Author: Mark J. Heinicke

Some Sort-of Good News on Endangered Species

Amid the deluge of sickening environmental news in the U.S., there are a few somewhat bright spots from abroad

On Tigers: Cautious Optimism in Thailand: Tigers here

China’s Move toward Shutting Down Ivory Trade:  Chinese crackdown on ivory trade

Environmental Impacts of Chinese Looting of Resources Worldwide

China Resource Grabs

More “charismatic” animals such as elephants could slow Chinese resource exploitation around the world.  The sad and not-so-sad reality is that elephants are easy to love, and their killers easy to hate. Most of the endangered species on Earth do not have an equivalent “poster child” to represent them, and they are quietly being crushed under the bulldozer of economic “progress.”  In a world where celebrity tweets get more of our attention than trees and rivers, there’s little standing in the way.

 

Get the Cold Shoulder: Speak Out Against Climate Change Denial

Cautionary Advice on Opposing Climate Change Denial

Confronting climate change denial carries a social cost. That’s the finding of a study done by University of Exeter, as reported by Adam Corner in The Guardian:  Social Cost of Speaking Out

Just think of the social cost in the 19th Century for speaking out against slavery, or against denying women the vote. Or, in 1938 Germany, speaking out against oppression of Jews?  From the findings of this survey, you can be pretty sure the cost was high.  Adam Corner speaks of the importance of “potential collateral damage caused by challenging climate denial. . . ” He warns against losing the climate opinion war by engaging in battles that may degrade your social acceptability and thus your influence. “Being right,” he maintains, “is not the same thing as being persuasive.”

At What Cost Speaking Your Mind?

I’m not sure whether Adam Corner’s mindset reflects a British bias toward politeness, or a pragmatism that could prove useful in changing public opinion. If the latter, then just how his prescription for “emphasizing positive social norms” could be carried out is pretty vague. You also have to take into account Corner’s using the outworn metaphor, “collateral damage,” to refer to a psychological condition.  If “positive social norms” sounds jargony, and the use of “collateral damage” sounds tone-deaf, then you have to wonder about Corner’s analytic edge.

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The Consolation of Big Numbers: The Long View

[Let’s back away a few trillion steps from our world’s tragedies, comedies, inspirations, follies, triumphs, losses, meaningless accidents and meaningful enterprises, to muse upon the otherworldly. It gives me some tranquility at a time when tranquility is hard to come by. To do so, I will have to venture far into Nerdland.  If big numbers leave you cold, stop right here.]

Zillions of Planets Akin to Ours?

While here on our own planet things are lurching from bad to worse, I was comforted to hear the news of nonzero odds for the habitability of  several planets in the “nearby” solar system TRAPPIST-1.  Located a mere 40 light years from us, these planets are rocky, not too big and not too small, not too heavy, not too light, and at a distance from their sun that liquid water could exist on them, and harbor Earthlike life forms. Their distance from their sun is smaller than the orbit of Mercury around ours, but the star is so cool—an “ultra cool dwarf”—that three of them are evidently situated in the “Goldilocks Zone” amenable, with the presence of water, to life as we know it.

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THEY did it! The Signature Theme of the Trump Presidency

It Was the Other Guys Who Screwed Up – the Guiding Principle of Trump Governance

Confronted by a reporter with actual indisputable facts contravening Donald Trump’s boast about his massive electoral college victory, Trump replied “I was given this information.” Sure, and two months after the election he still had not bothered to confirm that which he had been “given“—which was no more complicated than comparing three or four numbers.

Whether this kind of prevarication is a deliberate lie, or evidence of Trump’s lack of curiosity as to facts, is not exactly clear. But whichever it is, the man’s instinct is immediately to shrug off responsibility. Something goes wrong, it is someone else’s fault.

Likewise, concerning the death of Ryan Owens in the botched raid in Yemen, he assigned the responsibility for Owens’s death to the  generals: “They lost Ryan.”  Moreover, he made a point that the operation had been planned during the “totally disastrous”  Obama presidency—no matter that Obama had rejected carrying it out, it had to be something Trump was not responsible for. Two times over.

Of course, his attribution of the loss of the popular vote in the election to fraud on an unprecedented scale—for which not a shred of proof has been adduced—belongs to the same pattern.

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Rogue Republicans for Presidential Transparency

Apparently there are more than one Republican speaking out for release of Trump’s tax returns (see below).  Nevertheless, while Iowan Republican congressman David Young says it’s a “no-brainer,” the same guy refused to sign a letter from other Republicans requesting it.  Such is the climate of political fear in the Republican Party.

Intimidation is Trump’s time-tested tactic, whether it’s over Democrats, the press, the judiciary, minorities of various ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, physically or mentally handicapped, or various political stripes (nothing to do with ideology, only whether they comply with any Trumpian whim. Also members of his own party about whom he has no compunction in attacking with a tweet. He’s used to bullying and insulting people in his own business and making it work for him; it seems not yet to have occurred to him that it doesn’t work to bully everyone. (The example of Paul Ryan notwithstanding. I don’t believe Ryan fears Trump; rather he thinks he can use Trump. Good luck, )

Republicans call for release of tax returns

It seems that an increasing number of people are coming around to ther recollection that “The only thing for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing,” said by Edmund Burke in the 18th Century( if he were alive today, I think he would have included women as well).  It appears that the Republicans who are doing nothing must have something else on their minds, such as the next primary.

 

How to Slow Global Warming, for Real

Failure and More Failure: Time to Get Real

If you are a typical reader of this blog, much of what you’ll see below is not news . But my hope is to frame questions about climate change and its remedies in a coherent way. . . and also to make the argument that. . . you’ll see.

As much as climate change believers have attempted to rein in the combustion of fossil fuels to reduce CO2 emissions, they have largely failed. It doesn’t matter what accord or protocol we’re talking about—Paris, Copenhagen, Kyoto—economic considerations (especially in India and China), and the slow development of zero carbon technologies are preventing us from meeting the goals.

That’s even without the worsening of U.S. emissions we can expect for the next four years—at least.

The good news is that CO2 emissions worldwide have ceased growing—we may be at a plateau with some promise of  reduction.

Slowing CO2 Emissions

Continue reading “How to Slow Global Warming, for Real”

Not So Fast with Public Lands Sell-Off: Sportsmen’s Hornets’ Nest

Jason Chaffetz Runs from Army of Hornets

Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz unleashed a storm of protest from sportsmen left and right when he introduced a bill that would direct the Bureau of Land Management to sell off 3.3 million acres of federally owned land.

The CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, Land Tawney, warned: “Mr. Chaffetz, you’ve kicked the hornets’ nest, and the army is amassing. . . . The only thing you can do to make this right is to pull those bills back.” He was joined by the National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever, Trout Unlimited, Remington Arms, as well as the National Wildlife Federation, who joined to circulate a petition that quickly gathered 46,000 signatures.

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“I Was Given This Information” (So I’m Not Responsible)

Will It Ever Stop?!?

Sorry for yet another political post, but it’s hard not to comment on the totally extraordinary. Trump’s press conference on Feb. 16 veered from paranoia to grandiosity in a way not unfamiliar to Trump watchers for the last 20 months except for a new, unsurpassed level of narcissism—a level that gets ratcheted up higher and higher the greater the pressure he is under. (I’ll note here that many of his followers were thrilled by his performance; they believe he speaks for them. We’ll see if they believe this in 2019.)

There are so many bolts of craziness shooting from the mouth of the Complainer in Chief, that most of us feel incapable of even enumerating them, much less think of a larger context beyond “I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!”

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The Calculus of Fear

As of this writing the  infamous Presidential executive order banning entry into the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries has yet to get a final judicial ruling. But whether it succeeds or fails, its main purpose will have been achieved: to instill fear in those deemed undesirable by Trump, Bannon, & Co.

From that perspective, it’s all the worse if the ban is eventually determined to be constitutional. You can do more than just scare helpless undesirables, you can lawfully inflict pain on them. The undesirables could be any group—Muslims, Mexicans, Arabs, etc.—for which you can find some pretext to justify barring them from entry, throwing them out, or jailing them.

Much was made by Republicans that it was only a “temporary” ban. But of course once you have a “temporary” ban, what’s to keep it from being extended in the name of national security? The point is not about temporariness or permanence, the point is about power and intimidation.

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Why Court Russia? Look to the South China Sea.

If Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s belligerent approach toward China’s activities* in the South China Sea—as conveyed in his confirmation hearing—were to continue, getting on Vladimir Putin’s good side makes perfect Realpolitik sense: squeeze China between the U.S. in the Pacific Ocean and Russia on land.

It’s not clear if Tillerson’s tough talk was mainly to cheer up hawks in the Senate during the hearing. But there’s more than just strategic thinking going into confrontation with China in the area, namely, oil and gas.

Continue reading “Why Court Russia? Look to the South China Sea.”