Reactions to story from Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

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  The Will to disbelieve

  http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/23/14729/3653
  195 days ago in Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist · Authority: 30

  By David Roberts This ran on VanityFair.com earlier today. George Will is far from the only middle-aged Boomer pundit who spends his time shadowboxing Dirty Hippies on the Washington Post editorial page, but his Thursday column is a doozy even by that genre's dubious standards. Seems the Communist Greens, with their "hostility to markets" and contempt for individual freedom, have teamed up with Activist Judges yet again. They're after America's vital fluids! Amidst the error and oleaginous bad faith, however, lies one valuable nugget of insight. Let's dig it out. What's at issue is whether polar bears should be listed under the Endangered Species Act (as they were last week ... kind of) because of the danger of climate change. Now, Will doesn't believe in climate change, though it's clear he hasn't updated his cue cards in a while. One sure indication of lazy conservative hackery on climate is the invocation of a "global cooling scare" in the 1970s. Will deploys this tired trope not once, not twice, but three times in a 700-word column. Not a good sign. (Side note: the "global cooling scare" talking point is refuted here; see much more in How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.) But about the polar bears. Will think it's a "fatal conceit" that humans can know, much less influence, the future. Obscurantism masquerading as world-weary wisdom is a hallmark of the rightwing pinhead faction, and as always, it's meant to distract your attention. Will wants you to think about hippies doing bong hits and dreamily speculating what might happen to the bears. But it's not the hippies who are worried -- it's scientists. Over the last few years the U.S. Geological Survey did a series of studies up in Anchorage, Alaska. Steven Amstrup, the wildlife biologist who headed the project, said, "Our results have demonstrated that as the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear." How's the sea ice? Mark Serreze, a researcher at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre who specializes on the Arctic, put it this way late last year: If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children's lifetimes. So the science is pretty clear. But science is beside the point with an ideologue like Will. He has to deny that polar bears are in trouble, because he correctly senses the implications. This is his insight: If we acknowledge that the bears' survival is threatened by global warming, then "anything that can be said to increase global warming can -- must -- be said to threaten bears already designated as threatened." That means every power plant, vehicle, and leaky building could potentially be held in violation of the Endangered Species Act. In other words: the ESA is far more radical than we dreamed when we passed it. When it was put into law, threats to species were localized: loggers who wanted a forest; a factory dumping chemicals in a river; development around a rural town. It has since become clear that the greatest threats to species are shifting climate zones, droughts, and habitat loss -- the effects of climate change. We had no idea what we were getting into. Preventing further species extinctions from climate change will require a society-wide mobilization beyond anything in this country's history. Yet that's what our law implies. We said we'd protect the earth's other species. Did we mean it?
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  David Roberts: The Will to Disbelieve

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-roberts/the-will-to-disb...
  195 days ago in Huffington Post Wires · Authority: 777

  grist.org George Will is far from the only Boomer pundit who spends his time shadowboxing Dirty Hippies on the Washington Post editorial page, but his Thursday column is a doozy even by that genre's dubious standards. Seems the Communist Greens, with their "hostility to markets" and contempt for individual freedom, have teamed up with Activist Judges yet again. They're after America's vital fluids! Amidst the error and oleaginous bad faith, however, lies one valuable nugget of insight. Let's dig it out. What's at issue is whether polar bears should be listed under the Endangered Species Act (as they were last week ... kind of) because of the danger of climate change. Now, Will doesn't believe in climate change, though it's clear he hasn't updated his cue cards in a while. One sure indication of lazy conservative hackery on climate is the invocation of a "global cooling scare" in the 1970s. Will deploys this tired trope not once, not twice, but three times in a 700 word column. Not a good sign. (Side note: the "global cooling scare" talking point is refuted here. For similar refutations of dozens of other common skeptical arguments, see Grist's How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic series.) But about the polar bears. Will think it's a "fatal conceit" that humans can know, much less influence, the future. Obscurantism masquerading as world-weary wisdom is a hallmark of the rightwing pinhead faction, and as always, it's meant to distract your attention. Will wants you to think about hippies doing bong hits and dreamily speculating what might happen to the bears. But it's not the hippies that are worried -- it's scientists. Over the last few years the U.S. Geological Survey did a series of studies up in Anchorage, Alaska. Steven Amstrup, the wildlife biologist who headed the project, said, "Our results have demonstrated that as the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear." How's the sea ice? Mark Serreze, a researcher at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre who specializes on the Arctic, put it this way late last year: If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our children's lifetimes. So the science is pretty clear. But science is beside the point with an ideologue like Will. He has to deny that polar bears are in trouble, because he correctly senses the implications. This is his insight: if we acknowledge that the bears' survival is threatened by global warming, then "anything that can be said to increase global warming can -- must -- be said to threaten bears already designated as threatened." That means every power plant, vehicle, and leaky building could potentially be held in violation of the Endangered Species Act. In other words: the ESA is far more radical than we dreamed when we passed it. When it was put into law, threats to species were localized: loggers who wanted a forest; a factory dumping chemicals in a river; development around a rural town. It has since become clear that the greatest threats to species are shifting climate zones, droughts, and habitat loss -- the effects of climate change. We had no idea what we were getting into. Preventing further species extinctions from climate change will require a society-wide mobilization beyond anything in this country's history. Yet that's what our law implies. We said we'd protect the earth's other species. Did we mean it?
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  In a salute to the Polar Bear

  http://greenlibrarian.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/in-a-salute-t...
  202 days ago in Green Librarian · Authority: 2

  In a small way and as a salute to the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species, I have gone through my endless supply of articles on various species and found what I hope are some of the more positive stories on some of our larger friends. First, lets start with the main attraction here, the polar bear. From the Grist comes “Bearly Legal” by Kate Sheppard. Next we have two stories on two different rhinos. First we have,  ”Species Sucess: Rhinos Recover” by Clara Moskowitz at Live Science. This includes both the White and Black Rhinos of Africa. Second, we have “End of Maoist Strife Spurs Nepal Rhino Numbers” from ENN. Then there is “Presumed Extinct Javan Elephants May Have Been Found Again- In Borneo” at Science Daily. Finally, we have this story, “At Indian Preserves, Tigers Remain King as People Are Coaxed Out” by Somini Sengupta of the New York Times. Sincerely-   Green Librarian
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  More Favorites (note: mostly political)

  http://www.rosasharn.com/2008/05/15/more-favorites/
  203 days ago in Rosasharn Designs » Home · Authority: 1

  1. A Farm Bill with an extra $1 million in nutrition programs (and of course the fact that Congress will override Bush on anything). 2. The listing of the polar bear (except for this part. I say use the ESA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions!) 3. Politics like these in California. 4. Politicians telling it like it is. 5. Browsershots
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  NWF: Conditional "Threatened" Listing Not Enough to Protect Polar Bear

  http://blogs.nwf.org/arctic_promise/2008/05/nwf-conditional....
  203 days ago in Wildlife Promise · Authority: 24

  Today the Dept. of Interior announced it would list the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, the decision came with administrative guidance -- better known as strings attached. Despite its own admission that the polar bear is threatened by global warming, the Bush administration insists the ruling can't be used to limit greenhouse gas emissions. And even though the Minerals Management Service says oil and gas leases in Alaska's Chukchi Sea come with a 33-51% chance of a major oil spill, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne claims the polar bear's threatened status shouldn't be allowed to interfere with fossil fuel drilling in their backyard. So if the Bush administration won't go far enough to protect the polar bear, what can we do? As the National Wildlife Federation's Karla Raettig told CBS News today, Congress needs to pass the Climate Security Act: You can read more National Wildlife Federation reaction to the ruling in our Newsroom. As for the oil and gas leases, Grist's Kate Sheppard reports, "On Wednesday afternoon, Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) filed the Polar Bear Seas Protection Act, a bill that would direct the National Research Council to study the impacts of climate change and of oil and gas exploration on species in Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort seas." Learn more about global warming's threats to wildlife and contact your senator in the National Wildlife Federation's Climate Action Center!

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