans criticize the Chinese for killing elephants for ivory and rhinoceres for aphrocisiac horns, all the while spending billions of dollars to maintain their killer cats.
An animal lover would never keep a cat, just as a woman lover wouldn't keep a woman.
I would urge the democrats to adopt and push this agenda.
Would the billions already spent on high speed rail have served California better if used to build aqueducts, reservoirs, and pipelines?
It's my understanding that northern Californians guard their water pretty avidly from southern Californians. I'm not sure how politically feasible any north-south pipeline would be, regardless of who is in charge.
I'm not sure how cost-effective it is, anyway, to plan for a super-drought, a once-in-a-lifetime type thing, which might be what California is experiencing given the amount of snowpack (or should that be no-pack) in the southern Sierras.
Nuclear powered desalinization.
Some pictures of Sierra snowpack previously. Not sure if the 2013 one was taken right after a storm or not. That might be the case 'cause it was warm here on 1/18-1/19 2013, which speaks to a trough/storm on the west coast.
This shows 2010-2015 differences. Note the lack of snow at the southern end in 2015.
It could be a long smoky summer in CA. We'll see.
By the way, if you want to see a really cool satellite, the SMAP satellite launched by NASA fits that bill. (It detects soil moisture, or lack thereof).
I have no clue how it works (I haven't read up on it), but the animation of it (link) shows a wicked cool contraption.
Let's archive the planet Earth. We don't need you people here anyway.
"In the long run, we're all dead," John Maynard Keynes observed. Ironically, the cause will be the lack of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere:
"As the Sun slowly brightens, carbon dioxide is sequestered into limestone. Some 600 to 800 million years from now, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations should fall below 10 parts per million, a threshold where plants can no longer photosynthesize. This process might wipe out plants and the animals that depend on them."
"California has had droughts before. It will have them again."
A lot of this is from people who don't know anything about California history. The 1977 drought was bad enough that people who lived on Catalina could not flush toilets. Avalon had had salt water sewers for years but the "modern"residents decided that the corrosion from salt water was more trouble than it was worth and converted most houses to fresh water sewage. Then came the drought
This is nothing new. I have also seen houses sliding down the hill in wet winters. Mine almost did in 1979-80. In 1969, my in-laws' next door neighbor lost their house to a mud slide. and the in-laws had to reengineer the footings for their garage which was sliding away from the house.
Brown made it much worse with his "Small is beautiful" program and the diversion of water to the ocean by a federal judge.
National Parks sequester enormous amounts of carbon and should be preserved, even if it means taxing non-breeders and minorities.
Crying climate change is the mark of a coward. Climate has always been changing, but if the climate change they are worried about is a result of global warming, they should state that. Using the politically correct term is the mark of a political actor, not a serious person concerned about society.
@MadMan, how short do you think a lifetime is? Per Wikipedia California has had severe droughts in 1953, 1961, 1977, 1986 into 1991, 2002, 2006 through 2011, and now 2015.
Here's the money quote from Wiki: "From 2006-2011 the state of California endured through a five-year drought. First declared by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008, as he tried to win voter support for an $11 billion bond to build new water projects, such as new dams and peripheral canals. The State legislature moved the bond ballot measure to 2012, but as of April 2014, has again re-scheduled to the November 4, 2014 election. California officially ended its drought in March 2011, when Governor Jerry Brown deemed the 'drought emergency' over."
Nope, can't let a (gasp!) Republican take action to forestall droughts? Vastly better to obligate $68.5 billion on a rail system, which, if it works, will be less useful than Alaska's "bridge to nowhere."
@Michael K, Catalina is an island, for heaven's sake. What stopped them from using the surrounding salt water for their sewers?
MadisonMan said...
It's my understanding that northern Californians guard their water pretty avidly from southern Californians. I'm not sure how politically feasible any north-south pipeline would be, regardless of who is in charge.
From your lips to God's ears MM. Would that NORCAL could guard its water. In the West all fights are ultimately about water. Go watch Chinatown again.
All that Sierra snowpack falls on Federal or State forests. The voters of SOCAL voted to build canals (much larger than any pipeline) to take (steal the water to feed SOCAL lawns...
The Problem is that the last of those dams and canals were designed during Governor Pat Brown (Jerry's Pop) admin in the 60's and finished during Reagan's in the early 70's. Since then Dams and pipelines are evil incarnate.
PS: Note to Leftists: When the Liberal NGOs sued to get water for the delta smelt, it was the Federal projects and the State projects who had to turn the spigots on and dump fresh water. The City if SF with its private Hetch Hetchy pipeline was not impacted.
California has not made any improvements in its water storage and distribution system in 40 years, while the pop has doubled...
PS: SOCAL also gets Colorado River water. However the agreement between Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Mexico and California was drawn during a very wet period. Some feel that the actual 100 year average flow is 2/3rd of what the split calls for.
Of course we can quantify the number of birds killed by climate change. How many birds have been killed by the blades of wind turbines erected to fight global warning?
Try between 140,000 and 248,000 according to which criteria you use.
http://tinyurl.com/qfo3jod
The present southern Sierra is more meager than in 1977. The previous ones -- 1961, 1953 -- could be called a lifetime ago. They weren't measured by satellite.
On the Drought This Time, I just had an epiphany while collecting an Amazon box from my front door.
I want to buy household water from Jeff Bezos, Sam Walton, or Fred Smith.
@MadMan I think $11B spent in 2009 would have greatly alleviated today's drought. Too bad it's earmarked for riderless high speed rail lines.
"Banning cats, major killers of songbirds and vectors of zoonoses, would be a great step.
Amerikans criticize the Chinese for killing elephants for ivory and rhinoceres for aphrocisiac horns, all the while spending billions of dollars to maintain their killer cats.
An animal lover would never keep a cat, just as a woman lover wouldn't keep a woman."
The ravings of a lunatic.
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of birds, regardless of cats and wind turbines. And "climate change".
Cats are the best pets. Our two go outside but are kept inside our 7' fence by my clever system of dowels mounted in flagpole holders with garden netting affixed. We get a lot of birds...they like to bathe, drink, and poop in our pool. Our cats scare them away but have NEVER caught even one bird.
My orange tabby always comes when he is called, is delighted to be around us, and delightful to be around. He sits on my shoulder and purrs, and he will play fetch with his feather-on-a-stick toy for as long as I will throw it across the room for him to pick up and return to me. What kind of sick twisted beast wouldn't love such a creature?
Yes the snow pack is pathetic. Our rains this winter were warm and thus most of the precipitation fell as rain in the Sierra. It still helped to fill the reservoirs as runoff so the scary snow pack stories somewhat exaggerate the situation, though it is pretty bad.
Of course the climate hysterics claim this is proof of catastrophic AGW even though four years ago we got well above the average annual precipitation, and we could as well next year. No one knows.
That being said the only way to deal with the threat of drought is to build more reservoirs and pipelines and stop flushing the water into the delta for baitfish. In other words reverse the Democratic agenda that has led to this crisis and change the state's priorities away from follies such as the $60B train to nowhere.
"What stopped them from using the surrounding salt water for their sewers?"
Most Avalon residents, as opposed to "summer visitors," vote D.
Does that explain it ?
Most are also on Medicaid and therefore on Obamacare now.
The fellow is certainly a conservative's caricature of the global environmentalist - jetting off to various exotic locales to have "authentic" experiences with wise, Gaia-respecting natives. It did cross my mind that progressives ought to feel a certain cognitive dissonance for supporting unlimited numbers of southern immigrants who will be more likely to take their future sustenance from planet-killer Costco rather than friendly, sweet cuzco.
Why is climate alarmism so difficult to stamp out? Two reasons:
1) claiming a global warming angle to your pet issue is the easiest way to get press and funding.
2) the "cure" for global warming reads like a hard left wish list. It's the radicals' ticket to everything they want.
What happens when the Salton Sea's decline accelerated in 2018 and tons of toxic dust gets blown throughout the Coachella Valley and onto LA and San Diego? Will that have been caused by global warming too?
California actually has many public works projects that should be undertaken but aren't, because the state is broke and spending outrageous sums on an idiotic high-speed rail project.
Why? Because liberals think it would be neat to ride as choo choo.
Hey, shouldn't the advent of driverless cars put a significant damper on high-speed rail?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - "Climate Change" is religion for people who think they're too smart to believe in God.
Ann, you've teased out a part of the article to make it seem like Franzen is more of a skeptic than he is. He makes it clear that he buys wholly into AGW. He thinks we're going to self-incinerate. Not in his lifetime, so he's going to continue to live the way he always has. He feels twinges of guilt about his carbon footprint when he boards a plane, but he assuages his guilt by saying his actions have zero impact on an already determined outcome.
He's saying that conservation groups are less effective by relying on 'global warming' because they don't have to really do anything about it. Instead of addressing tangible, root causes of animal endangerment and doing the hard work to eliminate those root causes, now they just sit back, rake in donations, and turn out useless agitprop to justify their positions.
As far as I got into the article, Franzen seems to think we should focus our conservation efforts on more tangible causes so that the wildlife has a chance to survive our coming self-incineration.
Read the rest of the article, Joe, and you may get a different take. The last two paragraphs are strangely optimistic, portending not a dying world, but a changing world.
Short answer. Yes. Yes it has.
m stone, I'll have to take your word for it for now. I've had enough solipsistic meanderings for one day.
Franzen sounds like a typical Boomer who is looking for ways to justify his lifestyle while pining for the days when environmental activism seemed to make a real difference. His biggest beef with AGW is not that we're all going to burn up, as he seems content that he'll be able to live out his days comfortably before that happens, but that AGW wasn't able to wrest the levers of economic control out of the hands of the indutrial complexes. But damn he likes his modern conveniences, so what's a girl to do.
While a somewhat novel insight, I don't think this is a piece of real import, or the most effective call for a return to tangible environmentalism.
Conservationist Paul Kingsnorth has a harsh critique of climate change environmentalism that tracks Franzen's critique, but from the idealistic premise:
To [go zero-carbon] will require the large-scale harvesting of the planet’s ambient energy: sunlight, wind, water power. This means that vast new conglomerations of human industry are going to appear in places where this energy is most abundant. Unfortunately, these places coincide with some of the world’s wildest, most beautiful, and most untouched landscapes. The sort of places that environmentalism came into being to protect.
And so the deserts, perhaps the landscape always most resistant to permanent human conquest, are to be colonized by vast “solar arrays,” glass and steel and aluminum, the size of small countries. The mountains and moors, the wild uplands, are to be staked out like vampires in the sun, their chests pierced with rows of five-hundred-foot wind turbines and associated access roads, masts, pylons, and wires. The open oceans, already swimming in our plastic refuse and emptying of marine life, will be home to enormous offshore turbine ranges and hundreds of wave machines strung around the coastlines like Victorian necklaces. The rivers are to see their estuaries severed and silted by industrial barrages. The croplands and even the rainforests, the richest habitats on this terrestrial Earth, are already highly profitable sites for biofuel plantations designed to provide guilt-free car fuel to the motion-hungry masses of Europe and America.
What this adds up to should be clear enough, yet many people who should know better choose not to see it. This is business-as-usual: the expansive, colonizing, progressive human narrative, shorn only of the carbon. It is the latest phase of our careless, self-absorbed, ambition-addled destruction of the wild, the unpolluted, and the nonhuman. It is the mass destruction of the world’s remaining wild places in order to feed the human economy. And without any sense of irony, people are calling this “environmentalism.”
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