Category: Politics

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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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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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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Holy Coal

Who would have known that fossil fuels are a special gift to humanity from the Divine?

Fred Palmer, that’s who. The Heartland Institute’s holy warrior senior fellow has revealed his elegant chain of reasoning: “Because it’s easy to get to, it’s here and more people live better and longer for it,” therefore “fossil fuels [are] part of a divine plan.”.

This is a guy who says that global warming science is “sophistry. It’s an agenda driven by lawyers who make their own facts. . . . ”

I ought to note here that if you are a Deist—which is the most minimal religious belief this side of atheism—of course all Creation is divine by definition. No argument here. But that’s not the sense in which Palmer makes claims about fossil fuels. He means to elevate fossil fuels above other objects of Creation, special gifts to humankind. Which seems to me a bit dismissive of stuff like oxygen (without which, incidentally, coal, oil, and gas would not burn; oh, but oxygen is used by other animals, so it’s not so special).

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Coping in the Data Ocean

Our Oceanic Data Environment and the Paradox of Choice

What is it like to be a bat? is the  title of a paper by Thomas Nagel in the Philosophical Review in October 1974 that is widely quoted and discussed among philosophers.  But you don’t have to be a philosopher to see that the question goes straight to the mystery of consciousness. Is the consciousness of a bat anything like ours? What about a wolverine, a gecko, a sea urchin?

How does an  animal’s environment shape its consciousness? You’d expect that the consciousness of a wandering albatross, who spends months at a time on the wing without ever touching land, has to be wildly different from that of a mole who spends most of its time underground in the space of half an acre.

For more on wandering albatross flight, see this will blow your mind

It’s all very well to imagine yourself a wandering albatross. It sounds like a glorious life, untethered by our bonds to mere stationary places and to people who do not soar thousands of miles at a stretch.

But, what is it like to be a fish?

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Now for Pushback: “Indivisible”

Resistance is not Futile: Coordinated Nationwide Action Getting Traction

Just in case you are not aware of a coordinated national group gathering momentum to resist Trump & Co., check out the link at the end of this post. This group is for real and you can join: local chapters are springing up in places with potential for critical mass.

The emphasis for Indivisible is on pressuring your national-level legislators to. . . well, there are too many issues to enumerate here, but the priority at the moment is trying to save the ACA. For example, here in the Charlottesville area some of our members plan to meet at our (Republican) Congressman’s office Tuesday to make the case against repeal.

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Another Disrupter: Prince Charles

British officials are all in a sweat about Prince Charles possibly confronting Trump over Climate Change when the latter visits UK.  White House is telling UK that Prince Charles raising the issue would be “counterproductive.”

Counterproductive!?! Isn’t Climate Change counterproductive enough already without trying to sweep it under the diplomatic rug?

See http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/trump-and-charles-in-climate-row-d2qwb7962

Trump Speaks, Many Cringe

This country is rubble and needs to be rebuilt

During Trump’s inauguration address, I was reminded of his observation, many months ago, that “the generals are rubble.” Essentially, our whole country is rubble needing to be rebuilt, was the message he sent today, with a litany of bad stuff and the newly minted term “American Carnage.”

The strangest part of the speech was when he said that the education system has caused our children to be “deprived of all knowledge.” Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos is set to reverse this situation by informing us that public education is a fraud, which is the one piece of knowledge that will get driven into our empty heads.

So, from rubble and absence of knowledge, shall we rise?

That’s not such a good bet, considering how he just excoriated a lot of the people who will be working for him.